My Snow Day

It's taken me all weekend to recover from the past week.  It was time to
get back to work, but also time for school to start again --for me and for
practically everyone around me.

Monday started with warnings of a heavy snowfall coming to our region. 
Now, in most areas, a big snowfall induces panic.  Here, a couple of
centimetres induces panic and with the expected 20-30cm they were calling for it
was time for martial law and for the military to come in.  Actually, now
that I think about it, the last time we had a snowfall like the one expected,
people throughout the valley walked to the train tracks because the army
engineers had cleared them for people to board a train bringing people into the
town centre.  It looked quite pitiful that people were riding on a slow
moving train because the road crews hadn't cleared any (and I mean any)
roads.  Nothing happened around here for days.  At least it happened
over Christmas, so most people just stayed at home and didn't bother trying to
get anywhere.  This year, however, it looked like it was hitting the first
week back at school.  So, on Monday, preparation were being made.

On Tuesday, we started to hear that Vancouver was hit hard by the snow during
the morning commute.  I spent the day looking East towards the mountains. 
In the space of an hour, they disappeared behind the clouds.  It was
looking bad.  It was about 9:30 that the snow started falling and it was
fairly light.  It got heavier and started to accumulate on the ground and
we got word just after 10 that we'd be shutting down at Noon because of the
weather.  We were expecting up to 30cm.

We got almost 8...

The guy responsible for making the decision to stay open or to close will be
gun-shy for the rest of the year now as it wasn't as bad as everyone planned
for.  In fact, the next 2 days were worse.  We had freezing rain and
our parking lot was a skating rink.  Roads looked like they could serve
professional hockey teams better than some of the stadium ice you see these
days.  It was bad.  But we didn't close.

Even stranger than the snow and ice that accumulated on Tuesday and Wednesday
was the realization I had about 2 in the afternoon on Friday.  It was all
gone.  The campus 'green' was green again and not a field of snow lined
with shoveled walkways.

Having the afternoon off (all of 2 hours for my shift) and coming in late on
Wednesday (about 90 minutes there...) threw my whole week off, though, and I'm
hoping that I can start fresh tomorrow....