Snow Day

After years of bouncing around from city to city, I wound up working in the Washington, DC area. Getting used to the area took a while. There is an air of self-importance about many people in and around DC. Don’t get me wrong… I have met a lot of nice people. I’ve also met a lot of other types. This post isn’t about the people, that’s just me rambling a bit. I took a job outside of DC a little while back, which was a blessing. Today, I was presented with a little gift. A snow day.

We got hit with a decent sized winter storm last night as March came roaring in. With it, it dumped a bunch of snow and my office was closed. I can’t even begin to express my disappointment. I think the best part of the deal was that it happened on a Monday. It’s a free three-day weekend. So, I kept my little girl, the Newtette, home with me and we got to play outside, followed by some shoveling of the driveway. A friend of mine had to leave town on short notice, and after checking his wife was OK on the driveway front, I realized I had a good day of general hanging-out ahead of me.

When you’re pushing 40 and have a family, the snow day is a bit different than it used to be. Sleeping in till noon isn’t an option when you have a living, breathing alarm clock living in your home. Likewise, you are limited to what you watch on TV during your free time. (A word of advice: The Big Lebowski has too many F-bombs in it to make it even remotely plausible for a family snow day.) What you can do though, is try to describe what would be an otherwise mundane day in a way that’s interesting to other people. Certainly not as entertaining as the Coen brothers classic, but it helps to get the brain cells firing.