Corner of Bourbon & Division

I'm serious. They've been preparing for a winter that hasn't arrived in well over five books. If they were in Canada, they'd be all set. Plus, we have snowblowers. They'd be amazed.

I, however, fan of winter though I am, am 2000% done. There's a winter storm warning for Cornwall, Lancaster, and western Quebec for later today. Guess what day it is for me? If you guessed COMMUTE DAY, you win a prize! It's a crappy prize comprised mostly of slush, black ice and utter frustration, but whatever.

No matter which way I look at it, today is going to suck. If I stay here in Ottawa and sleep until early afternoon, I'll have to drive home through the worst of it. If I leave now(ish), right after packing up and having a quick breakfast, I'm going to hit rush hour traffic in Ottawa and add on about an hour to my two-hour drive, while going on no sleep. Which is the better option? Who the fuck knows?

I'm opting for driving without snow, but it means rush hour traffic and sleep deprivation. I mean, more sleep deprivation than usual. If I get home early enough, I'll try to take a nap before Bean gets home from daycare. In theory, that should be doable. I can't imagine that driving conditions will be so bad that it'll take me eight or more hours to drive home. (Famous last words. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything)

Compounding all this is the fact that I had a rather shitty time of it at work last night. Maybe Mercury is retrograde again, maybe the moon was full, I don't know, but all my systems shat themselves and died. They took turns to do it, very politely, too, so that I ended up spending the entire night on the phone with multiple help desks trying to sort things out. Also one of the alarms went off at work: a really loud, really shrill alarm that's right outside my door and that can't be turned off. And because it wasn't deemed a "priority" alarm, I was informed that it would wait until regular hours started this morning. So I got a good seven hours of that to add to everything else that was going on. All the help desk people asked me what the sound was.

"That's not your fire alarm, is it?"

"No, no, it's fine."

"What did you say?"

"I said it's fine! Can we go back to fixing the network connection please?"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well."

Etc.

Anyway, I am having breakfast. There will be more coffee in a minute. Because I'm leaving early, it means I can't pick up milk the way I'd intended (milk in Ontario is much cheaper than in Quebec, so I try to stock up on my way home usually). So thank you, weather, for fucking things up for me even more. After coffee I'll finish packing and be on my way. I have to get gas for the car (yet another delay), and I may try to aim for a Tim Horton's as well mid-trip, in an effort not to fall asleep at the wheel, which would be so many levels of disastrous I don't know where to start.

Wish me luck!

So I'm thinking of getting a space heater. This place doesn't heat all that efficiently, and the thermostat in the kitchen appears to have permanently given up the ghost.

Any recommendations from local folks? Horror stories of what to avoid?

Thanks! :)

It SNOWED today! Yippee!

Large, fluffy, happy flakes.

Winter is finally here. I'm hoping for BUCKETS of snow. Heaps and mounds and giant snowbanks everywhere. I don't care if I get snow in my boots and down my collar and the streets turn into raging rivers of freezing slush. It's winter, and this is my time of year. I want heaps of snow all through December, and then weather so cold in January and February that they feel it in the lowest regions of hell: cold, crisp, and sunny, and with three feet of snow cover.

I am looking forward to snowshoeing this year. None of this stupid waiting until after Christmas for snow, and none of this stupid rain-in-January business.

I'm SO happy there was snow today, I can't begin to express it. I actually did a little jig of happiness today.