Snow day - Student interpretation

University campuses are a great place to work, to spend your time, because there's always something going one: mad things, crazy things, zany things, serious things, nothings, etc.  Yesterday was a snow day, so do not come to campus unless you are essential personnel.  Well, students are certainly essential to a university, so what does having a snow day mean to students?  Their obvious interpretation is that a snow day is for playing in the snow.  Since the  primary reason for a snow day is the convenience of commuters, the campus residents are there ready to go, and nature supplied a goodly amount of nice mouldable snow and the accompanying temperatures were quite mild, it was perfect day for snow play.  The main quad of our campus now sports about two to three dozen snow "sculptures", which they must be called since the size and creativity goes far beyond mere snow men, and in several cases the gender was not at all left in question.  A couple of strategically placed snow forts suggested a battle, or at least ambushes of anyone so foolish as to be walking on the sidewalk between them.  In one case a tree had a new suit of clothes around its trunk, but white is wrong for the season.  Perhaps coming to a Youtube near you, an avant-garde film of a young Asian woman in a pink bikini and naught else cavorting in the snow while being pelted with snow balls.  Otherwise, who knows?  So, yes, students certainly know what to do on a snow day.  TPP worked on illustrations for a publication.  Yes, very lame. 

Speaking of snow - and soccer - and Costa Rica

TTP has spent a lot of time in Costa Rica doing research and teaching, and every now and then just being a gringo tourista.  Snow days here in the upper midwest are no big deal really.  But some things, just like dogs and cats together, are just unnatural.  So when TPP saw this soccer game the other day, it was just plain wrong, a crime against nature.  Soccer is one of those games that is played under diverse field conditions, but this was not right.  Cold, OK. Some flurries in the air, OK. But when the ball can't roll because of snow accumulation, this just isn't right.  You can't play the game the way it was meant to be played.  And then there's the whole Costa Rican thing.  They love soccer way more than the USA loves soccer.  It's their love and their pride at stake.  So you take the Costa Rican national team and you ask them to play soccer in a form of precipitation that they have never, ever seen before, a form of precipitation that most Costa Ricans can't even imagine, and it's just plain wrong.  Most of them probably cannot believe even still that they were playing soccer under such conditions, and then to lose late, by one goal; outrageous!  Never has the weather conditions been so stacked against one team before.  Their protest is most appropriate, and hopefully it will be upheld. 

Snow Day

Snow day!  Whoda thunk it? It's been so long since our university had a snow day TPP can't remember the last.  The usual reason for the snow day is the time it takes to clear parking lots, or a lot of wind makes driving outside of town dangerous.  Us pedestrian (or X-country ski) commuters present no problem although the cheap skate land lords whose buildings ring the campus for a couple of blocks in all directions never clear their sidewalks, the simple obligation of all property owners. TPP had an exam scheduled today, so my students will feel like they got a reprieve. 
It's actually a beautiful scene this morning because this was a heavy snow that has stuck to all the trees and shrubs hopefully without damaging them.  Some 7-8 inches of snow is nothing for us natives of the New York State snow belt, but for here this is a lot of snow. The cardinals certainly stand out boldly, and when foraging is difficult, large numbers of birds and squirrels gather at our feeding stations, and the rest of the food chain lurks. The kitty-girls just watch the activity out of our kitchen windows. The massive red-tailed hawk is perched in a tree over the garage and about 80 feet beyond a Cooper's hawk is perched waiting for its chance.  But it's time to get moving, and we've got a big, long sidewalk to clear, but not too many people are out and about.

Blizzard of ought-eleven - dug out but bogged down

Takes a special knack or some uncommon fortune or something to get sick days to come on snow days, but the Phactor has done it. Had enough energy yesterday to finish the digging out although it took 5 person hours to do it, and one of us wasn't feeling so hot especially as the day wore on. But it's hard to enjoy a bit of time off, or worse, difficult to accomplish anything useful, when your head feels like it's going to explode and you can't breathe. But no rest for the wicked, the car won't start, and Mrs. Phactor only discovers this after driving it to a morning appointment. So must arrange to get a tow. What a pain. However, things do sort of look nice after a big snow like this. Here's a thread-leafed sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera), which is sort of weepy anyways, coated with snow.

Blizzard of ought-eleven

A lot of snow fell last night, although nothing compared to the snow belt of my youth, but definitely the most snow this area has had for years, and the most snow that the Phactors have had to deal with since passing the 60 yr landmark. And it all has to be shoveled, not pushed or shoved, but shoveled, lifted and thrown, step by step. Two person hours of travail yielded a drive cleared from the house to the garage, and taking our civic responsibility as land holders seriously a cleared sidewalk. The bird and squirrel feeders were restocked much to the satisfaction of all the feathered or furred free-loaders. The drive from the house to the street will have to wait until later. Besides our union demands a coffee break about now. Our street is an E-W artery passing a hospital, so it gets attention early and often, but seriously there's no where to go until tomorrow anyways. Without work or gardening to keep us occupied, the Phactors will turn to their only other activity, cooking. The heavy snow cover will insulate lots of plants as the bottom drops out on the temperature tonight (-7F, -22C) in the inevitable Arctic blast that always follows such storms. Now for some coffee.

Snow Day - Sort of

Well, the university along with every other entity is the area has whimped out, scared by dire weather predictions, as they are scared by dire economic and social predictions, and declared a snow day. Of course if we really do get snow, then it's tomorrow that should be and will be cancelled. This is a great annoyance because Tuesday afternoon's lab is ready to go, now alternative arrangements will have to be made. So the Phactor just picks up on several ongoing projects and makes some progress on them. Writing a science book is quite a task especially because the field just doesn't stop and wait for you, and even when writing for a non-technical readership, you want things to be reasonably current, and worse, you make one change to accommodate new phylogenetic relationships among prokaryotes and it's like dominoes falling, and you have to change this too and then that and so on. So that's today's task; finding all the dominoes and fixing them up. But it requires changes to at least 2 figures, and that takes real time. At some point in time, it will be cut and run or truly this will be the never ending story. So here's a nice image symbolic of the weather, and something that the robins, who foolishly just arrived a week ago, from the north or from the south (?) will consume as soon as the ice melts.