Baby it's cold outside
....And snowing to beat the band. There is a winter storm warning in effect until tomorrow AM I think. Perfect. Youngest Son heads back to school on Sunday in a car sans snow tires. I'll worry myself sick from the time he drives away from the house until he calls to say he's arrived in one piece.
Monday he begins Jan Term - a 3 1/2 week long intensive term during which the kids take one class 5 days a week for three hours, and if they want, a PE class that is not usually offered except during Jan Term, like ice skating, snowboarding, or something equally fun, for a total of 4 credits. YS will have "Everyday French" from 9 to noon, and then ice skating from 1:00-2:00. He took ice skating last year during Jan Term and had a blast. He's looking forward to perfecting his mad skating skilz. Besides, there are usually a lot more girls than guys in ice skating class, so his odds are pretty good. It makes a great ice breaker (pun intended)...."hey, let's go practice our skating tomorrow night, maybe grab a bite to eat"... you get the picture. The Everyday French class is a prerequisite for his France trip, which is now a mere 4 weeks away. The class descriptions makes me want to take it:
"No English allowed. Students immerse themselves in the language in a non-structured situation. Shopping, meals, conversation. Class offered in an informal setting: small groups, games, movies, songs, cooking, skits. A fun, intensive class (3 hours minimum per day), that allows students to know they can speak French. Required of beginning language students going on the France Study Program. FR 130 may be used to fullfil the foreign language requirement if taken before the program."
Doesn't that sound fun?! Lucky duck.
The roads have been in horrible shape. The main streets are pretty clear, but the side streets are scary, and the roads in the outskirts are downright dangerous. During the holidays, we had two storms back-to-back. Then it rained a little, and then it got really cold. I don't know what the problem was, but the plows did a terrible job. The roads in town are so bumpy you can barely stay in your lane. There are all these super hard patches of thick ice, live reverse potholes. You'll be driving along just fine on bare pavement, then hit a patch of this lumpy, icy stuff and lose traction just long enough that your car slides a few inches to the side, then catches hard on the next patch of pavement. It's hard to describe, but anyone who has lived in snow country knows what I mean. That's in town. In the outskirts, the roads are solid ice, and with the rain we had a couple of days ago - non-stop rain for two days - they became water on ice. The Spouse has had to drive roads like this from 8 AM until 8 PM for the past week. I'm amazed he's alive. He has has to walk in to a lot of the places he delivered to because even his four-wheel drive truck couldn't make it up or down the steep, narrow, icy driveways. He was telling me last night about one stop yesterday that he managed to get to the house, only to discover there was no way to turn around. He had to back several hundred yards, down a narrow, winding, icy private road/drive, then up a steep incline onto the county road, onto which he had to make a quick, hard left turn (all in reverse), and brake immediately, not knowing when he'd come to a stop. As it turned out, he slid about 30 feet backward down the hill before he came to a stop. No way I could do that job. And now he's out there driving in this snowstorm, on those same horrible roads, which are now snow on ice. In the dark. No wonder he wants to retire now.
Coworkers who live out in the boonies are leaving now. I don't live that far out of town, and only have to drive on flat roads, so I have no excuse to leave early. Darn. We were planning on going to Spokane tomorrow to take YS shopping for stuff for his trip. I don't think we'll be doing that now. The Spouse has already said he has so many miles to drive, such hard stops, and so many stops, that he won't be home until 9:30 tonight. That was before it started snowing. He can't work much past that, so I suspect some folks won't be getting their FedEx today. He's only human.
Have a nice weekend, everyone.
