Yay, Snow Day!

Snow day! Yay!

When I first moved here from Chicago, I was totally disgusted with the winter weather induced behavior. The next year, I was just amazed at the stupidity. This winter, I'm going with the flow. Why the hell not? It's a free day off for everyone. The thing that really amazes me is that the schools were closed yesterday, pre-emtively, before one flake of snow even fell! I'd have killed for that as a kid. We didn't get snow days unless cars flat out couldn't move, and you were expected to have a car that went in snow. Probably half the people only needed their cars to get to the commuter train. Once I moved to the city (in 1987), I had *no* car related excuse for missing work. The trains always ran. It seemed to be a point of pride that people could make it in to work on the worst days. Here...not.

Just to give you an idea of how things work here: On Tuesday, we received a dusting of snow just before and during the evening rush hour. This is a clip of an article from the post for Wednesday:

At 9 p.m., about 30 Montgomery County school buses were still stuck in traffic jams in the lower end of the county, schools spokesman Brian J. Porter said. He said some of those buses were equipped with radios, and school officials were able to relay messages by phone to reassure parents of students on board. Porter said everyone was home "safe and sound" by 9:30.

I see why they panic over snow here now. There's nothing to be done about it -- it's like mass hysteria or something. I bet 7-11 is totally out of toilet paper, milk and bread right now. The propensity of Washington residents to make runs on stores for said items has even been made fun of by the Maryland lottery. They used the matching of TP, milk and bread icons on a instant ticket as a winning combination. It was also accompanied by a humorous commercial

I wonder if Reston has a run on disposable diapers. I've never looked for that sort of thing, but I can't even imagine what manner of Hell would break loose if the Washington 'burbs were denied disposables for a couple of days. I wouldn't want to even *see* those people's houses. Actually, I bet the more paranoid folks (who need them) have Y2K diapers leftover anyway.

Guess I'm keeping that stupid rental car for today. It's only $24.00, and frankly, it's such a piece of shit that I wouldn't want to drive it up the hill out of here anyway, and I really don't want to try and get it down the route I need to take to the car dealer. If I had my own car back though I'd have no fear.