Snow Day

To anyone living in the DC area: Yes, I teach school in DC. No, school wasn't cancelled today. Yes, I'm being a little bitter/sarcastic with my post title here. No, no children actually came to school today.

To everyone:
After yesterday's snow and the freezing rain that followed, I was praying hard that the district would break their tradition of keeping schools open when everything around us shut down. As the ice thickened, I figured my chances of a snow day were getting better. I woke up this morning (three times, actually), to check the district and the WP websites only to discover that EVERY district for about 100 miles (maybe further, but they don't report those in the WP) was closed. Except mine, which had a "Two hour delay". We didn't have those back home, but the idea is to start school two hours late in order for the roads to clear enough to get kids safely to school.

After whining to my roommates and another friend, I finally accepted the fact that I'd have to go in to work, and turned to the first task at hand: De-icing my car. Walking down the front stairs was hard enough! This is what I found:

Maybe not that unusual for some of you, but I'm from Boise. We hardly even get snow, much less ice storms. It took about 20 minutes to actually get my car drive-able.

Once I actually got off of our street, the roads were fine (which is good, because I swore that if I started sliding at all on the ice, I was turning right around and spending the day at home). Upon getting to work, however, I discovered that my principal had sent us an email this morning saying that our school wouldn't be starting until 11:30. Which is lunchtime, meaning that I would really only be there to "teach" from 12:30 - 1:55. Lovely. We rounded up all the social studies classes (about 18 kids total from 5 combined classes) and showed a documentary on apartheid. Sure glad I went into work for that.

You could argue with me that the government stayed open (with liberal leave), that the roads were fine, etc. I agree- my commute could have been much worse, and I actually did get some things done today. But I'm still mourning my snow day.