Delay, delay

Greetings from the place where it is 8 degrees F and highly windy, though not quite as bad as last night when I really had some concerns that some piece of the house might come loose. Seriously windy. Schools did an odd thing yesterday — despite the fact that it was snowing hard on top of rain that had turned to ice, they did not close. At least not in the morning. For the afternoon, they closed. This morning, we were supposed to go to the high honors breakfast (the top 6 in each team in each grade get special recognition), but the delay means that’s off. A shame, because Hannah basks in the praise, and deserves it, she works so hard.

Stupidly, I made it to a doctor’s appointment yesterday despite the absolutely miserable driving conditions. I had the little car, not the 4-wheel drive truck, and its sole redeeming factor is that it’s very light and has ABS so you can stop a skid quickly. (When we bought it, the salesman tried to talk us out of ABS, which he was never going to be able to do with me, but oddly, this model of Mazda only has ABS if you also get the moonroof, and they were harder to find. So make a phone call for your commission, buddy — I’m not getting a car without ABS.) There were a number of hills in Troy that were just miserable to get up, and the final hill to our house was the usual challenge. It’s steep, curves and dips all at once, and to get up it my wheels were spinning pretty wildly and were pointed completely to the left just to keep me going semi-straight. Plus, the wipers were completely useless, so it was an entertaining drive the whole way. (It was a makeup for an appointment I should have had in September.)

Didn’t ski last weekend because everyone was a little sick, but Bek and I went for a nice snowshoe hike at Peebles Island, which is still the rare treasure in winter that it used to be (its development has left it too popular in summer for my tastes). We tromped through the woods for a while, then got onto a trail and walked out to the lowest set of falls. It was snowing kinda hard, hard enough I wished we’d brought our goggles, but we still covered some ground, and the hiking was sweet.