Ready for cold

It looks perhaps less-dire than it did last night, but we still might get freezing rain. As of now, campus is open, but as a lot of the nearby public schools have decided to dismiss at 1 pm, I wouldn't be surprised if that happened to us. (And at any rate: once my office hours are done around noon, I'm done - no faculty meeting this week for a change).

AAUW party is postponed. I'm not sad about that; I'm perhaps the youngest member and I don't like the thought of all of us having to drive (and walk; a few members have brittle bones) on icy sidewalks. I am going to make the meatballs I planned to make, and then freeze them, and I can either thaw them out for next week's party, or I can decide to take them Monday over here for FFFFF (the exam-week food extravaganza; the Fs stand for Five Festive (days) of Fabulous Finger Foods) and then make a new batch for the party.

I've got flashlight batteries, and candles, and extra food ("....cornmeal and gunpowder and hamhocks and guitar strings....*") But I suspect, based on the current projections, that I won't need them, that at most we'll get icy roads and maybe not have class tomorrow.

I think I am going to let the taps run overnight tonight (it's supposed to get into the teens and I don't think the underside of my house is all that well insulated) just as a precaution.

I have a good coat. A few years ago (perhaps as many as 10, now) at Christmas, my dad invested in Gloverall coats for all the women in the family. These are British-made duffel coats - in fact, I call mine my "Paddington Bear Coat" because it looks very much like the one he wore - dark blue, closes with toggles, has deep pockets for cramming hats and gloves into). It's an *excellent* coat - because it's made of boiled wool, it stops the wind very well, and it has also held up remarkably well. It still looks fairly new and has stayed that way longer than any other wool coat I've owned.

(Heh. It occurs to me that if I ever needed, for any reason, to come up with a costume of a children's book character, I could do Paddington with almost no effort - rub a bit of eyebrow pencil onto my nose to darken it, cram my broad-brimmed yellow field hat on my head, make a tag that says, "PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR. THANK YOU." and tie it to my duffel coat, and put the coat on. Oh, I'd probably need to find something like a little briefcase (for marmalade sandwiches), but I otherwise have nearly all I'd need.

Paddington is one of those characters who's not remembered so much these days, I think. I'm guessing it's because there's been no recent movie of him (though, seeing what some of the studios have done with some "classic" characters, I am not eager for them to make a movie of Paddington - and Wikipedia hints there is one coming, oh dear.). I loved Paddington when I was a kid, partly because of the anthropomorphic-animal aspect, but also because in a way he was a very polite and  logical and rule-bound little bear. He got into trouble, but he wasn't malicious - in most cases, the trouble he caused was either the result of him taking something too-literally (I was a very literal-minded child, which may be why I appreciated that) or his trying to be helpful but being a bit inept about it. I also loved him because his main defensive weapon was a "hard stare" - especially when he felt someone was doing something underhanded, he would fix his "hard stare" on them. In many ways I was a bit like Paddington, which is probably why I liked him and related to him.I also liked that he had a friend (Mr. Gruber, who ran an antique shop) with whom he got to take elevenses most every day. And I just liked that this was a world where elevenses and teatime were possibilities...)

So I'm as ready as I can be for the bad weather. I'm hoping the power stays on, at least - if that happens problems will be far less. I plan to stay home and knit, something I haven't got to do much this week, because of all the grading I had to do. I think I've kind of gotten my head stuck in the one-inch picture frame these past couple days, because it's been mostly work, most of the time, and that's why the angry student yesterday upset me so much. (I actually had one of my periodic bouts of "Why did you ever think becoming a professor was something you could DO?" coupled with "Is there any career out there that doesn't stink on ice, or is it humans' lot to be miserable while earning our bread?" Totally forgetting the very positive interaction I had with a colleague's research student that morning - he wants me to do some statistical consulting with him as he designs his studies, and help him with analyses when he has data, and that is my favorite part of my job, so I told him I would be happy to, and he was grateful.). I find that making stuff, doing stuff unrelated to my job, helps me break my head out of that mindset that says "If one thing about work is bad, that means you're a failure and you will always be miserable."

I've added a few rows to the Big Purple Thing (this is a stockinette-stitch stole sort of thing I've been working on FOREVER), but that's it. I think I need to get back to working more on a sweater or something (Although maybe give Pocketses a day or two to cool off; it was what I was trying to invigilate-knit after the incident, and I find that memories of what I was doing at the time I was knitting get tied up in the knitting....I have a shawl I started while a family member was in the hospital (ultimately they turned out to be okay), I have things I knit on while reading a certain book, and I remember what I was reading when I look at the thing.... so if something bad happens while I'm knitting on something sometimes I have to put it aside for a bit.)


(*Oh, and for people who either don't obsessively watch cartoons, or don't have a freakish memory for minutiae like I do:)