Friday, January 30, 2009

Weather Report . . . They Closed Schools for This???

It's really no surprise that my New England and Mid-Western friends laugh when they hear about school closures in this part of the country. Tuesday was a great example . . . the forecast called for 1-3 inches of snow. No biggie. By 6 am, there was barely a dusting on the ground and our local schools, CLOSED! In fact, just about every school district in Maryland had cancelled schools. By late afternoon, we had a whopping inch and a half on the ground. What a joke.

I know I'm sounding like my grandparents, but in my day, there is no question we'd have gone to school. Maybe we close early, but if there is no appreciable precipitation on the ground, we're going.

Only thing I can figure is the fear of lawsuits. What else could it be? Buses can drive in a couple inches of snow.

The problem with Tuesday was that it led to Wednesday, when the real weather was expected. A nice half inch coating of ice expected overnight. Nobody's driving on that. And that's about what we got. Schools closed. (Although, apparently it wouldn't have slowed schools in Chicago according to the Obama kids!)

So here's what we've got. . . last Friday the kids had a half day for god knows what reason. Monday was a teacher's professional day, no school. Tuesday no school for no good reason. Wednesday's ice. . . no school, good reason. Thursday, two hours late to let Wednesday's ice that melted in the afternoon and refroze over night do some more melting. All of the sudden, you've got almost a week's vacation for the price of none. A bit of stir crazy going on? Uh huh!

What's all this got to do with a diet and weight loss blog? (This blog is about, well, me, after all, isn't it?) Seems that the classes at the gym don't go when the schools don't go. Over the course of three days, I think I signed up for 8 classes that never happened. Tuesday, I blew off Body Pump thinking I'd get something in later in the day. Didn't happen. Wednesday's ice meant nothing moved. I finally hit the treadmill at home for a 5 miler. By Thursday, the itch was serious. Time to get my money's worth -- an triple header -- 3+ miles on the treadmill, an hour spin, followed by a Body Pump. Man did that feel good.

I've only hit the club in the evening a couple of times, usually for a convenient post work run. Gotta say, the vibe was totally different. First, there seemed to be a lot more people there. Second, there are a ton of kids -- I'm talking teens. They were everywhere. Third, it just felt different. Don't know if the folks felt less serious or less friendly or what. Just different. I kinda like my early morning crew. Looking forward to getting back to them next week.

Can't believe January ends tomorrow. One month closer to spring! Yeay!

L'Chaim!

3 comments:

Pat said...

When we had school closings back in the 70's in Ohio, we'd go play in the snow, in the parking lot of the school.

My kids in AZ didn't know that snow days existed.

Daiquiri princess said...

You are so right- we would have gone to school on Tuesday. Wednesday might have been a different story.

Carroll co. Was closed Mon, Tue and wed as well. My brother called wed asking if I wanted the boys- OH hell no-I dont have game stations and X boxes at my home.

CoachLiz said...

I have the answer of why your schools were closed. There was a meeting of some congressional staff members from Maryland and Texas and your guys did not like the fact that there were a bunch of kids in Texas who got anywhere from 8 to 14 days off of school for a really good reason called no electricity after hurricane Ike. They also did not like the fact that the Texas Educational Agency was only making the school districts make up 5 of those lost teaching days. Maryland wanted their cut of days off, so they have been dicking around with those teacher in-service days, MLK holiday, snow days to combine them in the best possible Pre-Spring Break vacation that they have ever had.

Blame it on us, LOL.