It snowed again last night, and then rained this morning. When I got up icy pellets were pinging against the windows and everything was covered with yet another layer of white.
My company's intranet showed no sign of an office closing. So, remembering the last snowstorm when I stayed at home and everybody else showed up, I dressed and struggled through the snow to clean off my car.
The roads were a slick greasy treacherous slippery mixture of very wet lumpy snow and rain-icy slush. Even very slow turns precipitated gentle fishtails, the rear of the car sliding back and forth like a belly dancer's behind. Most people were keeping to a cautious crawl. On the highway, cars and trucks were hurtling past me at their accustomed speed, merrily rushing up on one another's rears and changing lanes without signaling as usual. As if they were invincible. As if their precipitate rush to work couldn't be cut short by an abrupt slide into the guardrail. Or worse.
But I made it. The office was conspicuously empty and the door locked when I arrived. Letting myself in, I explored to find the office manager holed away in his back office, like the living brain that ran the place. "So we're not closed, eh?" I asked in almost-disbelief.
"Oh, no," he chortled. "I never close. You can assume that as a default, unless there's 18 inches of snow out there. Of course, lots of people won't show up anyway," he added.
Grrrrr. Grinch.