It appears that the forecasters on Groundhog Day were right about having another six weeks of cold after that day. And it appears that God still likes to play with His thermostat up there to give us some variety down here. We're still switching rapidly between sunny mild days and cloudy cold days with snowstorms and windchill.
And it appears that I'm becoming a good forecaster about emergency levels and hence school closures. Last night, when they were talking about 4-6 inches of snow and strong winds for Tuesday, I could easily anticipate a level 2 emergency. Such inclement weather means hazardous driving conditions and that means school closure.
And it appears that I've not improved so much since my early years as a school-kid, although I'm in graduate school now. It's not that I don't like school. If it were so, I wouldn't had abandoned a promising career in engineering to go back to school. It's just that while I've always had an insatiable thirst for learning and although I spend most of the time I'm awake and sitting somewhere (even in buses) reading something, I've always had problem with sitting in classes like a good boy, quiet, silent and above all, immobile. Since elementary school up until now.
So basically, snowstorms and school closures have always been good news to me. Even at this age. So, it's not difficult to imagine my joy about level 2 emergency in Lucas County. And overburdened as I am this semester under heavy coursework, I was counting days for our spring break. And more than having fun or travel (which I cannot afford after 2 financially excruciating root-canals), to work on the whole lot of my papers. And this advance spring break day, was a God-sent blessing to let off a little bit of my stress to brace for a busy break.
So, in the same way that we have good terrorism and bad terrorism (depending on your political position and whether those babykillers are your friends or not), we can think of good emergency and bad emergency. If you're a school-kid, even a busy grad student, a level 2 emergency (that grants you a day away from classes), would be a good emergency. But I doubt that homeless people would feel the same. For them, a snowstorm means more misery and cold. And I have to confess that when I think of those guys, I feel guilty about my rejoicing over snowy days.
However, schoolkids should not rejoice unconditionaly (as we college kids do). There's a cap on the number of Calamity Days (days that the schools get closed as a result of snow or else). All school districts should observe Minimum School Days when they shut down schools. If they exceed their cap, they have to make up for the excess days during spreak break or worse, summer vacation.
Anyway, thinking again of cold and adaptation, I took advantage of this great day where the temperature remained around freezing with a little bit of windchill and I gave myself a day off. Trivially, I thought of biking and spending my time with Mother Nature. I biked to Wildwood Preserve amid snow and wind. And having realized that my camera had been gathering dust since my last trip to Nicosia in 2006, I decided to take it with myself. However, as I knew that it would take quite some time to develop my film before spending all its 36 frames, I used my cellphone camera to capture some of the scenes for a short-term pleasure. The pictures appear a little bit reddish and somehow poorly focused, but that's what you get with a cheap cellphone camera (and I didn't feel like editing the photos). And right now, I'm far from being able to buy a satisfactory digital camera. We have a proverb in Persian: "a tiny cookie is better than nothing".
And it appears that I'm becoming a good forecaster about emergency levels and hence school closures. Last night, when they were talking about 4-6 inches of snow and strong winds for Tuesday, I could easily anticipate a level 2 emergency. Such inclement weather means hazardous driving conditions and that means school closure.
And it appears that I've not improved so much since my early years as a school-kid, although I'm in graduate school now. It's not that I don't like school. If it were so, I wouldn't had abandoned a promising career in engineering to go back to school. It's just that while I've always had an insatiable thirst for learning and although I spend most of the time I'm awake and sitting somewhere (even in buses) reading something, I've always had problem with sitting in classes like a good boy, quiet, silent and above all, immobile. Since elementary school up until now.
So basically, snowstorms and school closures have always been good news to me. Even at this age. So, it's not difficult to imagine my joy about level 2 emergency in Lucas County. And overburdened as I am this semester under heavy coursework, I was counting days for our spring break. And more than having fun or travel (which I cannot afford after 2 financially excruciating root-canals), to work on the whole lot of my papers. And this advance spring break day, was a God-sent blessing to let off a little bit of my stress to brace for a busy break.
So, in the same way that we have good terrorism and bad terrorism (depending on your political position and whether those babykillers are your friends or not), we can think of good emergency and bad emergency. If you're a school-kid, even a busy grad student, a level 2 emergency (that grants you a day away from classes), would be a good emergency. But I doubt that homeless people would feel the same. For them, a snowstorm means more misery and cold. And I have to confess that when I think of those guys, I feel guilty about my rejoicing over snowy days.
However, schoolkids should not rejoice unconditionaly (as we college kids do). There's a cap on the number of Calamity Days (days that the schools get closed as a result of snow or else). All school districts should observe Minimum School Days when they shut down schools. If they exceed their cap, they have to make up for the excess days during spreak break or worse, summer vacation.
Anyway, thinking again of cold and adaptation, I took advantage of this great day where the temperature remained around freezing with a little bit of windchill and I gave myself a day off. Trivially, I thought of biking and spending my time with Mother Nature. I biked to Wildwood Preserve amid snow and wind. And having realized that my camera had been gathering dust since my last trip to Nicosia in 2006, I decided to take it with myself. However, as I knew that it would take quite some time to develop my film before spending all its 36 frames, I used my cellphone camera to capture some of the scenes for a short-term pleasure. The pictures appear a little bit reddish and somehow poorly focused, but that's what you get with a cheap cellphone camera (and I didn't feel like editing the photos). And right now, I'm far from being able to buy a satisfactory digital camera. We have a proverb in Persian: "a tiny cookie is better than nothing".
The interesting thing was that although Toledo Metroparks were officially declared closed, they were still plowing the trails. I could see a few people who had visited the park to enjoy their great day. Oddly enough, I didn't see many kids. In Iran, when schools are closed, you can see kids around parks making snowmen or throwing snowballs.
After finishing my day and returning to school to check my Emails, I was checking Google Analytics for reports of visits to my blog. And I found that some UT student searching for university of toledo closing during level 2 snow emergency, had hit a previous post where I'd written about snow and level 2 emergency. This reminded me of a previous post on Google search and the relevancy of its results. I checked the a.m. keywords on Google and found that my blog actually showed up as the third search results. It was surprising to me. But what surprised me even more was the student hitting my page. Surely, Google shouldn't had listed my page before news outlets for that matter. But this student had a clear intention by searching those words and this blog post (from 2007) clearly didn't satisfy that intention. Checking news websites below and above my blog entry would had been more useful.
Then, I remembered one of those old school years silly jokes. A teacher asks a pupil: "why didn't you come to school yesterday?" and the pupil replies "I saw a newspaper on a window reading 'all schools are closed today'".
After finishing my day and returning to school to check my Emails, I was checking Google Analytics for reports of visits to my blog. And I found that some UT student searching for university of toledo closing during level 2 snow emergency, had hit a previous post where I'd written about snow and level 2 emergency. This reminded me of a previous post on Google search and the relevancy of its results. I checked the a.m. keywords on Google and found that my blog actually showed up as the third search results. It was surprising to me. But what surprised me even more was the student hitting my page. Surely, Google shouldn't had listed my page before news outlets for that matter. But this student had a clear intention by searching those words and this blog post (from 2007) clearly didn't satisfy that intention. Checking news websites below and above my blog entry would had been more useful.
Then, I remembered one of those old school years silly jokes. A teacher asks a pupil: "why didn't you come to school yesterday?" and the pupil replies "I saw a newspaper on a window reading 'all schools are closed today'".
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