Shaken, stirred…..
Listening to:You’ve Got Mail - Soundtrack
Reading: Once Upon A Star Nora Roberts et al.
Weather: 30’s, snow…ick
Trivia: Why are cities usually warmer than the country?
A large city can create its own local weather patterns, including a bubble of warm air called an "urban heat island." The heat island is created by rooftops, streets, and parking lots, which absorb the sun's energy during the day, and radiate it at night. In moderately moist climates, these warm city "bubbles" can cause clouds and even thunderstorms to form. The warm air rises up from the city, creating an area of low pressure that pulls in moist air from the surrounding countryside. The rising air cools, and clouds can condense. If there's enough water in the air, thunderstorms can occur. As a result, cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, and Paris experience more thunderstorms than the rural areas that surround them.
Cool word: bus [n. BUS]
A bus is a long passenger vehicle with a central aisle and seats along the sides. It can also be a cart for carrying dishes in a restaurant, a metal bar that distributes electricity to many different devices, or a group of electrical lines that carries data signals. Strangely, all these meanings are closely related. In France in 1828, a new kind of conveyance was invented. It was called a "voiture omnibus," where the first word was French for "carriage" and the second was Latin for "for all." The new kind of carriage caught on quickly in England, where it was simply called the omnibus. In a strange twist of linguistics, the name was shortened to bus, leaving only the suffix of the original Latin word without the root. Since a bus carried a collection of diverse people, the same word became applied to other things having to do with diverse collections, such as the cart for dishes and the electrical cables for power and data distribution.
….rattled and rolled.
That more or less describes my day. You could put nerve wracking in there too.
I left for work at my usual 6:55 - in the dark- and it was sort of spitting snow out. By the time I got four miles down the road I was in a white out. The roads were covered and slippery and you couldn't see an inch in front of the car.
I was on my way down a hill and felt the car starting to build up speed, so I started to put on the brake. I then went into a spin. I missed getting hit by a truck that was in the oncoming lane by mere inches. I overcorrected and hit the curbing on the right side of the road, wiped out a mailbox on a very thick wooden post, and was hit by the person behind me. (Who turned out to be one of the teachers from my building.)
I ended up with a flat tire and some damage to the rear bumper (again!). I was very shaken up. It took about 45 minutes for AAA to get to me to fix the tire, then I had to drive to school on that stupid fake spare tire.
Which made me very nervous.
It continued to make me nervous all day, because it continued to snow all day and all I could think of was having to drive home on the "donut" and how dangerous that could be.
It was a long day. I wanted to just turn around and not go in, but I was being observed by the trainer for that reading program I'm learning (and hating). I knew that if I missed that I’d really be up the creek. I was also dreading that I was going to have to stay until 5:30 to take the stupid seminar.
Fortunately the seminar was cancelled. The instructor realized that no one would stay late in given the conditions outside. Smart move.
I left school at three and I made it to Sears in one piece. They replaced the tire (buying the road hazard protection for the tires was a good investment, it only cost $25). I had to hang out at the mall for two hours while they fixed the car. That was weird. Other than employees there was no one there. No shoppers, no diners, it was a ghost town.
This would have been a perfect opportunity to shop and buy and buy, but I really couldn’t find anything that I wanted. I scoured through a bunch of the racks and traipsed through all sorts of store, but didn’t buy a single thing.
The car was ready at about five thirty and I was relieved to find that the storm had stopped and the roads had been treated. The short drive back to my apartment was uneventful.
Thanks goodness.
Now what we have to look forward to is bitterly cold weather and black ice in the morning.
Wahoo.
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Horoscope
ARIES
You are very much in love with the idea of bringing in new sights and sounds, new experiences, into your life this year, but there is the consideration of how much all this is going to cost. However if you put your thinking cap on you can come up with a neat solution or compromise between pushing the boat out and living within your means. Old friends or lovers could put in a reappearance in some way.