Friday, February 2, 2007

A Whole Inch? Gee!

Some of you may know that I'm fortunate to have a ay job that's super flexible. Since I work for the federal government, I can't work more than 80 hours every two weeks (try getting a deal like that in a law firm--HA!). And the agency that I work for is allows us to choose when those 80 hours are (I could work 13 hours a day for 6 days straight and then take the next 8 days off and only take 2 hours of vacation if I wanted).

So I work 10 hours a day Monday through Thursday and then have 3-day weekends every week. It's lovely. Perfect opportunity to get lots of writing done.

Anyway, since I don't work on Fridays, I've taken to doing my grocery shopping on Friday afternoons, so I can get it all done without dealing with the rush and chaos that is the store on a Saturday or Sunday. Only today, the aisles were packed and the lines snaked and wrapped around and around.

What the heck?

Sadly, people were out to do their run on eggs, bread, and milk that always happens whenever we get a forecast for snow. Never mind the fact that we're only expected to get an inch, if that. What if we get trapped in our house without eggs, break, or milk?! Oh no! We might not be able to dig out for days!

*shakes head*

We're supposed to get 1 inch, people! 1 inch!

DC is arguably the most powerful city on the planet, yet one loudy inch of snow throws everyone into a tizzy and panic and completely incapacitates us. Pretty darn pathetic.

6 comments:

rebyj said...

LOL its the same here in nashville. people who normally don't even DRINK milk buy it when it may snow. In my memory, only one time in the past 15 years did the roads stay bad more than one day and that was an ice storm , not snow.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, reby, ice storms are the worst. I could totally see panicking about that.

I did buy milk, but didn't buy any bread or eggs. I wonder if I'm going to be screwed. I mean, after all, we're supposed to stockpile eggs, milk, and bread if there's a snowstorm.

Anonymous said...

Charlotte is the same way (I love working at a school!). Except there's a run on beer. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

I grew up in the mountains (well, mountains for the east, they'd be considered bumps out west) of Northern NJ, so I laugh when peeople consider what we get here in DC "snow."

Back in 96, we got 28 inches in one day. I was supposed to fly back to school in North Carolina, but because of the snow, Newark Airport was closed. Pretty reasonable. The governor declared it a state of emergency, so the kids got off school for two days in a row.

It snowed on Sunday. I finally was able to fly back to school on Friday. They'd also gotten snow in Durham, but only 6 inches. By the time I got there on Friday, the snow had melted to about an inch and a half.

The school kids had off M-F and then until the next W.

Pathetic.

Ansley Vaughan said...

Well here in London it snowed a few weeks ago. The immediate reaction from the people who run the Underground was "What on earth is this funny white stuff? Never seen that before! Better close most of the system down until it goes away."

I go in to work on the Metropolitan line which runs overground for a long way. I just missed one train then had to wait for almost an hour. And of course, there was a knock-on effect which meant the whole of the tube was chaos all day. Fortunately it had all thawed by the evening.

The dogs really love it though; they were dancing about in the garden getting snowballs in their ears.

Marci Baun said...

You must have heard about it snowing in Malibu a few weeks past. Considering how often it snows in Malibu (every 10-20 years), if people act like idiots, it's not surprising. LOL

Marci