Snow day!!!

... but not for us. Every private school in Vancouver? Closed. Every college? Closed. Universities? Closed. Nearly every surrounding school district? C-l-o-s-e-d. But us? Noooo... we stay open. Right. Thanks guys.

It actually wasn't too bad getting to work today, though I live quite close to my school, and it's all along major roads. The worst part of my commute was the fact that it took half an hour just to get into my car! The keyhole on my driver's side was frozen so much I couldn't get a key in it (even after shooting it - twice! - with WD-40. Hmm...), and the other side would unlock, but was frozen shut. I nearly ripped the handle out of the door, so I figured I'd better stop that. I thought about trying to go in through the trunk, but I need to unlock the folding seats from the inside of the car, first. Plus, as it turned out, my trunk was also frozen shut, and not even me planting my feet, tucking my arms under the dip for the licence plate, and heaving up with all my might was going to get that sucker open. Too bad, cause my ice scraper was in there. I used the handle of a squeegee and my mitten-clad knuckles to scrape the ice off my windows this morning. Ouch. Only after heading inside to pack my stuff into a backpack in preparation for taking the bus did I finally, on one last try, get my passenger door open. Sheesh.

The nice thing about school being open today is that there was hardly anybody there. We got a double recess today, and a bunch of my kids asked my why I didn't go out and play with them. So I did at lunch! It was so fun! :-) My kids and the other grade 5 class plopped down to watch the Sound of Music this afternoon (you can't exactly teach something new with only half the class there!). I now have Edelweiss running around in my head. There are worse things in life. Would you believe I've never seen that movie all the way through? (And I still haven't... we had to cut it short about half an hour before the end to send the kids home.)

There is talk of school closures tomorrow. It is STINKIN' cold out there. It's supposed to get down to -10 tonight, -20 with the windchill (that's about 15 and -5 degrees farenheit, respectively, for my American friends). Brrrr! See, the thing about snow in Vancouver is that it's wet and slushy. And then when it gets that cold, all the slush turns to ice. Not so much a good plan to drive on that.

Apparently we're breaking records all over the place for cold and snowfall amounts. This is the most snow we've gotten ever in November, and the coldest it's been in 20 years.

But the good news? Today they finally lifted the boil water advisory. Ha! You know who's had it the worst? All the people who have been without power, sometimes for days, first because of the rain, now because of all the ice and snow on the lines, AND they've had to boil their water. Thankfully I've not been one of those. (yet!)

Oh, and I WISH I had my camera at school today. Just as I was leaving, around 4:30 or so, the scene out my window was SOOO gorgeous. Unbelievable, really. The paned windows were all fogged up, settling in one corner like the scene so often printed on Christmas cards. Every pane had a perfect swoop of fog all in the same corner. As I'm on the top floor of the school, all I see out the window are the rooftops and trees, all covered in brilliant white snow. There are both evergreens and deciduous trees out the window, a perfect balance between those dark, wintery green needles and black tangled branches, all tempered with white. And to top it all off, the winds had blown much of the clouds away, and there were streaks of blue and streaks of cloud all lit up with the pinky orange of the setting sun. It was breathtaking. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Hmm... how much MORE can I ramble about the weather? Probably not much. Tomorrow is supposed to be super cold, but sunny. I SO hope there is no school tomorrow so I can go out and take some pictures!