I stopped by the Mall tonight to get a travel pillow at Brookstone, and when I returned to my car, there was a note tucked under the door handle: "for a good time, e-mail..." Nah, I figured I'd already had a good enough time today, what with waking up to snow falling, joining the neighborhood's morning snow-clearing, talking to Liz for an hour or so about architecture, co-housing, schooling, etc., taking a long nap, hanging out with Mom and Dad, and going cross-country skiing over at Riverside in the afternoon. I am so spoiled. Groomed ski trails 5 minutes from my house? Life is good. And I couldn't tell the difference between my legs today as I skied. Life is really good.

Now quickly knocking on the frame of my futon. :-)

Every once in a while I think about my old teachers and what I remember about them, mostly things they said that stuck in my head. Most often it makes me chuckle, but it also makes me think about things I can say (and how I can say them) to help my students remember them. For example, I will always remember how to negate a verb in French ("SurROUND the VERB with NE, PAS") or the relative life importance of the unit circle ("if you're stranded on a desert island, at least you can scratch your unit circle in the sand.")

"PASS the PARameter in the PARentheses". Ayuh. I think I'll put that one up on the wall.

Snow day today, though so far there's practically no accumulation. The sky is white, so where is it all going? Bonita is curled up on the back of the beanbag armchair, nose and paws dangling over the baseboard heater, fur ruffling ever so slightly in the heat. I've caught up on my grading and have put my house back together after spending several hours last night looking for my passport. Gack. I finally located it in a folder in my filing cabinet, where it had fallen at some point, probably due to Bonita walking around on top of the files the way she does.

I'm mostly packed, except for a few items such as tango music that I want to play with Dom. Hard to believe that on Saturday morning I will get off a plane and it will be summer. (Harder to believe that I have a 7-hour layover in Dulles...maybe time to arrange 2 more waltzes for TML?) Hard to believe that I get to spend an entire week in Buenos Aires with a sweet, super-sexy bandoneonista. I may not survive this.

It was a quiet and productive snow day, I thought, as I noodled around on the violin, figuring out how to play the guitar solo to Nothing Else Matters. I did my bookkeeping for 2006 (house and business), baked 2 chocolate cakes for tomorrow's classes, caught up on all of my grading...and all while enjoying the look of snow falling outside. Then suddenly: ping! the sound of freezing rain on glass.

In a flash, the violin went in the case and--poof!--I morphed into Marshmallow Woman (thanks to some awesome snowpants I bought at Marden's). Portrait: Marshmallow Woman with Shovel. And Snow Scoop. And Snowblower. Up and down the street, snowblowers materialized from garages in a race to clear the foot or so of powder before everything became crunchy. I finished shoveling off the first floor deck as pointy airborne ice nuggets started to get serious. Then, inside. For once I'm happy that the attic is 10 degrees cooler . I'm plenty warm at the moment.

And now, sudden silence. Neighbors have finished, too, and the street is back to being dark and still. To bed.