The rhythm of the seasons

Anyone who knows me knows I spent a LOT of time in school. The long and short of it is I got sidetracked a few times for various reasons, as one distraction or another reared its insidious head. Some of these distractions were more pleasant than others (at least at the time), but that is neither here nor there. I DID eventually manage to matriculate more than once, and now I've got a neat little pile of credentials and a couple of degrees out of the deal. I might go back at some point, but I'm definitely all schooled out for the time being. Anyway, it recently occurred to me how easily your life can slip into a comfortable rhythm. Anyone who's still in college or university knows what I'm talking about. There's the big drive or flight out in September, whirlwinds of stress and activity until the next thing you know it's midterms with Thanksgiving in there somewhere, then Christmas vacation and New Year's with possibly another drive and/or flight (like, say...oh, to California for argument's sake). Then you come back and try to get back into the groove in time for spring break, and all of a sudden it's finals and summer when you start worrying about a job or other gainful activity to tide you over until it's time to start over again (let's say...herding goats or heck, keeping bees). Rinse and repeat, hopefully not longer than four years. Now that I'm on the other side of the desk as part of the faculty/staff, it's funny how these once-familiar rhythms are no longer meaningful to me. We stay open during breaks, such as the reading week we just had last week, so the sameness of days is striking to me. I mean, there's days with less people and days with more people, but regardless I'm there as a constant fixture like the furniture or potted plants. We also have summer school, so I'm kind of stuck there too. The hours we keep may change, but I'm still kind of tied down. I've tried to look ahead into the immediate future, and I can't imagine when I'll get to take a proper vacation again. On the plus side, I have a solid three day weekend every week. As soon as I get off work on Thursday evenings, I could disappear off the face of the earth until the next Monday afternoon. That's not so bad, I guess.

Old man winter

We've had some really crappy weather lately, although I guess it would all depend upon your perspective. Let's say, instead, that we've had our weekly dose of winter. Last Thursday they actually shut down our school, naturally only an hour after I had arrived...but we still got paid for the day, so that's always a plus. When the weather acts up to that degree, I usually forgo driving and let the bus do all the heavy lifting precisely so that I can avoid ending my life prematurely in a frozen ditch. But even the bus was skidding and sliding around like Brian Boitano, only less gracefully and to a much lesser degree of skill. Visibility was way down as well, maybe ten feet between the sheets of snow. So there were a few dodgy moments there, and admittedly I was not able to nap as peacefully as I would have liked to, which is another perk of the bus. Besides, with this alleged refinery fire taking all the gas off of the market, the less driving we can do the better. Station after station is closed and sealed off in an ever-increasing radius, and it's a little unnerving. Deserted gas stations make me feel all post-apocalyptic, I'm just waiting for the dune buggies loaded with leather bondage fetishists to come storming over the horizon because they want my gas and/or water. Bring it on, I say. I'm prepared for the gas wars. Car tires make decent armour (proof against blunt trauma and low-calibre rounds, you know), and I can jury-rig some spears and rudimentary firearms, although I suspect it will ultimately come down to a question of decent melee weapons.