Baby, It's Cold Outside

I wonder if my employer actually generated the winter storm that has inundated us with a very, very, very thin layer of ice. It would make sense in that they could therefore force a lot of employees, still on midwinter-holidays-go-slow mode, and therefore not productive anyway, to burn off a lot of vacation time for which they would otherwise have to be paid at some less convenient date.

But seriously now. Aside from having to scrape off the windshield, which (granted) is a significant pain in the ass, why does a 1/10" layer of ice on a few paved surfaces here and there mean we can't go anywhere?

Oh by the way, do not, I'm told, pour boiling water over the ice to melt it. You will crack your windshield. It will not be good.

When I was at UT, I had a housemate named Jessica, who had lived her whole life in Wisconsin. She couldn't believe we shut down the whole city because of a measly couple mils of ice all over everything. Of course, I think the problem with central Texas is that our humidity and temperature are exactly the ideal combination for accumulating frozen moisture. If it were a little colder, we'd have snow, which is not slippery. A little warmer, and nothing would freeze in the first place. But get it in that exact range where it's warm enough to melt during the day and cold enough to refreeze at night, and it's the rainy season, and voila! You get an ice rink.

And I remember a particularly cold, cold day in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where my family lived when I was in the third grade. I had missed the bus, and set off alone across the gray and empty fields towards Lincoln Elementary School. It was one of those bitter days that are so much colder than the soft, hushed snowy ones: the sky and the ground alike vacant, lifeless, colorless, and silent except for the piercing wind. Anything alive had taken shelter, so I was completely alone until the Lutzes spotted me trudging across their pasture, and brought me inside and gave me hot chocolate and called my mom to come pick me up. We had recently moved there from Austin. Who knew the temperatures could get so killingly low? My toes had big white blotches on them when I took my boots and socks off, and Mom was beside herself.

It'll never be that cold here, thank goodness. It seems pretty wimpy to whine about temperatures in the upper twenties. And when I think about it, my employer can't possibly have any responsibility for the weather. That would be a diabolically clever plan, and therefore not anything the state is at all likely to have come up with on their own; and the chances of their having shelled out money for a consultant to come up with it for them?

Quite a bit lower than the chances of scattered snow showers tomorrow.