No work today

One of life's unexpected pleasures is to unexpectedly find yourself with a day off. A snow day, or in my case a flood day, means you have your lunch packed from the night before, you're just about to take a shower and you get a phone call. "The boiler bursted and the library is closed today." Suddenly you have a day where you can mouse around the house, clean the kitchen floor, send e-mails and watch courtroom shows while lounging around in your sloppiest clothes.

Snow days are long anticipated and don't always happen. After watching snow fall all evening the phone call doesn't come. You have to go out to your car with a scraper and scrape ice and snow off of your windshield and drive through the icy streets to work. But sometimes you get that call and you are happy as a clam at high tide. Just like a kid waiting for the radio announcer to announce your school there is the eager anticipation of a day off, the only real work being clearing the snow from the car and shoveling the snow off of your driveway, if you are fortunate enough to have a driveway.

Snow chains can be perilous things. I, for one was not called this morning. I got suspicious and read a news story on the internet and woke up my boss. "Sorry xxx was supposed to have called you." But he didn't. Thank the Lord for the Internet.

Then there is the overeager caller. I used to have a director who would call the staff an hour before they normally got up to tell them they didn't have to come in.

There is always the person who doesn't get a call and comes into work. Poor Mrs. Crabapple is a seventy five year old volunteer who always comes in on Wednesdays. She waited an hour for the bus, came to the library and was greeted by the maintenace man using the snowblower on the sidewalk. "You mean nobody called you?' he screams over the sound of the dastardly machine. "That's terrible!"

Always remember to call the volunteers on snow days. Staff will remember to call you or check the radio, but not always so with volunteers.