We had the local morning news on today and, like all local news organizations everywhere, they were predicting "the end of life on Earth as we know it" because it's snowing and will most likely keep snowing for the next day or so. Everybody on Def Con 5! Captain to the bridge! Klingon cruiser off the port bow! Cats sleeping with dogs! Start stockpiling foodstuffs and toilet paper!

...oh, for the love of Mike, it's snowing...this is Chicago...it snows here and, as one brave and iconoclastic TV weatherman once said, "If you don't like it, move somewhere where it doesn't snow." (Although according to the news reports this week, I don't know where that would be.)

So they start running the crawl across the bottom of the screen...

SCHOOL CLOSINGS!?!?!?

School closings? There's maybe two inches of snow on the ground and they're closing the schools? What kind of sissies are we breeding in this Great Nation of ours?

I'm sitting at the breakfast table with my daughter, saying (in my best/worst phoney, stage-voice, Scottish accent), "School closings? In my day we didn't close the schools for snow...I went to Catholic school and the only time they closed the school was when the Pope died...okay...the Pope and President Kennedy! But that was it! I'll tell you what...you take your snow day off, me bucko's...do ya know what they're doing up there in Canada? Eh? Well they're in school, snow or no snow! Those Canadian kids are going to be that much ahead of you and when you apply to that fancy-pants graduate school, don't be surprised if there's a Canadian kid ahead of you because they have the perspicacity to get off their butts and hitch up the dogsled and get to school, snow or no snow!"

Seriously, though, I know that this recent streak of weather is making it tough on some of you in the parts of the US where it doesn't often get this way...so take it easy and be safe. Hope that nothing serious happens and that those of you who don't get snow that often at least get a chance to enjoy the good part of it like snowball fights and sledding.

Best

AA