✶✶✶✶ Chicago MMXIV ✶✶✶✶

Yes please, gr80!

I've been expecting Eazy to come through w/ a good tip. Seems like it would be in his bailiwick.

Incredibly, after six full days MIA outside in freezing temps, our cat came back! We had a feeling today would be the day when we saw some paw prints in the snow this morning, and now he's here. Awesome.

Yay!!!!!!!!

that's great news and i am genuinely happy for you.

how does he look?

Like nothing ever happened! In fact, he asked to go outside again this morning. I told him "no." Not until it warms up, at least.

lol

c'mon man its way fun out there

That's awesome, JiC!

I just read this on FB: Mobile [Alabama] sends folks with sand and shovels, not salt and spreading machines, to cover slick spots on I-10

Stupid schools stupid closed again tomorrow, and I assume Tuesday, too.

not mine!

:(

Glad to hear your cat is back home and warm JIC! Our Alfred is still reacting amazingly well to his medicine and has been in continued good spirits, but he's still noticeably slower.

My son's daycare is closed tomorrow, so glad my wife has a flexible work from home policy.

Yeah, Evie's day care is closed but we have access to back-up day care through Sarah's work, which just involves bringing her downtown on the train with us.

My cat update is that our older cat Pepper had another stroke(?) last weekend and was really having trouble getting around for a few days, but she has once again mostly recovered, though one of her eyes is permanently dilated so I'm guessing she can't see very well.

Our furnace was broken all weekend. Thankful for space heaters right now.

CPS closed again tomorrow :(

i can't wait to meet 15% of my students who show up for their first day of class tomorrow
i've been told "we never close"

Sarah said that people at her work must have been complaining about having to come in today because HR sent out a snippy email reminding staff that they live in Chicago and should own warm clothes and be expected to be able to deal with cold weather.

yeah everyone's getting real pissy this time
i told my coworkers that i am totally ready to flip the bird at this month and move on

Haha, I made the decision to open today (though we are closing early) and I can tell a bunch of people are pissed off at me.

It's not even close to as cold out today as it was on that Monday a couple weeks ago.

No, definitely not, but it's going to get even colder tonight then it was then.

We had half days scheduled later this week for teacher conferences. My friend did the math and our kids will he going to school about 12 out of 36 possible hours this week.

Yes, 12 hours. Of a potential 36. Even the fucking teachers unions must be kicking themselves at all the required institute days which can't be cancelled, thus basically guaranteeing an extra week of school. So far. God help us if we actually get some bad weather to go with our cold weather.

All my CPS teacher fb friends seem to be mad about both these days off.

There's an argument to be made that it's better to have schools open for kids that may not have heat in their homes. Also I mean if you think it's too cold outside for your kid you can keep her home, right? You don't get in trouble for that do you?

Plus I read that before the last 37 years of nonstop record high annual temps, it wasn't that weird for it to be this cold. We're just not used to it.

everyone seems to be mad about everything at this point

Yeah, historically, its not that uncommon to reach these temps, it's just that now the media has fancy new terms to make the cold sound NEW AND SCARY. Also it's just the way this winter, especially since the new year, has seemed to just hammer us with one thing after the other. Beyond maybe the NYE snow, none of thse things have been so terrible in and of themselves - 3 inches of snow here, 4 inches there, cold ass days, etc - but cumulatively it just feels so much worse. Also, yes, I can understand the pissedoffness. Screw this winter already.

Weather is evidence that God hates us and wants us to be angry.

My senior year of HS was the year of the East coast's "Storm of the Century," which dumped 18" of snow on our part of North Carolina, closing school for a week. We'd already gotten several snow days that year, and they had add extra days on at the end of the school year to meet state requirements. The result was a huge crisis b/c the number of extra days would have extended classes beyond graduation day.

I don't remember how that got resolved. Probably I never actually graduated high school.

yeah that is the issue for all schools and all emergency closings -- same with colleges
there is a mandated # of contact hours

I can understand cancelling for snow, but cold? The concern is kids who have to walk to school or wait around in sub-zero. They say it takes about 10 minutes for frostbite to kick between the wind and temperature. But still, any way you slice it, -10, 0, 10: it's cold this time of year. If you don't have a hat, gloves and scarf by now, maybe this isn't the place for you.

Admittedly, it's supposed to drop down to -20 tonight, and hit a high - high! - of -6 tomorrow. Still, wear a fucking hat.

You can't tell a little kid who has no control over whether or not his/her parent(s) buy decent gloves/hat "sorry, maybe this isn't the place for you"
Cold can be really dangerous!

hey poor people, life sucks, wear a hat

Jesse this one? http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ilm/archive/Superstorm93/

Do L platforms still have those (utterly ineffectual) heat lamps?

yeh but there's only room for a handful of people under them

I understand some people can't afford the best hats and gloves, but again, lack of hats and gloves would be a serious problem if it were 30 degrees warmer. So I suspect the reason they cancel school is not because some kids can't afford hats and scarves, but because the schools do not want to be liable for idiot kids (and trust me, my kids can be idiots with the best of them) who lose their hats and gloves on the way to school or even take them off on purpose and then lose an ear.

How I and all my childhood friends never froze to death or at least lost multiple extremities I'll never know.

Well yeah no one wants to be responsible for a kid losing an ear! I don't get how that means we should have school open?

Because it's always cold in the winter! That's why it's called winter!

Last year my kids got a preemptive day off because the forecast called for lots of rain.

Jesse this one? http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ilm/archive/Superstorm93/

Yep, that's the one. I was going to say it was in March but then thought surely that wasn't right, but it was. March 13.

By early afternoon on March 13th the central pressure of the low was lower than had been observed with any historic winter storm or hurricane across the interior Southeastern United States. All-time low pressure records were established in Columbia, Charlotte and Greensboro, even beating out the pressures observed just a few years earlier during Hurricane Hugo's visit in September 1989.

I know it's winter, but i was reacting to "gtfo if you can't take it"
i'm not hostile, just pissy bc i think it's dangerously cold out there and my nose/toes froze when i last went outside :(

also bc my workplace's reaction to this is ridic

I was being serious above btw. We did winter camping and downhill skied in awful weather and generally a bunch of the other stupid kinds of things kids do.

I remember playing hockey in a natural ice arena and not being able to feel my fingers and toes to the point where I couldn't hold my stick right and couldn't skate normally.

JiC you're not making sense.

School should be open "Because it's always cold in the winter! That's why it's called winter!" But it's not always as cold as it was today -- so cold that school officials are concerned b/c "schools do not want to be liable for idiot kids...who lose their hats and gloves on the way to school or even take them off on purpose and then lose an ear. Suggesting that a 30º variance doesn't make a major difference is crazy. -2º is plainly, on it's frostbitten face, more uncomfortable and risky than 28º.

xp to Dan - I can't believe the cold I intentionally endured as a kid in MN. I remember my brother teaching me that I should run cold tap water over my hands to warm them so they didn't itch and burn from getting to room temp too fast.

Things got a lot better once my dad let me have shelter in the winter.

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/55/124940034_077732cb94.jpg

omg that is adorable
i have never seen baby je55e!!

That's adorable.

Ahahaha xp

Thanks. Once more. Putting snow on Sally, my first dog.

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/39/124940043_c0eeaf7ca5.jpg