Wintry Mix

As a series of sounds and conjurer of images, "Wintry Mix" has a very pleasing sound to it. I think I just like it because it sounds like a sort of yummy snack food involving Chex cereal and mint flavored M&M's.

Of course, anyone in the mid-Atlantic knows that "Wintry Mix" is a cutesy way of saying Worst.Weather.Ever. A combination of snow, sleet, rain, and freezing rain (is freezing rain the same as sleet? I think it might be) that immediately transforms every licensed motorist on the road into a student driver with a brand new learner's permit.


When I woke up this morning, it was chilly (hello? January) but the sun was shining in a big blue sky. It clouded up somewhere during my commute from Capitol Hill to Tysons Corner (if you're from the area, you know the hell of which I speak), and by 10:30, it was snowing. Not wintry mixing, but snowing -- big puffy flakes that looked like cotton balls, and it was lovely. The bare trees looked positively sugar-coated after the first fifteen minutes or so.

But the weather report was dire. The snow would transform into a "Wintry Mix" before three -- so, everyone in Tysons Corner hopped back in their cars and started driving home.

I shouldn't complain; I was scheduled to give a briefing on my goals and projected milestones for Fiscal Year 2009 today (did I sound all corporate American when I said that? I did, didn't I?), and I've been dreading it all week. Every one on my team had to do this today, and each person was supposed to talk for an hour. I was scheduled for 11:30, just as the weather was causing concern, so I proposed a high-level (there's the corporate-speak again), 15-minute version so we could all get the hell out of there and go home. My bosses agreed, and I sped through that thing like you wouldn't believe, and now it's done, this thing I've been dreading all week. Woo hoo for me!

I got home around 2:00, got back on the e-mail, and noticed there wasn't a lot of traffic, mostly because everyone I work with was probably also on the road at the time. But I kept myself busy with work-like (work-ish?) things until about 4:30, when I grabbed my kitty, moved to the bed, snuggled up, and totally crashed. Dead to the world for about two and a half hours, until the other kitty decided he was hungry and woke me up in a fit of starvation. At least there were no head butts involved this time.

So now, I'm in that weird place where I just woke up, but it's clearly evening, and I'll be going back to bed within the span of three or four hours (I hope), and I'm at once well-rested but sort of groggy at the same time, and if it hadn't been for the stupid "Wintry Mix" I'd be at a bar enjoying cocktails with a group of friends right now, but as the freezing rain (sleet, whatever) covers my windows with a thin sheet of ice, I'm oddly comforted by the fact that I'm home.

And now ... I shall have cold cereal for dinner. Because it's just that kind of day.