Well, sometimes things don’t work out as you plan. And sometimes they work out better than expected. The latter is the case as of this weekend. Talk about a relief!

Wednesday afternoon my school got out at 1 o’clock, and I thought to myself, “Well, this isn’t good. I’m going to miss one of my practices before my concert, and we really need practice.” Then we were off Thursday. That’s when I got really worried. But when Friday was called as well, I knew that I had the opportunity to reschedule the concert in order to make up for the lost practice times. Another thing as a new teacher I have learned: always be ready for anything. After all, this isn’t always the case. I was fortunate to encounter a three-day blizzard in the early days of March 2007. Ten years between blizzards! But it was an awesome phenomenon. I can hardly remember the last one, mostly because I was crazy sick when it hit my 8th grade year (I had been home for one day, and then school was called off for the next six while I recovered).

But that wasn’t the only thing that was thrilling about the long weekend. I also got to do minimal lesson planning (since the lessons were pushed back quite dramatically), and I had fun with friends. My wife and I got to get all of our chores done immediately, and then we enjoyed ourselves. Except for the long waits in line at the airport. That’s what you get when you live in the airport town and your father-in-law lives in Madison, has tickets to O’Hare, and wants to meet his connecting flight to get on a cruise ship in Miami for a business cruise to the Bahamas, all the while knowing that the interstates have been closed due to blizzard conditions. A total of 4 and a half (plus) hours over two days in the airport terminal is a little irritating, but not so irritating as being in there for two or three days straight because your flight to home (or from home) was canceled halfway to the destination. Poor folks. Some of them are probably still sleeping in the terminals. Wish them luck.

Meanwhile, we had three really excellent breakfasts, some fabulous dinner and fun, and a lot of time to chill out. My wife has been sick (again), and that has been a real bummer. But past that, I’ve been pretty pleased with the excessive time off. It’d be a lot more fun if I didn’t have to worry about how the heck I’m going to get through the rest of the nine weeks (ending on March 14), but hey, life isn’t perfect. But it’s dang close.

Hope your blizzardy weekend was enjoyable. If you weren’t in the blizzard, I hope you at least got some time to revel over the gossip in the mass media about celebrities, their strange lives, and their stranger deaths. Is it just me, or do we need something more important to talk about?