The Hours

Even though it was snowing yesterday, getting to work was a breeze because it was also school vacation week, so there's been less traffic on the roads all week, the buses came a little earlier than usual, the subways were less crowded, and everything just moved smoothly. Getting to work usually takes about an hour; yesterday I was there in 45 minutes. Too bad it won't last.

My job is not stressful, but I do have this one Big Important Deadline each month, and it was yesterday (which is the main reason you haven't heard much from me this week). A lot of people in my office chose to work from home rather than deal with the snow, but I don't have all the necessary software at home. My alternative would be to lug my laptop home from work whenever there was an impending storm, but then I wouldn't have anything to gripe about.

So I worked. I was an industrious little knowledge worker all day, stopping briefly to chat with a couple of others who had made it into the office. We got an email around 2 telling us we could leave at any time, but I wasn't finished yet. I did finally finish everything around 4:30, and there was one other person still in the office.

As I was gathering up my stuff and putting on my coat, I was thinking how nice it would have been to leave early, to have gone home and taken a nap and still be getting paid for it. No matter how old we get, we still want a snow day. We want to be relieved of our obligations and responsibilities, if only for a day or just a few hours, due to circumstances beyond our control.

Instead, I went home at essentially the same time I always do. The Mrs. had picked up a frozen pizza the night before, and some of that ready-to-bake frozen chocolate chip cookie dough that comes in pre-cut cookie portions. I decided the snow shoveling could wait until today.