Journal of a Sabbatical

January 8, 1999

meaningful snowfall

It's been snowing since about 4:00 this afternoon and it is accumulating. It's supposed to change to rain by morning so I guess it'll be slush when I wake up but for now it's the first meaningful snowfall here.

Wilbur has been curled up in a ball asleep on the futon all afternoon. I think the snowy weather makes him sleepy. It makes me sleepy. Well, maybe... I've been staring at the screen all afternoon trying to come up with wording that will convince the NSF to fund our project. Zsolt woke me up this morning -- OK it was 10:00 and I should have been awake two hours already - to talk about a new place to host the web site and whether we should go ahead with the proposal if this particular program was really for mollusks and lichens and not trees and so on ... Wilbur was curled up on my shoulder the whole time kneading his claws through my T-shirt so now I have little tiny red itchy scratches on my already itchy skin.

Tom said I looked well and seemed in a good mood today. That was before I started beating my head against the wall of grant writing though. This was the first time I've seen him since before Christmas since he and Julie have been out in LA visiting the kids and grand kids. Tom got to play a full 18 holes of golf with the fabulously successful Eric so I teased him about father/son bonding. I hadn't pictured either of them as the golf type.

A snow plow just rattled by outside the window. It only plowed a single lane down the street. It didn't even come into the parking lot. I can tell this is going to be one of those natural snow removal type storms. "G*d put it there, let g*d take it away" in the words of one of Boston's famous mayors past.

It's such a pretty, soothing, meaningful snowfall that all I want to do is curl up and go to sleep. That might not be such a bad idea. I think I've underslept the past few nights so maybe I should turn in early to make up for it.