Two plus two is ten

I thought I was going to be more upset about having to go back to work today after the mini-vacation of the past four days, but half the office was still on vacation, and the owner of the firm bought lunch for those of us who were there, because -- as he put it -- we bothered to show up in the first place. I'm all about any situation that nets me free food, so I was pleased.

Christmas was spent at Mom and Dad's, with Ivan along so he wouldn't get lonely (my cat has serious abandonment issues, and leaving him alone for four days was most emphatically Not On). I baked scones and convinced my folks that Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie, and the whole thing was just really fun and pleasant and the most relaxing Christmas I've had in a good four years. To those who had good holidays, I'm glad everything went well, and to those who had a more stressful time of it, I hope things have settled out now. <3

According to the weather people, it's supposed to snow tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure what to do with that information. Our weather people? Are wrong a lot. It's a weird regional thingummy, some confluence of various systems that makes everything susceptible to rapid shifts to the point where it's sometimes ridiculously hard for them to make accurate predictions, but...I can't help but think of last year, when they predicted "just a little snow," and half of the Northwest was shut down for two to three days in the resulting storm. It won't affect me as much this time around, since I don't drive to work anymore and everything worth getting to is within walking/streetcar distance (including Trader Joe's!), but I'm curious to see how it will play out. Really, the biggest thing I have to remember is to throw a woolly hat into my bag in case the trolleys are running late. Cold ears = cranky Kathleen.

Here's the ridiculous thing: my parents got me a little survival kit for Christmas, since I live on a hill in an old building in an older section of town, and the chances of the power going down or the pipes freezing or something similarly obnoxious occurring isn't outside the realm of possibility. There's a little first-aid kit in it, insulated packets of drinking water, K-rations, a wind-up flashlight, those nifty gel heating pads where you snap them to activate the heat...my mom is a former ER nurse and my dad is ex-military, so this is like they combined all of their survival and disaster knowledge and distilled it into handy, easy-to-use, fit-for-apartment-living form. I have a similar kit in my car, only instead of K-rations, it has flares and a space blanket. My parents are awesome.

So, of course, now that I've just received this glorious little survival kit, there's a sick, sad part of me that wants us to get hit with a major snowstorm so that I have an excuse to use it.

Insulated foil packets of drinking water! And iodine tablets in case I run out and have to melt snow or use rainwater or something! I love shit like this!

To put this all in perspective, I was the kind of kid who pretended to get "lost" on camping trips (read: hung around in huckleberry thicket a yard from the tent) so that I could build my own lean-to shelter and attempt to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.