Grumpy

I'm really grumpy today. 

We had a blizzard last night that left us without power from 7:00 p.m. until 9:45 a.m. 

Along with the power and heat, the storm also took with it:

1.  Two large tree branches from our yard.  One across our walkway.  One across the entirety of our yard.  We have now (in the year we've lived in the house) lost significant branches on every single one of the large trees in our yard.

2.  A night of sleep.  You try sleeping when it's freezing cold, the sky is lighting up as transformers are exploding, lightning is, well, lightninging, and thunder is thundering.  Also, the power loss made our Verizon cable box beep incessantly until I took drastic measures and unplugged everything in sight.

3.  My clean hair and make-up.  We spent half the night outside shaking off trees, shoveling, and trying to save branches.  It was windy, freezing, and so snowy that I couldn't see three feet in front of me.  Coming inside afterwards to a cold house was no treat either.

4.  My good mood.  I was in a good mood about the snow until I realized that I'd still have to make my way to work in it.  8 inches closes the metro.  We got 7.5.  And now I'm grumpy.

What really gets my grumpy goat, though, is this:

At 7:20 a.m. I got a phone call from Georgetown saying that all classes were cancelled until 1:10 p.m.  I promptly got back under the covers (it was the only place warm enough to be remotely comfortable) and continued listening to the cracking and tremendous thudding of the trees breaking around our neighborhood. 

At 9:30 Blake and I were desperate and thinking of asking Blake's parents to come pick us up in their SUV and whisk us away to warmth.  Then Blake could work from "home" (no Internet at our house = total isolation) and I could stay warm until going to work after 1:00.

At 9:43 we got power back.  We were ecstatic. 

At 9:46 I checked my work e-mail and saw that, although classes has been cancelled, administrative offices were still opened.  Any late arrivals would count against our leave time. 

Perfect.  The important message doesn't reach me because I didn't have power.  How unfair.

So now it's lunch.  And I'm grumpy because I now have three less leave hours that I could have otherwise used for a much-more-rewarding/warm vacation.