My Incredibly Productive Cold Day

I was greeted with a most welcome sound at 5:30 this morning. It was my cell phone. And since the alarm on my cell is set to go off at 7:00, I knew that the electronic version of the MSU Fight Song could only mean one of two things: Someone had died or no school.

Fortunately, it was no school. Thanks to a splendid combination of subzero temperatures and just the right amount of wind, the wind chill factor reached the magic number of 25 below. Can I just say that whoever invented the wind chill factor should immediately be presented with the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.

Granted with what is essentially a free day, I was able to accomplish a number of astounding feats this morning. First, I went to the library and picked up four books. They are: Paper Towns by John Green (I had a hold on it), Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner (which I am rereading because it is similar in many ways to my current YA manuscript. More to come in a future post), Whales on Stilts by the inimitable (and about a billion other complimentary adjectives) M.T. Anderson, and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen, also by M.T. Anderson, who I will this time call brilliant.

Then I went to Lowe's because I have a bad habit of not performing regular maintenance on rather critical components of my house. In this case, I needed a new filter for the furnace because the box says I should replace it every three months and it's been, like, three years. Because my knowledge of anything house-related is similar to this guy's knowledge of popular sayings, I thought there would be a standard size. Or maybe I thought I would know what size to buy when I saw it. Whatever the reason, I bought the wrong size. So now I need to go back out into the too-cold-for-school-air to take it back and get the right one.

I rounded out my travels by going to that bastion of overpriced junk foods, 7-11. Nothing very interesting here other than I bought chocolate milk, which is currently running neck and neck with Kool-Aid (grape, please) as my number one rated beverage. (Beer fell a few notches after I consumed too much of it over the holidays and then looked at the scale. Sorry, beer. You've been a good companion, but I think we should give each other some space for a few weeks.)

And now I'm back here blogging and pretty soon I'll watch CNN. If they ever get over that plane landing in the Hudson story (which, admittedly, is pretty cool and probably has made-for-TV screenwriters salivating) and get back to reporting on Somali pirates, I will be one happy blogger. Who knew pirates would make the comeback they have?

I mean, pirates. Almost as awesome as the wind chill factor.


Your Twilight Quote of the Day:

"How can someone so tiny be so annoying?"

---Edward Cullen, Eclipse, p. 268