Happy Birthday to Me

God gave me a birthday present in the form of an inch of ice and freezing rain, so EMU was closed, which by the way is big news, because EMU never closes. So now I get to sleep in, stay in my pj's until sometime this afternoon and finish my laundry. Unfortunately my day will not be work free because of a strange policy EMU has for it's employees where they have to make up or take personal time for the time they don't work. So I'll be working from home today, but only a little.
Yesterday when I was watching the weather do very strange things outside (like fog, mist, a little snow, rain) I started to remember a birthday I had when I was little, maybe 10 or so, where almost the same thing happened. We had an ice day. The exception is that then we didn't have electricity, so mom couldn't make the special birthday dinner we had planned. I seem to recall eating birthday cake that day and that's about it. I think then I was little disappointed because when your in elementary school birthday's are cool. You get to take treats for your classmates, and the added bonus of valentine's day meant that there was a party.
The strangest thing about remembering this birthday is that I think I wrote about it at the tender age of 10 or so. Or maybe Mom did. I seem to only be able to remember it in certain words, which makes me think I wrote a story or a journal or a poem about it. I keep thinking of things like "Ice Valentines Day" or something like that that used to be the title. It might be worth a trip down memory lane into my journals, if they weren't stuffed in some box in Ohio. Oh well, for now I'm going to enjoy my coffee, my pj's and my "day off."

Old Habits Die Hard

Yesterday I met some undergrad students in the cafeteria for a lunch meeting. Only one showed up, which reminded me of the joy/trial of working with undergrads, you have to remind them more than once. And at least the once the week of.
I also discovered that I am a creature of habit. I went through the line, picked out some edible food items (some that turned out to be more edible than others). Then I saw the bowl of fruit. First, unlike Bluffton, the fruit bowl is accessible to all and not at the mercy of the cafeteria workers (No Fruit for You!). Second, I had almost no choice but to take an apple, not to eat for lunch, but to take with me. I knew I wasn't going to eat the apple for lunch, I knew I was going to take it with me for later, a snack maybe, or breakfast the next day.
So now I am sitting in my office, eating an apple "stolen" from the cafeteria yesterday. And I realize, I'm not as far from Bluffton as I thought.