We did not lose power this weekend. In fact, we only had a little bit of ice on Friday night. From what I can tell, the front seemed to hover right over Saint Louis and for the most part, those of us on the east side of the Mississippi escaped the worst of the ice this past weekend. I would like to believe that spending $100 to prepare for the storm invoked some sort of “Murpy’s Law” response from Mother Nature, but I guess I’ll just have to settle for lucky.

It was a far different story in the western part of the city where at one point there were over 100,000 people without power. The problem areas include Maryville University, one of the two schools at which I teach. While I know how awful it is to be without power, I won’t lie and say that I’m disappointed that the school has cancelled classes until Thursday. Since I only teach Monday through Wednesday over there, this means I can avoid my cross-city commute for another week.

I have to rewrite all of my syllabi to account for the change in the schedule, but that shouldn’t take too much time.

A winter storm watch has been issued by the National Weather Service.

…WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN ST LOUIS HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM LATE FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING.

TEMPERATURES WILL DROP AT OR BELOW THE FREEZING MARK AFTER MIDNIGHT FRIDAY NIGHT WHICH WILL CAUSE THE RAIN TO TRANSITION OVER TO FREEZING RAIN. PERIODS OF FREEZING RAIN AND RAIN WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEKEND AS TEMPERATURES HOVER NEAR THE FREEZING MARK. SIGNIFICANT ICE ACCUMULATIONS ARE POSSIBLE.

Great, just great…

In fact, this news prompted us to go out and buy ourselves an oil lamp, a new flashlight, an emergency candle, a few extra gallons of water, and a kerosene heater. We just decided it is better to be safe than sorry and there was no way we could live with friends and work out of our cars for another few days after what happened back in December.

And yes, we do have a carbon monoxide alarm installed.

If you read back a ways, you’ll remember me complaining when the University of Florida won the NCAA Championship in basketball last April. I should have never opened my mouth, not that it really matters.

The SIUE spring semester began today and the fact that I have the (mostly) same students from the fall semester made theory this morning feel like nothing more than a continuation of last semester. I believe this is a good thing, but the problem was that even though the students are the same, they’re almost all in different seats and many are at different times. I know all of their names, but it was very disconcerting to see the faces at the wrong time and in the wrong seats. This feeling comes over me every spring semester but today was particularly surreal.

I still have to finish up my syllabus for tomorrow, but I expect to resume full time posting now that I’m back from my travels, which will be the topic for the next couple of days.

My best wishes to everyone for 2007 and welcome back.