snow, snow, snow!

In Andy time, ten minutes can be anywhere from two minutes to two and a half hours.

Today, Steve had a "ten minute" meeting with Andy.  Andy announced this to the inhabitants of the 201 office this morning at 10:00, when we numbered two, Kate and I at our desks.  He arrived with bombast, having acquired himself some bubble wrap and popping it gleefully, forcefully, as soon as he had the door open.

A few moments later, he was standing in the middle of the office, looking very pleased with himself.  “I made an entrance,” he said, and then, “Shannon, I have a meeting with Steve now.  Can you join us in ten minutes?”

So in ten minutes, I dutifully made my way down to his office.  Andy launched into a sort of grandiose plan, and this plan lasted about an hour and a half for me.  When I was dismissed, Steve was asked to hang back and spent another 10 minutes with Andy before his own dismissal.  As per our usual, Steve wasn’t free to go because they were done, but because Andy had another meeting at noon.  Faculty candidates.

In the meantime, I’d been wondering whether or not to go collect myself some lunch, because I was supposed to hang back and discuss some chemistry with Steve.  Kate was all ready to pick up tacos from the top tier Mexican cart (Poblano Dos) for me, but then everyone ran into Steve, and Steve was down for lunch.

So we all had lunch together, and the cupcake truck even showed up down at the carts, so lunch was a merry affair, complete with “chocolate covered strawberry” cupcakes which I have to admit were pretty delectable.

Then I pow-wowed with Steve about chemistry, which was pretty fun because Steve is just a really fun dude.  He says lots of very British things like “that’s cheap as chips” and “this is piss-easy to make” (sorry, Mom… language is as language does!).  The chemistry talk went well.

As we were talking about chemistry and planning things out and formatting them in various structure-drawing programs, it began to snow in New Haven.  At first it was the unpleasant snow – the tiny spicules that fall more or less like rain – but as the day went on, the snow on the ground started to stick, and the snow transitioned from tiny particles to huge fluffy flakes.  My favorite kind of snow.

And the snow kept up.  I finally left around 7:50pm, and as I stepped outside of the building, I planted my foot squarely into a mound of sparkling, fluffy snow.  Looking down the path to the street, it was obvious that no plowing was happening, and I was thankful that I live close enough to school to walk.  The sidewalks weren’t in great shape, either, and I found myself wishing I’d worn boots this morning, when the walk was dry and sunny.

It was cold; my fingers got really painfully cold and unwieldy before I had the sense to put on my gloves, which was a considerably more difficult task after losing all of my dexterity.  My new sneakers seemed to be holding up well, and were pretty lovely against the snow.  Black shoes, white snow!

As I passed the entrance to the divinity school, a lone figure approached the doors and gave them a tug.  “Oh, no,” she said, audibly, “I can’t believe it’s locked.”

“Hey!” she called to me, apologetically, “Do you have a key?”  She saw me hesitate and said “it’s okay if you don’t.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I have an ID but I’m not a div student.  I can give it a try.”  And, lo and behold, my ID granted her access to the building.  She thanked me, and then I went sliding off down the rest of the hill, home to my apartment.