Just me and my shadow.

Already it has begun. Thanks to the wonderful construction crew that is working on the downstairs apartment, I have been awake since 9am this Saturday morning. That was fine though, because it gave me enough time to climb out of bed, throw on a layer of clothing for every degree in temperature we have currently (that's eight for those of you who are keeping track), and march myself out into the arctic blast to the grocery store before the snow hit.

Disgusting weather calls for desperate measures. The grocery store was packed full of people whose sole purpose seemed to be to stand in the middle of anywhere they could find, and refuse to move out of the way no matter how many times a person said "excuse me". Let's just say that's an hour and a half of my life I could have spent elsewhere.

At any rate, I managed to make it back to my apartment (with brownie mix in hand, because you can't have a blizzard without brownies!) before the flurries began to fly. I even managed to set up a patio chair in the back yard so that I could run down every so often and take pictures of the 25 inches we're supposed to get in the next two days. 25 inches folks... in New York City.

Might I remind you that I'm a native Floridian, and I could do without the snow. I've never seen more than a foot of snow at any given point in my life. Quite frankly, that foot was enough to last a life time. Give me a hurricane any day. They're more entertaining, not to mention warm. Oh warmth.. sweet warmth.

Something tells me I won't be going to work on Monday if mother nature really does drop that much white stuff on the city. I'm not complaining there. I'm an overworked and underpaid teacher, I will take a free holiday whenever someone wants to offer one.

And to top it off, the director asked on Friday if I would go to the center to hang up a sign on the door letting parents know that school is closed if the mayor decides the weather isn't conducive to learning. They know I live within walking distance, and will take advantage of that whenever they see fit.

No I won't go out in two feet of snow to hang up a sign on the caged doors that says school is closed. If the parents are silly enough not to watch the news and see the schools are closed for the day, and end up taking their kids to the center and find the gates locked and the doors barred and still wonder what's going on, then they deserve to stand out in the cold.

(Darn, I'm starting to think that picking a comedian with such a long name was not the brightest of ideas Charlie. Especially since I'm not a lengthy writer such as yourself.)

Looking across the river, I can no longer see the Empire State Building from my kitchen window. Oh I'm sure it's still there in all it's glory, but when they said blizzard they weren't kidding. I wonder if they'll even bother turning on the lights tonight. This is NYC, I'm sure there will be people out in this mess regardless of whether they need to be or not. The city of crazy people who never sleep.

Everyone wondering why this post is so long will find an explanation on Charlie's site, for he is playing a secret message game, and my answer to his riddle can be found within this endless NYC weather report of mine.

Rambling complete.

An iconoclast can be unpleasant company, but at least the modern iconoclast only attacks such things as ideas and institutions. The original iconoclasts destroyed countless works of art. Eikonoklasts, the ancestor of our word, was first formed in Medieval Greek from the elements eikn, “image, likeness,” and -klasts, “breaker,” from kln, “to break.”

The images referred to by the word are religious images, which were the subject of controversy among Christians of the Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th centuries, when iconoclasm was at its height. In addition to destroying many sculptures and paintings, those opposed to images attempted to have them barred from display and veneration. During the Protestant Reformation images in churches were again felt to be idolatrous and were once more banned and destroyed.

It is around this time that iconoclast, the descendant of the Greek word, is first recorded in English (1641), with reference to the Byzantine iconoclasts. In the 19th century iconoclast took on the secular sense that it has today, as in “Kant was the great iconoclast” (James Martineau).

Brought to you by Dictionary.com

Returning from a month worth of vacation is no fun. Especially when you're returning to a new apartment filled with cluttered boxes. I've finally managed to dig out all of the wires to my computer, thus I am now able to communicate with my one obligated adoring fan once again. Yo Zann!

The children were thrilled to see me back at work this week. Mainly because they have had no intellectual stimulation in the last three weeks while I was away. We had an hour-long discussion about elephants yesterday. That never happens with three and four-year-old children. Never. They were starving for knowledge!

Thus, I taught them all about winter and snow this week. Go ahead, ask them to explain the concept of snow... I dare you. Sponges, all of them. Now if they'd only learn to clean up their spilt milk.