If that groundhog saw his shadow, he's a fucking marked rodent.

Two things have happened to me this semester, and I can't figure out if they're related to one another. First, and thankfully, I am starting to be able to detect minute improvements in my grad school thinking. For instance, when someone in class says, "This is so Kantian," I don't immediately think, "Fuck you." I often know vaguely what's being referenced. Universalism, aesthetics, teleology, something like that. Also, I find that when I say things in class this semester, I don't always have an out-of-body experience, and most of the time what I've rambled about doesn't make me want to crawl under the seminar table and spend the rest of the class building lego racecars. Most of the time.

I talk a lot about small victories in graduate school, but this is actually a huge improvement.

The other new thing this semester is that, paradoxically, I seem to care much, much less about my work. It's there, and I know I need to do it. But there's no panic, there's no Fear. Fear has been replaced with Priorities. I don't seem to need my entire weekend for doing work. Apart from this weekend, when I fucked myself with three mini-assignments (including a paper I can't seem to formulate a coherent thesis for) on top of all of my reading, most weekends, I think--dare I say it?--I might be able to kick back a little.

So, are these two things related? Or am I heading down a dangerous road of not reading but talking in class anyway? Am I headed down the highway to the danger zone? To a neighboring state that begins with a big old capital A?

Speaking of a different (but related) A, he asked me to update my weather blog. And I was feeling self-conscious that all I ever write about is the weather... it's like being that person at a party who has nothing to talk about, and since I usually feel awkward at parties, with nothing to talk about, it felt important that I try not to simply post over and over again about the temperature. But I do have a couple items of note that I wanted to share, and now that a request has been made, well, here:

It snowed 13 inches last Wednesday. 19 inches in some areas outside of the city. Apparently one of the 5 worst storms on record. 1,000 cars were stranded overnight on the highway. But the University opened in the morning! With a nice, patronizing note reminding us that the UW has only closed twice for snow in the last 18 years. That's cute and all, but when the city has declared an emergency, is woefully behind on plowing the streets, all the other public schools and all the other UWs are closed, and the UW Madison hasn't even begun to shovel its on-campus walkways... maybe it's time to put safety above pride? How many of those people who spent the night on the beltline were trying to get to/from the University? At the very least, the Chancellor needs to reword / make more public the snow policy, because it's not a great reflection on the school when most students believe that the school simply "never closes" or that the Chancellor adheres to some arbitrary snowfall total instead of actual city conditions. The students should at least believe their school puts safety before pride, even if it's not true.

And, finally, here's a screen capture from Saturday night:



HOLY SHIT GROUND BLIZZARDS??

You win, Madison. Game over.