I could have called in sick, but ...

... the government in the DC area labeled today a "late arrival/unscheduled leave" day. You could be up to two hours late, but it was back to reality for the Nation's capital, such as it is. Employees in the outlying areas didn't have access to public transportation, and some major roads were still covered with snow drifts. So we were short-handed, and the front office said they could sure use me to help prepare for a rescheduled event. It was the call to public service, like a herald in the wilderness.

What the hell was I thinking?

I told myself I wouldn't go into certain details about life at the office, so I won't. Suffice it to say I was late getting out of there tonight, and a columnist for The Hill explains how sorry I was:

I am convinced that infants born in Washington, D.C., are taken from the arms of their loving mothers right when they are born into a room where someone shows a film of a snowstorm with shrieking and screaming so that those children come to believe snow is a mortal enemy, like a nuclear attack ...

It's a wonder we got out of town on 9/11 without killing each other. Closer to the present, it took nearly an hour and a half to get home. It normally takes less than half an hour. I live six miles from the office. To be fair to my colleagues, two of them whose work I was doing offered to get me lunch. When the second one asked, I relented. That was very nice of them.

Heh, it's a living.

[THE NEXT DAY: It seems that the Washington Post agrees with our assessment, as Saturday's front page relates.]
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