Just as I began wondering whether we'd get any major snow this winter, the forecast came down: something like major snow is approaching, due to arrive here tomorrow evening.

I say "something like major" because every time I think of snow, I remember not being able to get to my car during the first week of classes in my second Rochester semester--and then, once I'd dug into my car, not being able to start it. I remember having to take a taxi to the first meeting of my second class. I remember how it snowed, day after day after day, from the beginning of January until the middle of February. We didn't miss a day in nearly six weeks; we got something like five feet of snow. I learned to drift in and out of parking places, riding strange billows of as-yet-unpacked snow, learning new ways to pilot my car even when its tires didn't feel as though they were making contact with the ground in any way.

And so a forecast of six to eight inches, or so, seems manageable. Lovely, even. Which doesn't mean that I won't go another round with my iced-in car tomorrow, getting it deiced and defrosted enough that I can get to the grocery store for what's left of the bread and milk that I'm sure my entire county is droving in to buy.

Today: sacrifices from my syllabus, a jettisoning of the books that just won't fit--and that I suspect I must have ordered under the delusion that a semester has eighteen weeks, not fourteen. What's left makes a syllabus I'm excited to start, though. This afternoon, I found myself wondering how it is that people doing introductory courses in my field find room to teach so many poems. And then I remembered: they don't teach so many novels. Ah. Yes. Having scratched out one novel, I am holding tight to the ones that remain. And though I am not deliberately setting out to frighten people off, I suspect that the first week's reading may do just that--at least to the ones who are faint of heart. To my mind, there's not really a way to tackle my historical period without tackling a whole lot of reading.

Something like an avalanche, even.