The ice storm abated. My kids went back to school on Wednesday, and I went back on Thursday. Yes, that means I had one blessed day home all alone. Ahhhh…

I think about half my students decided to skip the couple of days we were back in school. The semester was extended a week — the week after Christmas break — so we can make up the missed days, which happened to occur the week of end-of-instruction testing. That means the kids have two weeks to forget everything before taking their benchmark tests. You know, the ones that actually affect their grades.

Today it’s snowing and the wind is howling. I do not think we’ll get the 2-4 inches our wide-eyed TV weathermen promised. Sometimes I really believe they predict weather disasters with a hard-on. I’m sure the retailers love them, as it drives people to the shelves to stock up on food, rock salt, and such. Whatever. The snow was supposed to start yesterday afternoon, but it didn’t come until this morning. It isn’t heavy, and isn’t sticking to the ground. It’s just blowing and blowing.

Chainsaws are roaring, despite the snow and cold. This is good. It drowns out the nasty rap music Sara listens to. Not all of it is rap. I guess some of it passes for pop these days. I don’t know. Synthesizers and jungle drums, with one or two lines of lyric repeated over and over. “She moves her body like a cyclone.” I guess that means the girl who is the subject of the song sucks and blows as much as the song itself. I was out cutting limbs for a while, until the chain came off the saw. The tools to fix it weren’t handy, so I knocked off for a while.

I’m about to go out and try to finish up the Christmas shopping. Kim was going to do that last Tuesday, but had to work her day off, and has had to go in early and work late every day to cover for people who couldn’t get to work. Plus, they didn’t have power at her job for almost two days, which threw them behind even more. She won’t have a day off until Christmas Eve, so I actually have to buy my own gift this year. Hmm. She didn’t give me a spending limit on myself … Most of my gift, of course, is sitting in the driveway. The damn “tag”, tax and title on that truck was $400, and the freakin’ tag expires in January, which will cost another $80. I let the lady know I thought that was a crock or crap. Her response was to tell me I could go ahead and get my new tag in December if I wanted to. Not the point! That was random. I’m waiting for Alex to get ready so he can go with me. He has a list of gifts he wants to buy for his girlfriend. Of course, he has no money … but then, I remember my parents paying for the first gifts I gave Kim back before I had a job.

I bought the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End DVD the other day. I thought it was much better than the second film. I didn’t get to hear a lot of the dialogue because Amanda and Jacob were “watching” it with me. Little chatterboxes! The movie really made me want to dig out the Charlton Heston version of Treasure Island that TNT did back in about 1991. I recorded it, which is a good thing, because it isn’t available to buy on DVD, or even VHS for a reasonable price. Christopher Lee as Blind Pew. And Heston did a really good job as Long John Silver. Oh yeah, the other movie. How come Davy Jones never once summoned the kraken in the third film? And how did Captain Jack go from the kraken’s gullet to Jones’s locker? I know, I’m trying to apply logic to an action/comedy flick. I shouldn’t expect everything to make sense.

Speaking of which, I’ve heard there are some real logic holes in the Will Smith version of I am Legend. Have you seen it? What did you think?