I’m not calling it a snow day because there is absolutely no snow outside, but apparently there’s enough ice on the roads for Wake Tech to close. I’m not arguing. I wouldn’t have been upset if I’d had to go to work today – it’s only the 2nd day of class, so I’m not ready for a break yet – but I will pretty much never argue with an unexpected day off.
And I’m proud of Raleigh for having learned its lesson when it comes to ice. When I moved back to NC from NY six years ago, it was right around this time. I blogged about it very briefly here. You don’t have to read it. The important part is that I went to Greenville to buy my car, and when I was driving it back to Raleigh, the same thing was happening that happened yesterday/last night – ice. And it took me NINE HOURS to make a trip that should have taken an hour and a half. It was crazy. It took people 8-10 hours to get across town, kids had to sleep in the gym at school, teachers had to stay there with them, people ran out of gas, people had to stay in hotels because they couldn’t make it all the way home from work, there were wrecks all over the place.
And all because nobody took the weather seriously. They all thought, “Oh, it’s just going to snow a little. We can handle that.” But now they’ve learned their lesson. Ice don’t play. If it’s icy, you stay home. You stay home in your jabambas, and you eat cinnamon orange rolls by the fire.
Done and done. And I think L-Josh and I have invented a new mixed drink. We call it Bourbonade. We haven’t actually made it (because we don’t have half the necessary ingredients, most notably the bourbon), but in our minds, it’s bourbon, sugar, water, and a squeeze of lemon…on the rocks. We came up with it through a series of imaginary conversations with our new neighbor, Jackson.
Because he has such a southern name, we always pretend to invite him over for southern-sounding things in a really thick, sugary, Georgia accent. Or maybe Alabama. Sometimes we invite him over for mint juleps, sometimes for lemonade, sometimes for bourbon. Well, today we combined the lemonade and the bourbon invitations and invented Bourbonade. I think it just might work.
Feel free to experiment with your own Bourbonade recipe and report back. And if you want to come over and sip a Bourbonade by our fire, we’ll be here all day. You’ll have to bring the bourbon and lemon, but we’ve got plenty of sugar and ice.