Just when I had a trip to Boston planned for the next three days, Mother Nature decides that my plans are completely irrelevant, and all flights and trains get cancelled… which led to my calling the airlines and the hotel to get my refunds. What joy. And as I am writing this, I have one colleague who is stuck overnight in Toronto due to a cancelled flight (and will not be home until tomorrow night, earliest, and that’s being optimistic), a second colleague who was scheduled to come home from Chicago tonight and his direct flight got cancelled, forcing him to take a connecting flight through D.C. into Newark late tonight. Then, a third colleague is taking a flight to Albany and renting a car to drive him 2.5 hours away. That’s how desperate he was to get home. And, he didn’t have a change of clothes, which probably made him want to go home even more.

This is always something that seems comical and absurd to people who have never lived in snowy areas. Whenever we share this information about meeting cancellations, trip interruptions, and flights getting diverted due to weather, my California colleagues always laugh and think it’s so funny and insane. Yes, it’s funny… when you don’t have to deal with it and have no concept of it ever happening to you.