Are we really calling the storm that struck the East Coast over the weekend Snowmageddon now? Come on – yeah, some flights were canceled (uh, mine in fact), but really…I’d hardly say that the storm resulted in an armageddon-like disaster. Maybe we should ask the people of Haiti to chime in on this one? Did their natural disaster get a fancy nickname yet?

Yeah, ok, Dulles got some snow, but it’s not like they’ve never seen snow before. Wimps.

At any rate, yes, I had a flight scheduled on Sunday to Dulles (Washington, D.C.) so that I could take a course entitled “Resource Management Implications of Climate Change” at NCTC (the Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center). NCTC is in Shepherdstown, WV, which is about a 2 hour drive from Dulles and apparently currently inaccessible…so the course was generally canceled as well. About 7 brave souls managed to survive Snowmageddon and reach NCTC mostly unscathed (not sure how many emergency amputation were performed yet…news comes slowly when communications are down), so some of the sessions are being broadcast over the web, which I get to watch from work (which is what I’m doing right now…). On one hand I was really looking forward to the course (and racking up almost 16 hours of travel comp time – woo hoo!!!), but on the other hand, I was really not looking forward to spending almost 16 hours of my own time traveling. Luckily, I found out that my flight and course were canceled Saturday night, so I didn’t have to drive to the airport at 5 am on Sunday to get that bit of news. I was very tempted to just not show up at work this week to see if anyone would figure it out…but in the end, my conscience won the battle and I decided to report for duty.

On an unrelated note, I made my modeling debut a couple of weeks ago for a bellydance-wear company here in Portland. It was a lot of fun, but I think some of my pictures turned out better than others. For most of the photos I was wearing this humongous coin bra that made my boobs look incredibly huge – really, I’m more of a B cup kinda girl, and not the FFF that the coin bra makes me out to be. So, to satisfy your curiosity, here’s a photo that will also be featured on the back cover of Yallah magazine next month.

That’s me with the incredibly goofy look on my face and ginormous-looking boobs in the middle of the bottom row. But in case you’re wondering, I’m still dancing, still love it, and am getting a bit less sucky at it! :o) This is mostly due to the constant encouragement, guidance, and entertainment provided by one of my instructors, Ziggy (top left, yellow skirt).