You know you've been living somewhere with easy winters when your reaction to the words "blizzard warning" is a kind of wistful jealousy.

So while it is nice to speak to a human, and I understand that people's reaction is annoying, I tend to give the person I'm calling more information via voicemail.

And I understand that, but when it's a medical office in a subspecialty practice, it's just... fully half the calls that come here aren't actually looking for either me or my boss, but for the fellowship office or the clinic or the echo lab or the hospital billing department or whatnot. If I can talk to the people, I can figure out what they want and who they need to talk to and transfer them to that person instantly. My boss almost never answers the phone himself, and he's on the far side of 60 and only just last year figured out how email works so there's zero chance that any voice mail left for him would actually be picked up by him. It'd be me, slogging through the messages, calling each person back and playing 20 Questions until I find out what they actually want and whether either Boss or I can possibly help or if they need to talk to someone else.

And half the time I called people back, I'd get their voicemail, and half of the callers-back would get our voicemail, and so forth. Sometimes voicemail is best, but in this place it would suck serious donkey balls, and it does get kinda discouraging to hear people wilt at the prospect of talking to me.

That's been upgraded to a blizzard warning.

From Tom's link:

FINAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE 12 TO 15 INCHES BY SUNDAY MORNING.

That is so many kinds of wrong.

Done with errands. Boss needs to get off the phone so's I can go home- or, y'know to the bar.

I need to go grocery shopping. Sigh.

I think blizzard is about wind, not amount of snow, isn't it?

I know people are a PITA, Jacqueline. Stupid PITA people.

Jesse, according to the link:

A BLIZZARD WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WIND SPEEDS OR FREQUENT GUSTS OF OVER 35 MPH ARE EXPECTED WITH CONSIDERABLE FALLING AND OR BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW.

I think my favorite part of the blizzard warning is:

STRONG NORTHERLY WINDS WILL PERSIST SUNDAY MORNING. THESE WINDS WILL RESULT IN BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF SNOW.

Just for the Brooklynites who have never, you know, encountered wind before and might be freaked out by the blowing and drifting of the snow.

The snow is going to ruin my cable installation scheduled for tomorrow, isn't it? Drat.

Pita People would make cute little figurines. Kind of like Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but dough-y.

A BLIZZARD WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WIND SPEEDS OR FREQUENT GUSTS OF OVER 35 MPH ARE EXPECTED WITH CONSIDERABLE FALLING AND OR BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW.

There, see? That's what I get for not reading the link. I bet you could have a blizzard with 6 inches of snow, is what I'm saying.