Soundtrack in my head: It's A Beautiful Day, "Soapstone Mountain"

Mulk is not necessarily rich in calcium, nor does it necessarily give you strong bones.  It likely won't give you a white mustache while consuming, because Mulk is not a liquid to be consumed.  Mulk is a Persian (or Arabic?) word meaning "dominion," and it also is the eighteenth month on the nineteen-month Baha'i calendar.  And the month of Mulk began just a little while ago because, just like the Jewish and Islamic calendars, the Baha'i calendar begins at sunset.  I am geek-fascinated with the Baha'i calendar, but that's for another post.

In any case,  it also is coinciding with a doozy of a winter storm here.  I was sent home from work an hour early, but many people started leaving earlier than that.  When I got out to the parking lot, I was surprised to find myself trudging through six inches of snow--ON the surface of the parking lot itself, where people were trying to drive.  Basically, the parking lot plows just couldn't keep up, even though, under most circumstancs they normally would. 

A co-worker gave me a ride home.   Normally I'd refuse, but he was pretty insistent, and it made me feel better that he had a 4 x 4 pickup truck that wouldn't likely get stuck.  The ride home was interesting--we were driving on packed snow the entire time, which made the road feel a bit like a dirt road.  As is true of many dirt roads, my co-worker sometimes had to find a pair of well-worn tire tracks--otherwise it became more difficult to control the vehicle. 

The Wisconsin State Journal, in its headline on Madison.com said "Roads are a wreck, government offices shut down."  UW-Madison classes were cancelled and so was the Baha'i feast celebrating the new month.  My credit union announced they were closing at noon.  The public schools were also closed.  I heard later that even some buses were stuck on the streets. The Madison area is predicted to get 14-18 inches of snow before this is finished.

When I got home, I saw one of my housemates' cars in the driveway.  Apparently, she had to shovel a path for herself just to get her car into her parking spot, so I grabbed a shovel and helped.  Another housemate also joined in.  I was suprised at the size of the drifts--some of them were two feel high, and in shoveling out part of the driveway, we created a drift almost shoulder height for me--it entirely swallowed part of a fence that we erected around the edge of the garden. 

So, I have an excuse to kick back and take it easy tonight.  Maybe that's why I love snowstorms like this...