Last night I just couldn't get to sleep. I'd turned the heater up a little too high and it made my bed uncomfortably hot. The traffic outside was, at 2am, remarkably lively; an ambulance, a few cops yelling through car-mounted megaphones at drunk businessmen stumbling to their third or fourth bar, late (early?) delivery trucks honking at lurking taxis and I was sweating.

I woke up tired. I've got iTunes to play a random song as an alarm clock and this morning, because I really wanted to lie in bed for a while and slowly come to grips with being conscious again, it started off with Van Halen. The first few opening bars of 'Jump' had me flying across the apartment to shut the thing off. It was too much, too soon, and way too loud. The sky, and my window, like yesterday were dark; the city has been under oppressive winter clouds. Jangled nerves, in a dark apartment and tired as well.

Yesterday it was practically dark at 3 in the afternoon. I sat at my desk checking email and preparing for a brand new class of beginning students when after a few cracks of thunder, it started to hail. The storm didn't last long, but the students all came in with wet umbrellas and pant legs. What leaves weren't knocked out by the late autumn winds were finally felled by this. The classroom floor was slick with wet shoes, followed by steamy from the heating. And there's no good solution for that. I tried to open a window, but cold air flew in, sending a stack of homework papers across the classroom and elicited cries of,"Nooooo! Teacher! Weather very cold!" We settled on their side of things; a sauna conducted in an English classroom.

I showered, put on a sweater and went out to get a coffee. Three feet out the front door of my apartment I turned around and bolted for the elevator. For godssake! It was snowing.

The first snowfall of the season ought to go like this: Rested, I take a book and sit in the window of a cafe. Outside, the last of autumn rustles across the sidewalk, people drawing their coats around them as the breeze breathes past them. Snow sifting down like sugar into a hot tea. Today was not that. I threw on a coat, reemerged and it had more or less stopped. Invisible flakes condensed on my face as I walked, tiny pinpricks of cold. I hurried to work, wishing I could start the week, already well into Tuesday, all over again.