My hobbies include reading, playing board games, and meteorology...

Winter in the area where I live is a mixed bag. The average temperatures don't really tell the story.  In the last 30 days, we had highs ranging from 33-60 degrees. We can have rain, ice, or snow as the precipitation from any given system, and sometimes a mix of all three.

To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the winter weather before I started teaching in 2005. Bad weather meant I had to use my vacation time. Bad weather was not something to be celebrated.

But now, like many of my colleagues, I become an amateur meteorologist when the seasons change. At school, days off and delays happen with the ice and snow. For years, my department ran an informal snowday pool to guess which would be the first cancellation due to snow. But for the past two years, we've had very little of snow or ice, and that pool has fallen by the wayside.

Still, we perceptually look to the skies and the internet, especially during the drag of February and March when the honeymoon has ended and before the crush of testing and end of the year activities has us spinning through never-ending "to do " lists. Social media has become the outlet for our weather obsession.

In the past four days, it;'s become increasingly likely there will finally be a measurable snowfall in the area. In response to this developing story, I've watched my timelines fill with  snow talk like this:

• More than one teacher has shared this image: 

• The BSB weather team (BSB are the initials of three teachers who try to predict delays and cancellations, often comically incorrectly) has made its pronouncements. 
• Several people, myself included, have talked about the Capital Weather Gang's latest predictions and models.
• One teacher claims a student send her photos of ice cubes in the toilet in an attempt to get extra credit for causing the snow day. 
• Teachers have started talking about their to do lists and/or their plans to avoid working and use the day as a rest.
• So far, the funniest has been a rumor that Jim Cantore had arrived in Washington, D.C.[1] on Tuesday, a sure harbinger of weather doom.

Most of this is harmless fun and wishful thinking. We all want a day to catch up and breathe. We probably will get it, too.

But, we could also get Thursday, which will be a Faustian bargain. See, these days aren't all free. The school system where I work schedules three days without make-ups iinto the instructional plan. After that  we start losing federal holidays and teacher work days. Eventually, the system will tack dyas on to the end of the year and lengthen the school dya to meet the state-mandated requirements.

Still, as I gaze upon the piles of student writing to be graded and look forward to a week and a half of schedule interruptions due to state-mandated writing tests, I cannot help hoping to have at least one day of space before the next "to do" list starts again.

[1] @JimCantore's Twitter feed had an Instagram picture of the Charleston, SC Food and Wine Festival on Sunday. He retweeted a picture of himself and several friends outside of a Charleston restaurant on Monday night. So, I don't know if he was in DC.  But, he also tweeted "I feel a trip to #DC in my future: http://wxcaster.com/gis-gfs-snow-overlays.php3?STATIONID=LWX … #vawx#mdwx #wvwx" on March 3.