It always happens all at once, doesn't it?

So I'm in the middle of paper-writing hell, my students are overflowing my inbox with their final papers, my family is in the midst of some sort of messy reorganization of understandings, I'm gaining a nice little layer of winter fat, and it just snowed and iced for 36 hours.

Sigh.

Driving to class last night was quite an adventure. We had out first real storm last night and today, and the roads were shamefully awful. I'm not sure if it's assumed, because this is Wisconsin, that everyone is so rugged they don't need their roads plowed or if Madison just sucks at snow removal, but anything that wasn't a major road was deadly. And will be all winter, I'm sure - I remember now how bad it was last year. We ended up having to park at the bottom of the street and walk up to the house, since there's a huge hill leading up. And damn, my car was not going to do that. Nope. I'm not a bad driver in the snow, really, and it doesn't scare my in and of itself, nor have I ever gotten in a snow-related accident. But man. Last night was bad.

Also, I finally looked up how to set custom shortcut keys in Word, because every time I write a paper I wish I had a shortcut for footnotes. And I can't get the damn thing to work. It's annoying. Any helpful hints?

Since I began this entry, my paper has expanded from 10 1/2 pages to 15 1/2. Go me. Too bad I didn't craft an idea that would actually fit in 20 pages, or I'd be home free.