Snow snow snow

I hate working between Christmas and New Year. There's nothing to really justify your presence in the office, after all. (Except for me there is, because half the database I'm working with at the moment seems to be breaking, and since my illusion of incompetence can only be maintained by fixing things very fast before anyone notices, my presence at this point is actually quite helpful for continued employment).

But it's crap. It's cold, and there's snow outside, and it's between Christmas and New Year and I'm shattered from working too hard before Christmas, and all I want to do is be in bed. Things are made worse by my mother seeing the dread tidings on the news, that it's snowing and therefore all of Kent is impassable to vehicles. And if you go outside, You Will Die.

As it turns out, this isn't strictly true. OK, so they didn't grit the steep road up to the village where I live, and yes, I did have fun skidding uphill on the way home on the 27th, but by and large the roads are quite safe. Although having spoken to somebody in charge of gritting, who listed all the things wrong with the gritters (eg broken ploughs, oil spilling over the road everywhere, etc...).

So I'm quite demotivated, and therefore found it a real struggle to get to work. (And I'd got Burnout 4 to play on the Xbox, which wasn't half as much fun as I'd hoped, but still required half the night 'testing' it).

Ran home though. That's about 8 miles, through deep snow, including one comedy part in the woods where I got lost. Over the Christmas break, a few trees have fallen over and that makes navigation at night, when all you have is a tiny LED head torch, a little difficult. Took the long route home (slightly less up and down - well, more just up, rather than up and down and then up again) and made it back in 90 minutes (1035 calories). Only to find that the local Lidl was now shut, and the only food in the house was chocolate money. Went round to a friend's, had four pints of beer, went back to bed.

Now, the car was at work, so that meant once I'd summed up the requisite motivation, I then had to run back to work again. Snow's not quite as beautiful in the day. Actually, scratch that, it is beautiful, but in a different way. At night, it looks like it's glowing either red or blue; in the daytime it's just standard white. What was odd was to run along and retrace my footsteps - it hasn't snowed, but nobody else seemed to have been out in the intervening 14 hours.

And the further you get from Hawkinge, the more likely people are say 'morning' as you run past. Unsociable sods in Folkestone, I guess. Although did have one dog chase me as I ran through Saltwood this morning. Shouldn't have worn that face mask...