Snow Day

I'm home with the dogs today because a) even though I have Things To Do, there are no meetings which require my presence at the office today and school's not the boss of me; c) it snowed 5 inches yesterday and they still haven't plowed; and b) when I got up this morning to let the dogs out, it was COLD. I don't know exactly how cold, but cold enough that Cricket only did one lap, peed, let out a single, half-hearted yelp at the neighbor coming out to start his car, and came back in without having to be called. For reference, she usually goes berserk whenever anyone in our neighborhood so much as shows their face before sunrise. This is the procedure for getting her to come in: 1) whistle from the porch, 2) call from the porch, 3) whistle in a more insistent tone, 4) call her from the deck, 5) stomp out into the yard where she can see you and call her again while clapping, 6) stomp over to her, calling and clapping, 7) chase her around the yard as she playfully frolicks through the snowdrifts with a huge piece of frozen poop dangling from her mouth. So when she came back in without any of that, I knew it was bad out. An hour later, it had warmed up to -17. As evidenced at left, it's still cold out.
Since I don't have to go outside today, I'm kind of enjoying it. This is real winter. We're supposed to have this kind of winter: it's Minnesota! Of course, I also feel a teensy bit of schadenfreude toward those hysterical Minnesotans who meant to to California or something. They are very confused by the snow, and seem to think they'll make it go away through vigorously bad driving, inappropriate winter dress, and exclamations of bafflement and woe ("It's cold?! But a hat will ruin my hair! Oh, it's cold! Oh, it's so cold that even my Uggs won't keep my feet warm! Someone should really do something about this weather. This must be the beginning of the next ice age! Woops, was that my turn?" *slams on brakes, fishtails, nearly hits pedestrian).
So I'm staying home, away from them and out of the cold. It's all I can do to keep myself from curling up on the couch right now with a book and some cocoa - like I said, I have Things To Do. Lesson planning, proposal writing, laundry. We got the wallpaper off the dining room walls over the weekend (so easy! and no, we didn't just smear them with bacon grease for Cricket) and it's already much better, but I'm hoping to get the walls cleaned up so we can patch and prime and paint this weekend. You can see the current state of the room to the left. It's the center of the first floor, kind of a focal point, so I'm having major color indecision (Rob, consider yourself warned). Bright or neutral? Rust? Burnt orange? Eggplant? Butter? (Why do so many of the colors I like have food names?) Le sigh. Suggestions? Extra points if you create an entire pallete we can eventually use to make our living room and kitchen also look stylish.