When you work for the Masters of the Universe...

...they remind you repeatedly, as forecasters warn and lesser beings run for cover, that whatever may rain from the heavens, their educational mission is too important to be interrupted and the show must go on. And since they are masters of the universe, weather sent by lesser divinities is nothing they won't conquer.

So having heard the cocky confidence, the contemptuous dismissals, and the unmistakable guilt tripping in their statements Tuesday night as the storm moved in, I found it nothing short of miraculous to wake up Wednesday morning to a text message stating that all classes were canceled. Apparently everyone who was anyone at Princeton found it equally hard to believe. Our power was out at home, but when it returned at the end of the day and I checked email, I saw that the official cancellation was followed by an immediate round of tsk-tsking by middle managers who expressed their surprise and urged us to make up the classes: they seemed afraid to be caught looking neutral about, let alone pleased by, a day off.

And today we were indeed back in the saddle, though schools were still closed, though most campus events involving anyone coming from more than five miles away were canceled, though all paths were ice, and though the main door to my department was unopenable due to the wall of snow in front of it. In a meeting with top brass I heard elaborate disavowal of anything to do with the closing and thinly veiled scoffing at it. A new flurry of emails from middle management continued to urge making up the "lost" day. Imagine: An event not of Princeton's making, yet the university had to bend to it. Never doubt the secular liberal intellectual elite thinks it runs the world.

My class discussions today focused on Booker T. Washington's appeal for an educational system in which students' own manual labor on campus would both aid the institution and contribute to their own moral improvement. But the students I polled spent yesterday organizing mass snowball fights and building igloos in which to have their evening cocktails, while unseen hundreds of staff braved treacherous conditions to get in from points far outside the Princeton housing market to labor round the clock clearing paths and making food for the revelers. "We are a residential campus," said the top brass. "We don't close." "Employees choose to live outside Princeton at their peril," said one myopic graduate student.

But never mind. Many of us got a day! And a good thing, too, since with power lines down at both ends of our street, white-out conditions, and two little kids in a cold dark house, I wasn't inclined to go anywhere. The dedicated electric company workers got the power back on by noon, with only a few shorter interruptions thereafter, and from then on we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

"This is nothing, Edith. When I was little, a real snow used to come up to your waist..."

At midmorning, after the first wave of snow, conditions still seemed manageable.

But by afternoon, a brief jaunt outside was enough to create a mini-mountain of snow on one's head.

The cause of the power outage was a tree that felled two telephone poles and a bunch of wires at one end of our block. The PSE&G guys were out there all day...

...well into the afternoon whiteout conditions. Around 5pm a snow-laden line next door came down. This morning as we headed out to the university, we encountered police at the busy Harrison Street intersection of our street guiding traffic around yet another set of downed wires. They also pulled us over and forbid our going any further until we cleared the 18 inches of snow off the roof of the car.

The snow didn't affect tourism in Mousetown, where a bevy of visiting animals listened to an address by King Cherry, a mouse, and Queen Golden, a filly.

Edith was transfixed by Ghostbusters--she kept protesting it was too scary but couldn't stop watching and when it ended, asked to watch it again.

We also made Valentines cupcakes.

Tom packed some up, and we brought them to the workers in the cherry pickers. Along the way we met about half our neighbors, out shoveling for the second time that day, knowing they'd have to do a third round in the morning. It was nice to have an easy conversational opening with everyone; we haven't met so many people since moving here. Among our new acquaintances was a family two doors down with a four-year-old boy who will start kindergarten with Edith next year. Tom pulled the kids together in our sled.