scene from a spy movie

You may well ask why there's an Army truck outside my window.  That's because I'm at the Holiday Garden Inn (the garden, as ever in this bit of NC, consisting of spindly and sulking pines) by RDU airport, hoping that my relatively early flight to Chicago in the morning will indeed leave.  I monitored the weather in a thoroughly neurotic way throughout the day - 40% chance snow; 60% chance freezing rain, etc etc, percentages shifting up and shifting down - but the bottom line is that no one in NC can drive on any kind of frozen precipitation whatsoever, and it seemed safer to be here rather than with twelve miles of thin and slidy ice between me and the airport.  Of course, whether the weather will prevent the flight itself from leaving is a further question ...