Well, after several cold and now-and-then snowy days in Chicago (and wonderful meetings with kids in bookstores as well as the Chicago Latin School) I flew home late yesterday in order to have one day to catch my breath - and finalize my taxes - before leaving at dawn Sunday for Richmond, to speak at their Yom Ha Shoah Holocaust Remembrance ceremony Sunday afternoon.

But once again weather intervened. The forecast calls for a real Nor'easter here tomorrow (Sunday) with little likelihood that my smallish plane, headed to Philadelphia at dawn, for a change to Richmond, was going to get off the ground. US Airways confirmed that they would not be flying out of Logan Sunday morning.

So, late last night, the chair of the Richmond event and I tried to find ways to get me there. I balked when she wanted me to go to Providence this afternoon, from there to Detroit, from Detroit to Charlottseville, from Charlottesville to Richmond. I'm just too old and too weary for such an undertaking.

But now I am booked to leave home in a couple of hours, fly to New York, then from New York to Washington, and from Washington by car to Richmond. I will speak in Richmond tomorrow afternoon. Then: what are the chances of my getting my flight home tomorrow night? With the predicted storm underway? Probably zilch.

What are the chances, now, of my getting my taxes - still at my accountant's office - signed and mailed on time? Miniscule.

Will the IRS care that I was speaking at a solemn Holocaust ceremony? No.

I suppose it is all just as bad, and just as frustrating, for all the zillions of runners trying to get into Boston for the Marathon they will run Monday in high winds and drenching rain. (But I bet they all got their taxes done early).