Saturday
Mother Nature looked down upon the face of Utah, smiled, and blew frozen kisses across the land. It snowed again today. Wet, sticky snow. Not like the “dry,” powder-like snow that is normally seen here. It reminded me of winters back home.

When is it that snow ceases to be something “fun” and becomes something… else? Is it at the age when one becomes “old enough” to wield a shovel and use it to clear sidewalks and driveways? Is it when we discover that the halls of post-secondary academia don’t adhere to the same “snow day” policies as elementary/middle/high schools? Or, is it when we become part of “the real world” and discover that our employers look at snow and “summer vacation” are things to be relegated to the “Former Legitimate Reasons for Being Able to Stay at Home” list?

I don’t really have an answer to that. I still enjoy watching it fall and cover everything in sight. I still think that it’s “neat” the way that the sounds of a city (and especially the country) seem muted after snow is fallen. And I still enjoy a good snowball fight. I don’t necessarily like the fact that I have to brush or scrape it off my car. Shoveling snow is definitely not on my “Top Ten” list. Nor do I enjoy driving among people whose nominal driving skills (in dry weather) become comparable to those of the Keystone Kops when snow meets asphalt and concrete.

It’s just a matter of degrees and perspective, I guess.

Stray Toasters

  • After sleeping in, I woke up this morning (this is usually considered a good way to start the day) and proceeded to do nothing for a couple of hours.
  • I spoke with a good portion of the family unit today: Mom, Dad and Kris by phone; Adam online. By all accounts, everyone is doing well.
  • Television options were a bit limited this afternoon, but I managed to find a few things to help pass the time. Among them:
    • The high school and college basketball challenge (slam dunk and 3-point shot competition) on ESPN
    • 50 Sexiest Video Moments on VH1
  • I saw a Kia ad that made me laugh: The setting was a child’s birthday party. A man adjusts the bandana on a little girl, turns her around and then points her in the direction of a pinata. The little girl takes a hesitant swing and then steps forward taking home run swings. She nails a little boy in the kidneys and gets another in the stomach. As the picture fades to black, you can hear the surprised screams of the partygoers and the words “Protect them while you still can…” appear on the screen before an image of a car appears. The stick-wielding little girl and her grim determination made me laugh each time I saw that commercial today.
  • New Balance had a couple of new commercials, as well. The most interesting, to me, was one featured a man on his morning run. In itself, that’s not unusual. He was pacing himself by “following” a taxicab. He started when it picked up a fare and raced it through the streets (and sidewalks and alleys and walkways) of the city. When it reached its destination and the fare exited, he stopped to rest… until the next person climbed in. And then he was off again. Fade to black.
  • During one of the lulls in TV entertainment, I started looking at random journals. In one, I found a link to this site. Like driving past a bad accident, I found myself staring at the screen in slackjawed amazement… and amusement.
  • This link came to me by way of . It’s work safe and rather funny, too.
  • During the aforementioned 50 Sexiest Video Moments on VH1, Carlos Santana spoke about making the video for Smooth. He made comments about dancing that perfectly summed up what I was trying to convey in last Friday’s post about going to Sanctuary. He said that dancing was about being free and the freedom of expression. Voila! That was perfect. And that was why I felt that I needed to reassess my opinion of what should and should not be considered “dancing.”
  • Even though it had snowed and continued to snow intermittently throughout the afternoon, we played Ultimate today. Sort of. Most people ditched, because of the weather. It wound up basically being “throw the frisbees around.” It was fun, despite the cold and the wet ground.
  • We had a good turnout for bowling tonight; I think that there were 15 people bowling and three or four people who came to hang out. Of that 15, only four of us went to breakfast, but we were joined by , Brad, Spydr and Wookie. Jaysin (our former favorite waiter) also put in an appearance.

And now it is nearly 6:00 AM, thanks to the wonders of Daylight Savings Time. It’s probably a safe bet that I will sleep until somewhere around noon. And that’s fine with me.

Namaste.