and here i thought we would never get snow
We got snow, ice, sleet, and terrible weather a few days ago. But driving along at night and seeing the light reflecting off the sheets of ice which are the neighbors’ yards. . . beautiful! This would be terrible skiing snow, according to my mother. Its original powdery inches were spectacularly fun to walk through, though! You know, before all those other icy things happened.
I’ve got to say, let’s breathe a sigh of relief that Valentine’s Day is over for another year. Sure, I’m not single, but that doesn’t mean I have to love Valentine’s Day. I think it’s pretty much the worst idea ever, even if you do have a significant other. Thankfully, my boyfriend agrees, so we took part in the funnest “boycott Valentine’s Day” party EVER.
And the party consisted of this: my friends and Greg and I ate candy and chips and watched Reign of Fire. Because hey, what subverts Valentine’s Day better than Matthew McConaughey in a non-romantic role (although, as always, shirtless for an absurd portion of the movie) and Christian Bale (aka Batman) fighting CGI dragons in one of the most poorly-written movies of all time?
The snarky comments made it worth it. Seriously, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 has nothin’ on us. Pretty much I love how witty my friends are and how enthusiastically they bring the weight of their wit to bear against any and all movies we watch communally.
Now why hasn’t that gone into any advertising for Messiah College? It could be our subtitle. Messiah College: The Home of Witty and Sarcastic Friendship .
Hey, I would enroll. =)
Filed under general, absurdity, humor | Comment (1)i do not joke with you. pennsylvanians are crazy.
Pennsylvanians are CRAZY. CRAZY HARDCORE.
This is a tale of Pennsylvanian Christmas Hardcore-ness.
Preface:
I spent Saturday night at Greg’s house, with his family, because he invited me to the Howe Family Christmas on Sunday (his mom’s side). On the way to Greg’s house at about 9 p.m., it was sleeting and dark and freezing and unhappy — the edges of his windshield were forming little ice patches as we drove. The salt trucks were out makin’ the highways safe(r). People were driving stupidly. I was hoping Greg’s new car would not suffer damage in such bad driving conditions.
Act I:
Now, Mrs. Snader has massive amounts of siblings — 7 I think — so mere preparation for this event was way hardcore. Mrs. Snader cooked and carved 40 lbs of turkey the day before, and her sister cooked and carved 35 more. In case you can’t add, that’s SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS of turkey.
I mean, holy crap, right?
I wake up Sunday morning to the usual Snader household apocalypse (I guess with 5 kids the definition of “inside voice” changes). All six of us kids shower, breakfast, dress, caffeine, bundle up and venture outside. . . ready to go.
Act II:
The weather was not ready to let us go, however. We walk outside to a driveway sheathed in almost a quarter-inch of ice. Every individual blade of grass is iced over, and just shatters underfoot. Halos of ice surround every twig, branch, and tree trunk. The cars? Oh, the cars. Also sheathed in a solid quarter-inch of ice. We used the one ice scraper to chip at the ice around each door of the two cars; half an hour later we’ve broken in and are ready to pile in and leave. (the whole time we were trying to break the ice to get into the cars, Greg’s youngest brother is hip-checking the side of the car to try and shatter the ice.)
Then three people remember things in the house they’d forgotten to get/do, so we wait a while longer.
Then Greg, Charlene, and I pile into his new car and leave to get gas — the driveway was so slippery we don’t want to follow close together. We drive with one tire in the grass. It is way hardcore. Greg cannot see out of either of his side mirrors because hey — they’re still covered in a quarter inch of ice.
Act III:
We get a phone call at the gas station — after we’ve broken into the gas tank — the windshield wipers on Chris’ car are broken. So we go back, pick up the other three kids at the bottom of the driveway so we don’t have to try an drive up the steep icy slope, break into the trunk without an ice scraper to deposit all our belongings, then cram six people into Greg’s car.
Then we drive an hour. Loudly. And with much poking, arguing, yelling, teasing, smushing-one-another-around-curves, more sleet, and lots of rain. And lots of reminding ourselves why the heck we were leaving the house on a day like today, when the weather is utterly terrible. Seventy-five pounds of turkey. Just remember, we have to go eat 75 pounds of turkey.
Finally we arrive at the Howe reunion. We eat almost all of the turkey.
Filed under general, absurdity, humor, travels, winter, snow, Christmas, food | Comment (0)the wacky wednesday worries
“Elena!” I burst into my dorm room and accost my roommate without even saying hello. “Can you give me some advice?”
Elena looks up from where she had been peacefully drinking coffee and looking out the window at the snow-covered world. “Uh. . . sure.”
“Is it stupid to go to town in this much snow?” The heavy flakes hadn’t stopped falling all morning. I’m a southerner (at least by adoption), and I admit once again that I thoroughly lack knowledge about how to order my life in the winter. What does a snow advisory mean? What snow is too much snow? How early do the trucks get out there and salt the roads? What do I do if I hit ice? How much farther than normal should I follow behind a car if there’s a single snowflake in the air? Should I be carrying a shovel in my car? Or emergency flares or something?
“Well. . . I don’t think you’ll die or anything,” Elena said, clearly laughing at my panic. Seriously, though, if those large snowflakes had been falling on Hartselle, Alabama, everything would be closed down. If there’s even a forecast of snow, people buy the grocery store out of milk and bread.
You may laugh, too, but my anxiety level about driving in the snow is acute. Especially since my car developed a coolant leak (out the main intake valve — whatever that means) last week and the “Service Engine Soon” light has been on for a month. Oh, my ‘97 Chevy Lumina. Reliable, sort of, in that it so far it has not yet developed problems when I’m in the midst of the 13.5 hour drive home.
I’m not alone in my car troubles (and I hope not alone in my panic over snowy roads — although that sounds like I am wishing panic on my friends and I am certainly not!). Many of my college compatriots are driving used and/or elderly cars. Most of us also look forward to the day when we have real jobs and can afford a car with a little less personality and a little more reliability.
A car with personality does mean, however, that we can come up with amazing names for our cars. My lovely delapidated Lumina is named Gustav. For some reason, Gustav sounds like a name that ought to be green, like my car, and frog-like (which my car is not, at least, not yet. I’m not ruling out the idea that it may someday transmutate while I’m en route to the grocery store into something green and undriveable, remarkably like a frog). I asked around the office and it turns out that car names can be horrifically original. “The Red Death Wagon” is one Matt remembers from his college days. Apparently it saw 100 mph on a regular basis. “Edna” is another delightful moniker for a mechanical monstrosity. Oh, and my favorite? Dan Custer’s sisters named their car “Shabookie Bessie.”
I think my car got off lightly. Even if I do berate it when it breaks.
Filed under general, absurdity, humor, winter, snow, incompetent southerners, oddly named cars | Comment (1)“we fall but our souls are flying”
I AM VERY EXCITED BECAUSE I GOT A LIBRARY RESEARCH GRANT! And not only that, but my roommate got one as well! Go Elena Yamamoto! Wooh!
What are the library research grants, you ask me? Friends of Murray Library offers Messiah students the chance to earn awards of up to $750 to go somewhere and research something near and dear to their hearts every year.
For me, the research relates directly to my senior honors project in English. I’ll be going to Vassar College to view Elizabeth Bishop’s poem manuscripts and travel journals. I want to study her revision practices, particularly the patience she displayed in completing poems. One poem, “The Moose,” took her 20 years to complete. If I can, I want to see how she made decisions about what should be kept, what should be scrapped, and when a poem was complete. I’ve never been to any part of New York that isn’t New York City, so I’m pretty psyched. Yeah adventure!
Elena is going to fly out to LA to see Japanese textiles for her senior honors project as well. She’s studying textiles in the Edo period. Did you know that in the Japanese weaving industry, as an apprentice, you are not even allowed to touch the loom for years? How amazing is that? By the time you got to the actual weaving process, it would seem like such a privilege.
Also, in other news related to fun campus happenings, there was an impromptu rave at exactly 12:12 in Lottie Nelson Dining Hall today. And by “rave,” I mean that someone snuck into the sound system and put on rave music, switched off all the lights, and about three people stood up and started dancing.
Still, massively entertaining. My entire table burst out laughing and didn’t stop for an entire five minutes. I like living in an apartment, but I sort of miss Lottie, just because there’s so much amazing group interaction that takes place there. Against all odds, Lottie Nelson is a cool hangout. Who knew?
Filed under general, humor, housemates, travels, raves, lottie nelson | Comments (2)