Inclement weather

          It finally happened.
          My first snowball fight of the season.

          Heck. Yes.

          Yesterday, I woke up to thunder. It was thundering, in the first week of February. It was nice - strange, sure, but nice. I love winter, but I do miss summer storms. There's something quiet and soft and almost unbearably comforting and safe about lying in bed, standing on a porch, sitting watching out a window with someone as lightning flickers and thunder rolls overhead.
          But yesterday: the temperature hovered around thirty degrees, and the snow on the ground turned to slush under the freezing rain. I was grateful for boots.
          And then, in classic Midwestern style, it froze last night - the sidewalks became treacherous with invisible patches of ice. On my way to class at eight in the morning, I passed a maintenance truck, loaded up with blue-dyed road salt, wending it's way around campus. It was just starting out. I nearly wiped out on multiple occasions during the two-minute walk to the science building.
          But this afternoon, it started to snow.

          Huge, fat, soft, silent white flakes poured out of the clouds. The trees were coated almost instantly, an inch of white balanced precariously on the smallest of twigs. I snapped a few photos, but I'm sure they're not going to do it justice.
          When I left for dinner with four friends, it was only a matter of time until someone scooped up a handful to whip, as hard as possible, at somebody else. It turns out that this snow is the best packing snow I've ever, ever experienced (including all those years I lived in Michigan) - as one of my friends said, "It's like it packs itself!" They were perfect snowballs - a firm shell and a powdery center, providing maximum damage on impact.
          All I can say is that I enjoy being perceived as sweet and mild and generally nice.
          "Perceived" being the operative word in that sentence. It makes smacking someone with a snowball that much better.

          We yelled and hollered and slipped all over the place. When we got inside, we shook off our coats and bags and shed snow all over the rug. We ran upstairs and plunged our hands under hot water, dancing around in glorious discomfort ("It burns!"). I had barley soup for dinner, which is one of the best possible things to have for a post-snowball-fight-dinner.

          If it weren't Tuesday (and therefore layout night for the school newspaper), I'd be out there right now, freezing my fingers off, building a snow fort.
          Ah, hell, who says I can't make one at one in the morning?

          Maybe we'll have a snow day tomorrow. I haven't had a snow day since middle school. That'd be nice. I'd steal trays from the cafeteria and go sledding down the hill by the dorm, and build a snowman, and a fort, and stage some epic reenactments of the Revolutionary War.
          One way or another, snow day or not, some of these things are gonna happen.


          On an unrelated note, I spent last Saturday, from 4:00pm to 4:00am, making approximately twenty dozen truffles for the silent auction this Friday. Ten dozen dark chocolate and pomegranate truffles, and ten dozen dark chocolate, raspberry, and rum truffles.
          I felt useful. It's been too long since I've made any worthwhile foodstuffs.
          I just wanna take an afternoon and cook for everyone.
          Yeah, sometimes I find domesticity completely irresistible.



          It's still snowing. We're supposed to get anywhere from eight to twelve inches in the next twenty hours. Come on, Midwest, don't fail me now ... Finger crossed.