On Filling Days Filled With Snow

In which daily activities are cataloged and discussed.

We've had a lot of snow this winter.  Not as much as the east coast, but it has snowed almost every week for the last two months.  During that time we kept getting these winter weather warnings from the national weather service, and each time the amount of snow would be way less than was predicted.  On this last Sunday I checked the weather reports and saw that we were expected to get a little snow, they were calling for about an inch or two.  The school I work at is a county school and a lot of the kids live on back roads so I went to bed thinking that we might have a two hour delay the next morning.

At 5:30 the next morning my phone rang, here is the conversation that I had:

Me: Hello
Burkhart: Hey man, no school today.
Me: Awesome, thanks brother.
Burkhart: Go team¹.

When I got up a few hours later and went out to clean my car off so I could go to the gym I discovered that we ended up getting more like 3.5 to 4 inches of snow, way more than we got during any of the "warnings" the past weeks.  Monday afternoon I got another call from Aaron telling me that we didn't have school Tuesday, which wasn't all that surprising.  Then on Tuesday afternoon I got another call that we would be off Wednesday as well.  That was a shock.  Apparently Greene County, where I work, only has four snow plows for the whole county².  One plow managed to drive off a road and into a ditch, one broke down.  Due to a lack of funding there isn't enough money to pay for overtime, so when the two working plows reach the end of their shifts they have to just stop.  And thus, three days off and counting.

So what do you do with all that time off?  Good question.  Here are some of the things I did, with some thoughts thrown in for your enjoyment.


Monday

• Cleaned the snow off my car.  This is something that I always do, and I do it completely.  I don't just clean the windshield, I clear off all the windows, the hood, the roof, the trunk, the headlights and the license-plate.  It boggles my mind when I see people driving around with huge piles of snow on their roof, peering through small section of cleared windshield, headlights on but covered with snow.  Please know that if I ever pass you and you are driving a car like that I will be judging you.  Just kidding³.
• Went to the gym.  I have come to enjoy riding the recumbent exercise bike while reading a book.  It makes the time fly by faster than anything else I have discovered. 
• Watched the first half of Kingdom of Heaven (2005).  The original movie got pretty mediocre reviews.  However, I had heard good things about the directors cut.  Ridley Scott had added around 45 minutes of footage back in.  I was very impressed.  It was an ambitious looking at the roles that religion played during the Crusades, but it was able to go beyond just "Christians were evil" or "kill the Muslims."  Scott makes a point to show that both the Christians and the Muslims believed that God would show who was right through the battles they had, and yet doesn't belittle the faith that the people had.  He also investigates how some in the church used the Lords name for their own gain.  Plus the action scenes were pretty great.
• Community dinner.  I made sauteed apples and sausage and a tater tot casserole.  It was tasty.  After that we talked about the various groups throughout Bloomington that we work with and how we can be praying for them.  We ended the evening with some Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Tuesday

• Gym again.  Going to the gym early in the morning is really nice.  It's quiet and all of the machines are open.  Ran a little over two miles while listening to an audio book.
• Finished Kingdom of Heaven.  Here are some of the people in the movie.  Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, and Ed Norton⁴.  Something that I really appreciated about the movie was that it didn't spell everything out to you and left parts up to the viewer's interpretation, especially in regards to Orlando Bloom's character.
• Played Super Mario Brothers 2.  My favorite of the NES Mario games.  Though I was playing on my SNES.  It's just so goofy and fun.  Side note, it wasn't originally a Mario game, but when Nintendo brought it over from Japan they made it one.
• Fat Tuesday celebration.  The Roses and some folks from the Catholic Worker came over and we celebrated Fat Tuesday in style.  Which meant pizza and alcohol⁵.  Then we played some four player Mario on the Wii, which was way more fun, but way tougher after some beer.

Wednesday

• Egg and sausage breakfast.  Semi-scrambled eggs⁶ and frozen sausage links.  The eggs, which came from the Corry's farm, were delicious.  The sausage not so much.
• Trip to the dump.  Our trash and recycling overfloweth, thus did Tim and I trek to the solid waste station on Oard Road to remove it.  There was a nice old guy who helped us with our stuff, he even sorted our glass for us.  What a rad dude.
• Finished a book.  Patriot Acts by Greg Rucka, I had read it before but I got the book that precedes this one for my dad for Christmas.  He let me borrow it and I am going to let him read this one.  But I figured I would re-read it before i passed it along.
• Wrote a blog post.  The one you just finished reading.

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¹ This is pretty much what he says every time he calls me in the morning.
² At 522 square miles Greene County is the 5th largest county in the state.
³ But seriously, if you do this you are terrible.
⁴ Norton does an amazing job in a very unexpected role.
⁵ I had too much of both.
⁶ Crack the eggs right onto the pan and then scramble them while they are cooking.  For a bonus throw some shredded cheese on there too.