Snow @ MindSay

Well it snowed here this morning. It was almost surreal. The flakes were huge and falling straight down. The sky was bright although there was no trace of the sun, hidden by the thin cloud cover.

 

I just got to work and no one else was there yet, and I looked behind the building into the woods/forest, and it was like a dream. It was the perfect backdrop to a love scene or some magical event.

 

Nothing happened, of course…

 

It was mostly melted within a couple hours.

Part Two of the pictures:



The car up close.



The side of our house.



Our parking lot...or whatever you want to call it.



LOOK A MONKEY!....ok it's me.



the ditch.



The ditch again.



Happy trails...xD And good luck climbing that huge honker of a pile of snow.



There's the pile of snow.



The sun's trying to come out of the clouds there.



....and it was bloody cold.



The front yard.



lol, a better picture of the backyard.



The backyard fence.



I decided to take a picture of the tree. It looked gorgeous!



I love snow....



The birdhouse...COVERED with snow.



The house behind us.

More pics tomorrow...if I can come to the computer for Halloween.

+316+Another day in the life of Dangerous+316+

Syndrome..funny word...sounds like I have a particular ailment for which there is no cure. As luck would have it, I gave it to my friend today and she lives 600 miles away.

We were chatting about last song syndrome. A lovely term for a brain meltdown that happens when you get out of your car and the last song you heard gets stuck in your head and plays like a broken record all day long.

Sometimes it's a good thing. You wander around singing the song and sooner or later the whole office has the fever and you produce an acapella version in unison that would make Simon Cowell proud.

A good thing today? Not so much. Today the not so catchy but apparently contagious bad early 90s white boy reggae song otherwise known as Informer by Snow migrated into my brain from a co-worker whom I'd now like to beat with a shovel, Or tossing him off the Sears Tower.

Informer
Menika nahsteo dayuh I licky boom boom down

That concludes this blog because that's really all there is to say about bad white boy reggae.

How do I know I live in Minnesota?

Because the morning started with a chilly, borderline-freezing rain, but by the time my shift ended and I got to my car, I had to clear five inches of snow off of it.

Mixed with leaves that had fallen off the trees. That's Fall for you here.

Sometimes. Sometimes we don't get serious snow until right around Christmas, or rarely, after Christmas.

And sometimes it shows up as an absolute shock to the crops, and you drive home past tawny-gold fields of still-standing corn holding little white bundles of snow in their leaves.

At least it's not hail. Or sudden flooding. Seeing the crops laid waste like that is disheartening to everyone. And flooding wrecks a lot more lives than October blizzards.

Knocked out our power grid at work, though. And if it knocked out ours, it may have hit parts of Mayo, too. It was cool in the bookstore, because our backup power keeps the cafe and the constellations in the castle-sky lit, so it's pretty and deeply atmospheric, but it could be a great nuisance in a lot of other places.

Made me very grateful for the connections around downtown. I park next to the main stage theater in town (shameless plug - they're doing Wizard of Oz this December, and Santas is the W.W.o.t.W - y'all should go see her, she's going to be fabulous), which connects to the Civic Center. Civic Center connects to the skyways, which connect to a number of the hotels downtown, several blocks of the hospitals, a number of banks and other random places of business and foodings, and the downtown mall, which houses both the bookstore where I work and the chocolate shop where I work.

Er, and also the coffeeshop where one of my girlfriends works, and the bank where Swedewolf works when he's in town. And a bunch of my friends work at Mayo. Also, said skyway is a block from the newspaper where my mom works. All of this means that there's a good chance of running into someone you know if you take your lunch in the food court.

And the library. Mustn't forget the library. And the pianos in two of the hospital buildings.

Suffice it to say, between the hours of 0800 and 1730, I can be set loose downtown and keep myself amused and taking care of random errands for hours without ever having to once poke my nose into the raining slush that seeks a safe haven inside my shirt collar.

We're talking about quarter-sized flakes today. One of the baristas came in the afternoon, and said it took her a half hour to drive three miles. Desperately slippy.

I was in a nasty accident last December. Car was absolutely wrecked. Should have gotten pictures. Now very nervous about driving anytime there's junk between my tires and the pavement. This is not a helpful attitude when you live in Minnesota.

Could be worse. Sport's from Michigan.

It's not that I hate snow at all. I love snow. I get so excited about the first serious snowfall. Walking downtown in a busy snowfall with an armful of books and happy thoughts to yourself, it's like a hundred tiny kisses over your cheeks every minute. Driving in the snow I can do without, but I love playing in it, building forts and tunnels, and walking in it, and sledding, hillsliding, falling down in a big drift and watching it fall on you from the sky. Shoveling snow is kind of a quirky bonding thing with a friend, skiing is a big adventure (especially if you're like me and not very good at stopping), and ice skating is splendid. Winter's great - you have to love it.

I just really hope my car survives it.

Oh frabjous day! Callooh, callay!

That about summed up everything I had to say on the subject of the weather last night, which still seems to be going on today.

It snowed. It snowed gloriously. Friend, friend's husband, and I were hanging out watching a movie, and husband got a call from the local police department. They've declared "no unnecessary travel" for the town, and are in fact ticketing any and every one that they find driving downtown.

This is a good snowstorm.

I planned to leave friend's and go to bed. Upon stepping outside the shelter of her porch, I was immediately enraptured. This is snow. This is home. Well, like home, anyway.

I've been missing Minnesota on some deeper levels lately. Spring arrives so differently in the Great Plains than the Rockies. Evidently up here, it's a lot of stops and starts. Back home, winter arrives, makes a nest, and only a very impressive thaw might budge it. Even then, it will only be for a few weeks. So, when Spring DOES arrive, there's a great internal celebration. The warm winds drying out the earth and the smell of grass, new earth, new life all make me want to run! Running for sheer joy - not to escape anything, but because you're so filled with joy that you can't hold still.

But this...this was a snowstorm. We don't actually get snow quite like this around my neck of the woods very often. We get the occasional whiteout, and we get inches upon inches, but big heavy snow like this...I was half-certain that Lake Superior was just over the next hill.

I went for a walk. Originally, I stopped by Signscout's (his hall is between friend's house and mine), just to say hi - he was about to head for bed, and then the girls came by...which means he won't be going to bed for a few hours yet. They're both friendly and loud. It was determined that snowplay was in order.

I snarfed my gloves and boots and went back out, but for some reason I only played for a minute before ducking around the twins' house and heading up the street. This is the sort of snowfall that speaks of 'home'. I can't be loud and raucous in it without taking some time just to be in it.

It was a long walk. I almost went around the corral, but I remembered the cattle guards, and considered that the high potential for injury (because I am a klutz) would be increased in the snow. I'd actually encountered one of our campus-security friends, who asked me not to do anything stupid so that he'd have to come look for me later. Unnecessarily playing with cattle guards in seven inches of snow seemed to fit the bill.

How could this have been better? Being up in the woods for it. Heavy snowfall when you're in the trees is like the world forgetting and rejoicing in the same moment. Quiet worship, maybe. When you find a place to be still, to lean against a friendly tree and just watch, listen, feel, breathe - you're taking in so much that you forget you're there. Dazzling hills in the sunlight will be the joy in a few days, but for now the world is wrapped in on itself, whispering a thousand things more important than anything that's had your attention today.

I'm almost sad to leave prints as I cross the field towards the furthest building on campus. They're the only mark there that someone is alive out here - everyone else is tucked into their warm dorms, sleeping, studying, or watching tv.

Beautiful. Dickens has a line in "Things That Never Die" about "the impulses to wordless prayer." There aren't words. Infinitesimal crystals without number flooding the skies and cascading to the surface, with a sound like a thousand of the gentlest, privatest kisses when they touch. The sheer joy of 'cold' - good cold, not a cold that hurts, but a cold that stirs at the life-force inside you and brings it bubbling to the surface. You're aware of how vulnerable you are (I'm usually much more aware of the lack of protection around certain internal organs, and the exposed jugular in my throat, where life runs just beneath the surface), and how fiercely alive you are. You want to run, leap, tackle, thrive. Of course, if you try all that, you'll probably wipe out - the first five inches are good powder, the next two are good packed snow (splendid for ammunition), and the bottom inch is wet. Good luck with that.

The walk back was interesting. Painful. I had a few things to say to myself, "You're from Minnesota, and one semester out here teaches you to forget everything you know about preparing for the snow. Brilliant." I was courting tissue damage on my face. Snow's like the ocean - it's beautiful, and splendid, and a glorious reminder of how small you are - but it's also grand and dangerous and uncaring when you forget how much it can do to you.

Stopped in at the hall across the parking lot from my house to warm up, checked my phone (this at least I remembered. If you're going to go do something that might prove stupid later, make sure you have a way to contact the paramedics. I hadn't been sure before how far I was going, and y'never know, I might take it into my head to hike to the next town, just because this is so pretty). According the said phone, the gang's still in the little neighborhood between the six houses. Renewed from my stint in the protected entryway, I charged back to my house, to pursue a hat. Later in the night, I went back for a change of jeans and snowpants, as well.

Perhaps not a snowbattle, per se, but a fine bout of snowplay consumed the next few hours. Signscout commended me repeatedly on a shot to his face - it was actually a miss, I was trying for one of the twins, and he moved into it. Prior to the snowpants, one of the twins nailed me in the quad with a giant snowball that hurt like a high-velocity wombat. And, evidently, while I was retrieving said snowpants, I missed a fine whitewashing.

I do not whitewash people, because I absolutely hate being on the receiving end of it, and once you give it, you're probably going to receive it. If someone has the poor sense to be lying on the ground, I will cheerfully pile snow on their face, but I will not rub it in. That's just mean.

Pictures were captured, snow was flung, chills were shared, and laughter was made. It was a grand night.