Monday, December 27, 2010

What I've Learned About "Snow Days"



In no particular order:

1. You might expect to be super productive (clean your room, finish studying, write essays, exercise, etc.) but it's possible you'll neglect all of those goals and instead find yourself surfing the net, talking on the phone, basking in pjamas, etc.
2. Snow Days were way more exciting when you were 10 years old.
3. It's difficult to find somebody who wants to build a snowman with you! Or have snowball fights :(
4. I'm expected to clean the snow. Never mind the fact that I have no idea how to shovel normally, don't own any pair of boots that I want to ruin, and that I'm A WOMAN. When it comes to snow-relating matters, I definitely prefer to live in a male-chauvinistic society.
Apparently, the teenage snow-cleaning boys don't want to make $20 anymore. None of them rang the doorbell. (If anyone knows one who's willing, I'll pay $100-200...)
5. Animal foorprints in the snow really freak me out.
6. People like to bake and cook during snow days. One friend baked danishes, another made blueberry muffins, another made oatmeal cookies and banana cake, and I made... (drumroll please!)
hot chocolate souffle with ice cream on the side.
7. Diets don't apply during snow days.
8. Okay, FINE. You caught me. I didn't really make hot chocolate souffle -- I attempted to make a brownie cake, but because it was dairy and my oven is meat, I quazillioned-triple-abillion-double wrapped it. As a result, most of the cake baked normally, except for the middle -- which resembled chocolate pudding because it didn't quite solidify. The cake (and "pudding") was still hot, so therefore, it kinda qualifies as hot chocolate souffle.
9. Some people actually have the guts to drive in the snow, while my car will probably still be buried until the snow decides to melt.
10. Snow days might be a test from HaShem -- to appreciate His wonders of "nature" and use our free time for shiurim, learning, and chessed opportunities (as Conversations in Klal wisely mentioned -- checking on our ill or elderly neighbors and seeing if they need any help with shoveling or perhaps buying them groceries/food.)
11. This made me laugh:

13 comments:

  1. I feel exactly the same way, except I wish I lived in a feministic society which would have the girls shoveling and me watching, to be fair, my mom did help. Also, my brother decided it was a good idea to make cookies yesterday. 2.5 lbs. Of flour eaten in less than 24 hours...
    Snow days are a good way to make sure I never get any work done. I hope tomorrow is more productive, my 20 page math paper isn't going to write itself, although that would be pretty awesome.

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  2. Azriel Tzvi - yeah...you can dream on about the feminist female-snow-shoveling society :D

    What kind of cookies?

    20 page MATH paper? Boy, and I thought my situation was bad :D
    How on earth do you even write a paragraph about math? Wish you lots of hatzlacha with that!

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  3. Sefardi Gal- I would build a snowman with you and have a snowball fight! I did both of those yesterday...so much fun! :)

    If you throw a snowball at someone, most people will throw one back. That's all it takes.

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  4. SternGrad - it sure sounds like fun...pity I couldn't join :(
    Who am I supposed to throw snowballs at? My 50 year old neighbor? :P

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  5. Chocolate chip cookies, like there is any other kind of cookie.

    The paper is actually supposed to be 20-40 pages, I just want to only do 20, I mean isn't that enough torture. Also it is very possible to write a paper on math, as uninteresting as out may be. My topic is infinite sets, cardinality, bijections, levels of infinity (the last 3 where the exact same thing but using others words for it makes me sounds smarter), and some fun proofs (yay proofs!) The good news is that I have 1.5 weeks of school left of my last semester in college! I hope I didn't bore you to death.

    Also, throwing a snowball at your 50 yeast old neighbor probably would start a fight, but it probably would note include snowballs.

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  6. My phones new swype feature decided to change some words on me, sorry for the mistakes.

    out=it
    is= is on
    note= not

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  7. Azriel Tzvi - CC cookies are yum. Not the best cookie ever, but still good.
    "My topic is infinite sets, cardinality, bijections, levels of infinity (the last 3 where the exact same thing but using others words for it makes me sounds smarter)"
    No idea what any of that means. Bringing me back to horrible HS memories.
    Seriously b'hatzlacha. And mazal tov on almost graduating :)

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  8. "Not the best cookie ever, but still good."
    I would ask you to tell me your favorite cookie but this is not that kind of blog anymore... :P

    "No idea what any of that means. Bringing me back to horrible HS memories."
    The math is really not so complicated. I still have not figured out why everyone has such a difficulty with math, it was the only thing that I enjoyed in school. But then again we already established I am crazy, I assume that was also in post that got taken down...

    "Seriously b'hatzlacha. And mazal tov on almost graduating :)"
    Thanks, I am so tired of school already, I can't imagine doing it any longer. I am still not sure why people do it. I hope to have everything for college done by the end of January, but then it is still not over... actuary tests. :'(

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  9. Hi again :-)

    I'm pleased to inform you that I accomplished a few of the things that you presented:

    I completely organized and transformed my room (and then found that it turned into the lounging spot for many of my family members. Well, I had no problem with that, but then I found that my laptop was also for public use and then I felt it was important to establish and enforce some rules to maintain the decorum in my bedroom.)

    Next I made a delicious cake with my sister. It was so good that the entire pan was empty within the span of a few hours. That is, besides for a several forlorn crumbs.

    I actually listened to a wonderful shiur given by Rabbi Wallerstein (on torahanytime.com) who is one of my favorite speakers. You can download his speeches for free and they are extremely enjoyable and inspiring.

    Being that I finished the semester in college I had no schoolwork! BH! I did, however, have to organize all my notes/notebooks/textbooks from this previous semester.

    Animal footprints also freak me out.

    By the way, I totally believe that you can write a 20 page paper on mathematics. I convinced myself that anything is possible when I had to write a response (earlier this past semester) on an opera which I never watched and never read the libretto. I wrote this whole weird thing (and basically turned it into a dvar Torah) and surprisingly, my professor really liked it! So I was really happy about that.

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  10. Azriel Tzvi-
    "I would ask you to tell me your favorite cookie but this is not that kind of blog anymore... :P"

    Funny. Very funny.

    People who are good at math can never figure out why others aren't -- because it's so easy and logical for them to solve the problems. Like a game. Like a fun puzzle with cool reptiles as the design on top.

    I've decided a long time ago that school, like all other things, is a stepping stone in life. It's not life. If you don't make it your sole purpose in life, it won't be your life.
    Now back to my gazillion papers...
    I mean not now...
    soon...

    later. :)

    Mizrachigal- sounds like you are an awesomely busy and determined gal! Rub some of that determination off on me. PLEASE.
    I also enjoy Rabbi Wallerstein's shiurim. I've listened to most of them on Torahanytime :)

    "Animal footprints also freak me out."
    I'm so happy that someone else agrees with me!!! :D

    "I had to write a response (earlier this past semester) on an opera which I never watched and never read the libretto. I wrote this whole weird thing (and basically turned it into a dvar Torah) and surprisingly, my professor really liked it! So I was really happy about that."
    Sounds cool. Manipulating papers and professors should be listed as one of my hobbies.
    There's a particular method I've learned in high school: if you don't know what to write, use a a concept in hashkafah and connect it to the topic at hand. The teachers can melt. :D

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  11. K, this is completely unrelated to our discussion, but who knows? Maybe it will trigger a new post and some heavily-opinionated comments...

    Must read:

    http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

    Whoa.

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  12. No girl should be asked to shovel snow. It is a job for the boys. Last week I saw a girl shoveling snow, so I offered to do it for her, but she refused.

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  13. Mr. Cohen - "No girl should be asked to shovel snow."
    I fully agree. Feminism didn't fully kill chivalry yet, I see. Woo-hoo!
    It was very kind of you to offer your help with the shoveling. I hope you understand why I refused. :P

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