Snow

A month back or so I think we got some snow at Brown, but it was really just a dusting. Even the southerners weren't excited about it.

But this Friday we got some snow for real. I remember on Thursday night, Danny was talking to Tanya on the phone [he usually talks to her on the phone late at night right before they go to bed, I think - they used to videochat but for some reason I think they started to find that weird and switched to phone] and she made me promise that if it snowed the next day, I would play in the snow with Danny.

The next day it was gray and pretty crappy, but I don't remember it snowing until later at night. I think it was too late to really go outside and play in it by the time there was any significant collection on the ground. The next night, though, I was going to go outside and play with Danny in the snow. I saw Morgan somewhere earlier, and she said she wanted to play in the snow or make a snowman too, so I told her she should come with Danny and me. I think Danny went outside first bceause he told a guy we call Jun ["June"] that he would go out and play with him, and then Morgan and I came out and found them later.

I can't remember if it was there at this point or not, but someone built a pretty large snow penis on the Andrew's Terrace. I think it must have been on Saturday night, because earlier that day I went down to the Reading Room and looked out the window at some kids playing soccer in the roughly fifteen inches of powdery snow that we got, and there was no way they were playing around that snow phallus. Sadly, the shaft of it was removed sometime in the last 24 hours, it seems. Anyway.

When Morgan and I went out there, after she told her boyfriend Greg that she was going to be playing in the snow, we saw two kids outside on the hills just beyond the terrace and weren't really sure if that was Danny and Jun, but we would probably play with them anyway, whoever it was. It was Danny and Jun, though. They had a couple "toys" too - Two trays from the VW that I think Jun stole that night, and two shelves that Jun had removed from his bookshelf. A lot of people steal trays to sled on - they're actually really good sleds. I went down once and went really quickly and lost control and got snow up my gloves and my hands were freezing later. Jun tried to use the shelves as a snowboard and almost got hurt a couple times, but not too seriously. Then we basically got in a snowball fight. I actually had a pretty good shot and got some people in the head a couple of times here and there. I also used the trays as a shovel and just picked up tons of snow and shoved it in peoples' faces. Someone pegged Morgan in the face with a snowball and all the snow got caught between her eye and her glasses, and even minutes later you could see droplets of water left over from that hit on the inside of her lenses.

Danny was wearing socks on his hands because his gloves didn't come yet. At one point he took of his hand socks to make a snowball because he could make it pack a little better that way. His hands must have been freezing! I don't think he was really wearing snow-worthy shoes, but I wasn't either. Somehow they didn't get too wet, though. I think it was because the snow was too dry - it didn't pack enough to build a snowman that night, but some kids built one in the grass near Alumnae Hall next morning, I think.

At one point Danny wanted to try his luck sliding down the railing of the stairs in the middle of the hills in front of the Andrews terrace. Morgan and I looked on and I think Jun was running around near the hall with a trashbag to protect himself from something (?) and kept telling Danny it was a bad idea. Even Danny said it was a bad idea. But he did it anyway. It went well, he was going down, sliding, etc., all fine until the railing leveled out and slammed into his crotch. He yelped a little bit and collapsed on the snow and just laid there on his back for a couple minutes.

This morning my mom was asking me if it snowed here recently, and I said no, not much since Friday or so. I really didn't think there had been any. But then I went outside, and I found that it had snowed probably another five inches, was still raining a tiny little bit, and was seriously just the most miserable weather/walking conditions you could imagine. I feel once going down stairs a few nights ago and cut my hand, and Danny fell twice, once going to The Gate. There was water coming from a lot of places and of course snow melting, and it was all right on the verge of freezing, so when I stepped in it my toes were as cold as I've ever felt them. I hated walking to the Ratty today so much I didn't even go back for dinner. I'm a little hungry.

Sometimes snow falls off the rooftops here - they're slanted on Andrews. I was sitting in the kitchen doing some MATH0180 work today and then I heard a lot of noise behind me, wondered what it was and quickly turned around, and just saw a little mini-avalanche going by the window. It was a pretty good amount of snow, and I imagine if you were walking underneath it you would have been very hurt from the 40-or-so-foot descent it would go through before hitting you. Let's work out this math problem.

a = -9.8
v = -9.8(t) + v_0, but v_0 = 0, so v = -9.8t
d = -4.9(t^2) + 12.30, because d_0 = 12.30 [the height of the roof] ; the snow would take 1.6 seconds to fall from the roof to the ground.

int(v) = $ 9.8(t) = 4.9(t^2) = 4.9(1.6^2) = 12.544

So yeah, that snow would hit you at 12.544 meters per second, which is about 30MPH. Pretty harsh. No one walks beneath the kitchen window, but people walk on the Andrews terrace, and I saw some fall there, too. That would blow pretty hard.

Danny and I walked in the road today because the snow was so bad on the sidewalks it wasn't worth it. There were no cars for a long time. I guess people just wanted to stay in today. We walked home with Christie and her friend whose name I don't know and I feel really bad about that. Christie didn't have a hat on and her hair got wet (with freezing water, I'm sure) and I felt really bad for her, but she had boots on so I guess we're even.

The people who clean up the snow here are pretty good. I remember the first night it snowed the paths were cleared as it was snowing multiple times, and they even cleared a path to the two main Andrews doors by the next morning. But I think they took Sunday off and that kind of sucked. Oh well, that's understandable.

Bed time.

Peace out!