Our Snow is Better Than Yours.

I've been hearing around the digital cooler lately that people have been getting extraordinary amounts of snow in their living areas. It seems that everyone needs to brag about all the snow they're getting, especially those in Spokane who look down on us with their frosted over yet stubbornly upturned snow covered noses. If in fact you are looking for pictures of great snow storms then you have come to the right place. Provo has never been a city to be out-done. Provo coaxed snow from the reluctant sky and what spilled forth was a blizzard unheard since the time of the mammoth. It snowed 70 inches over night blanketing the streets in mountains of snow. That's right 113 inches of snow fell in Provo two nights ago.
Despite the futuristic design of our underground parking garage I was unable to get the Civic out of the parking garage while still adhering to the normal laws of physics. The only way to get out of the garage was with voodoo magic or by backing up to the end of the garage and gaining enough speed before I hit the ramp propelling me through the air. This, however, was very dangerous as the speed to get up the ramp was 6.8 miles per second which, as you NASA buffs know, is only.1 mps away from escape velocity. I would not do very well in space on account of the lack of oxygen, and when I say oxygen I mean the channel. But the truth remains that we were differently hit hardest. The streets were filled with snowy catastrophe. Since it happened later in the morning and our neighborhood doesn't have a high enough income level our streets were left unplowed the entire day.

Here is a picture of our ramp from our parking garage. The tire tracks you see were made by my car several hours earlier. As an interesting side note snow seems to be mostly made up of "slippery".

It snowed so bad in Provo that the Abominable Snowman was sighted. One blog had a picture of snow pile that had a car under it. Ha! This is a picture of the Abominable Snowman who ate a car outside our apartment.

Edward vs Chris Hansen

Why is it that if a 40 year old man were to have a relationship with a sixteen year old girl it is disgusting and perverted but a hundred year old vampire can date an underage sixteen year old girl and it is romantic? That's Dateline material.

Merry Christmas to all....

Suddenly again, I looked about the room for a clue as to what had filled our hearts with the pounding of a thousand ginger bread men singing carols and performing River Dance. I looked at our bedroom door and noticed something very peculiar for a door to be doing. Normally in the morning our door looks like a door but this morning it all manner of colors spilling over its edges as if they were all toppling over each other in a great race to be the first one to cheerily exclaim that our fortunes had changed with their arrival. I once again remembered the old Christmas poem, The Night Before Christmas. I began to throw open the sash and Annie realizing I had a picture frame in hand stopped me. After wrestling me into submission and stopping anymore sash opening incidents we came to the conclusion to open the door.

Slowly we drew near to the door. I turned the handle. With a slight pause I creaked open the door and entered our front room. Trumpets sounded and angels sung. My eyes were overcome with light and glitter. Before us was a room that was ours but
completely unrecognizable. Gone were the dead branches and sickly walls. In their place were lights of all colors and garland and tinsel. Gone was the defective tree and in its place was a tree of such holiday cheers that it would invoke Christmas vomiting of candies that only the heart could imagine. Santa had heard our plight and had sent the Incredible Hulk to decorate our house and bring Christmas to us for the entire month of December.

A Green Family Christmas Story (Green as in the Incredible Hulk?)

As I began my college internment I found that suddenly my Christmas season was horrifically slashed in a way that would make Jason Voorhees gape in astonishment. Before college I had at least a month of Christmas cheer besieging my senses, now I find it only lasting the brief period between the semesters, that two week period existing in the thin paradisiacal slice of reprieve from the mentally violent demands of the professors. I am married now so I thought that maybe this year I could attempt to extend that feeling of Christmas with decorations, the kind that go in a house.

We went to a store called Mich, which apparently used to be Michaels until they decided it was classier to leave the “aels” lights burnt out on the front of their store. There we thought to indulge our season’s appetites on tinsel, mistletoe, holly, and all the trippings and trappings our baskets could carry. Turns out Michs also decided it was classier to not have many Christmas decorations. So we ended up getting some lights and a broken wreath. Slightly dejected we returned home with thoughts of icicle lights, tinsel and fake snow filling our minds hoping that maybe, if we thought about it hard enough, there would be a Christmas Miracle. We put up are fake tree that night. It stood a pathetic 8 inches tall and in spite of being a fake tree had managed to turn brown. We grabbed some dead branches from outside and hung them about the apartment in hopes that it would appear garland-ish, it did not. In fact, it looked very much like dead branches. We went to bed that night wondering what we had done to anger the Santa deities.

Early the next morning Annie and I woke up for another day of no Christmas cheer. Something was different though. Neither of us could tell what exactly had changed, maybe something in the air or maybe it was something inside of us that spoke of endless adventure and countless gumdrops. Then suddenly I remembered the old poem about the night before Christmas and I quickly threw open the sash. Unfortunately we did not have a sash and I had merely thrown a potted planted across the room. My mind raced, what could be different, what was this feeling that we felt and more importantly who put it there? Was it a super spy or maybe it was Superman, or maybe it was something entirely different like the incredible Hulk.

TO BE CONTINUED.....

Thanksgiving Thanks

As Thanksgiving rolled around this year I tried to look past the festival, the trappings, and the veneers that constantly pull at our attentions, distracting us from the true nectar of the holiday. It is during this time that we should remember how Thanksgiving all began and why it means so much. 5,000 years ago our ancestors were freed from the Nazi’s by the Native Americans who then taught them how to grow turkeys. During this holiday we are urged to look back and be grateful for the things that bless our lives, things like the evolution and advances of modern physics regardless of Lauren being around. As I pondered this special time of year I decided to blog a gratitude list. I would feel so ungrateful if I did not make a list of all the reasons why people are grateful for me. This list was originally difficult to generate. What first came to mind was that I am awesome, but that begs the question why should others be grateful that I am awesome. Eventually, exhausted and lying on the bathroom floor, I decided to go back to the beginning and list why others are grateful.

1. I’m by no means what I would consider a ‘good-looking” guy, but I’m easy on the eyes, people like that.
   
2. I don’t spit when I talk.
   
3. I almost never smell bad.
   
4. I’m very courteous during occasions of high-social saturation making me perfect for Balls, champagne tastings, and Red Carpet Occasions. In fact I tell a joke that has been known to evoke boisterous chuckling.
   
5. I’m the kind of awesome that doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable but makes them think, “Hey, I could be awesome someday too.”….but really they can’t.

A Train Ride...(Through Time?)

As the economy settles into its recession people look for a cheaper way to do everything and for us that meant taking the train from Provo to California for Thanksgiving. Normally when I would tell people this they would then give me a look and repeat quizzically, “the train?” as if I had just informed them that we would be traveling by horse drawn carriage or hot air balloon. I must admit that at first it seemed odd to me too. I didn’t even know trains still existed in most of America. Trains seemed like an artifact from the past long extinct and only spoken of in children’s books and stories about the old west. But as we stood in the Provo train station (the station was more like a well tended trash can) the giant train lurched to a stop and settled itself before us. It stood there as if it had just raced through a time warp from an era when men carried six shooters and terms like "sam hill" still existed. I half expected to see the train doors open and cave men to emerge with well trained Dodo birds at their sides. Thankfully this did not happen. Cave men are very territorial and I would be hard pressed to defeat them and still board the train on time (which was unfortunate because I had just done some Tae-Bo and about 300 crunches and was ready for a fight.

The train was chrome and had a contemporary style as if it were trying desperately to prove it was modern but only had the effect of elderly gentlemen wearing some baggy jeans, a pair of lugs and s FUBU sweatshirt. Had this area of Provo been anything more than a barren patch of dirt the train would have seemed out of place. I stood at the door of the train and wondered what would happen to me upon entering. Would I be taken up in an Orson Wells or Jules Verne type of adventure through time, or maybe even find myself at the center of the earth fighting a giant squid? I entered. There was no squid or time warp, but there was a hobo on the roof with some hot chocolate for me, well I don't think he meant for me to have his hot chocolate but it was a bit cold up there so I did get to have some hot chocolate and get in that fight I wanted.