Sunday, February 14, 2010

"Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the Lottery."

Thanks, Bill Watterson, for the quote. You would be very happy to know that we have won a large lottery of snow. (Actually, if you kept it at 10 cents per inch, I guess we only won about 5 bucks.)
It's been called "Snowmageddon," which I think is quite funny. We thought that that big snow in December was big. Ha. This one was the snow to end all snows. We beat the record set in 1899 for the most snow at Reagan National. It was ridiculous. The first dump gave us about 28 inches at our house. We thought that was a lot. But then it snowed more, and there were at least 10 more inches. It was beautiful. I was stuck.
Since we live at the very, very end of a dirt road, plows do not often come all the way down here. This gets very irritating when there are 3 feet of snow on the ground. Once the road gets plowed (or ploughed, I suppose), we have to get somebody to come plow our driveway. Our driveway didn't get plowed until Friday afternoon, because our road didn't get plowed (for the second time) until a few hours before that.
The nice part of Snowmageddon was that there was no school that Friday or for the entire next week, with President's Day being the following Monday (as in tomorrow). We also had a snow day the Wednesday before the storm, so we got a lot of school off. The not-so-nice part was the being stuck inside for 7 days.
My mom and I got into this weird routine, in which I would wake up at about 10-ish, read for a while, and then go downstairs and eat some sort of food, after which my mom would ask, "So, what movie are we watching today?" We watched two or three movies together, stopping only to get some food, which we would eat while watching the next movie. When the last movie together ended, usually sometime between 7 and 8 o'clock, my mom would go to bed and I would watch another movie by myself. Since last Wednesday on our first snow day, I have watched 24 movies. 24. Ridiculous, I know.
We watched all sorts of movies: classics, not-so-classics, mostly old movies, and couple of genuinely weird movies. We saw a young and extremely attractive Marlon Brando, James Dean, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stuart, Bette Davis, Peter O'Toole (in what I can only describe as the weirdest movie I've ever seen, and not particularly in a good way). . . I can't even remember all of them. I can only say that I certainly made quite a good dent in my "101 Greatest Movies Ever" book. It was all very enjoyable, except for the fact that we had no way of leaving the house.
What's funny to me about this ridiculous amount of snow is that I had been complaining all summer and fall about how we never had any snow days anymore. We'd had all kinds of them when I was in elementary school (when I really loved school), and then when I got to high school and stopped loving school there was no more snow (and also our school system is terrible at calling snow days; last year or the year before they gave us a snow day when there was about an inch of snow and then made us go to school when there was literally a sheet of ice on most of the roads).
Well, needless to say, I've gotten my snow days. And now it's supposed to snow AGAIN on Monday night, so our 1 hour delay on Tuesday might turn into ANOTHER snow day. I think the weather thinks it's being funny. Very funny, weather. I get it now. You can stop now.
Anyway, we finally got out of our house yesterday. I had a read-through for my next play, Kiss Me, Kate. I'm a dancer in this one, which is fun, but not exactly what I was going for. But they made this one a mostly adult cast, so that's okay. I'm excited. We also got some regular tap shoes, and then after the read-through we went to see The Blind Side, which was a fantastic movie. Then I went to Border's, which is probably my favorite store ever, and got lots and lots of books. I have a lot of reading to do, which is very exciting. I'm trying to catch up on my classics; the Jane Austens, the Bronte sisters, the John Steinbecks, etc., etc., etc. (The King and I, anyone?).
Remember the one-act that I was doing? Well, the competition is finally happening this Wednesday, after being postponed twice. Saturday is regionals. Apparently only three schools are competing because most of them backed out, so only one school isn't going to make it to regionals. We'd better not be that one school, because regionals is being held at our school. How embarrassing would that be?? More news on that after that happens.
OH! And Bert came back!
So, until next time, enjoy the 12-foot snow drifts on the side of the road and the freedom to get out of the house.
Here's a list of the movies that I watched:
Undertaking Betty, You Can't Take it With You, Donnie Brasco, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Steamboat Bill, Jr., Phoebe in Wonderland, It Happened One Night, The Ruling Class, Planet of the Apes, Ushpizin, Calendar Girl, The Cider House Rules, A Letter to Three Wives, Forrest Gump, On the Waterfront, My Sister, Eileen, Little Shop of Horrors, Holiday, The Last Picture Show, Remains of the Day, All About Eve, Lady Eve, East of Eden, The Goonies, and The Blind Side. The only ones of all of those that I wouldn't recommend are The Ruling Class, Planet of the Apes, and A Letter to Three Wives.