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Snow. Whhhhhyyyyyyyyyy!?

Yesterday afternoon Ted and a friend of his at CCM were walking toward the doors getting ready to leave and saw it was snowing out. Ted was thrilled, obviously. He told the guy he was walking with that Lara must not have left work and walked outside yet because I hadn’t texted him “it’s snowing.” A few seconds later my text message arrived – “it’s snowing.” I’m certain nobody in this fair city was more shocked or disappointed than myself to see those ominous white snow fluffs cascading from the sky yesterday. It’s March, Cincinnati. What gives!? I’m cold, the squirrels are cold, and my windshield is a sheet of ice. I’d already geared myself up for a warm spring. I put away my snow boots and snow brush for the season, I’ve dug out my short-sleeved shirts, and mentally I’m so past snow that it’s causing heartbreaking, toxic levels of anguish. What a cruel trick. That Puxatony Phil is getting senile in his old age.

Anyhow, after I’d collected my jaw from the ground, regained some dignity, trudged to my car (shivering the whole way), and picked up Ted from CCM, we drove (in the snow) to the little suburb of Milford, about 15 minutes from where we live in Anderson. Two days ago at work I’d scored free passes for two to a sneak pre-screening of the movie Paul, which opens next week sometime, I think. I guess the Museum somehow got hold of a few of these passes and decided our staff was either the weirdest or most creative of the bunch and that we’d likely appreciate free tickets to an alien movie. Um, I don’t know about you, but I appreciate free anything. And since we both had the evening off and neither of us had ever been to a pre-screening of a not-yet-released film before, we decided not to watch any movie trailers of it and just go with the flow and be surprised. The theatre was packed full, but the movie about two British comic book nerds road tripping across America when they find and attempt to save a smart-talking alien from the U.S. government was really funny (if you don’t mind aliens or flicks riddled with foul language, sexual innuendo, and all manner of other non-PC things that find their way into R-rated films, that is.) We had a great time. Definitely worth free!

The museum, it seems, has been handing out goodies to me left and right. Two free admission movie tickets, two coupons for free scoops of Graeter’s ice cream (um, that alone is worth working there), and yesterday the Egyptian curator of the Cleopatra exhibit where I sometimes work wrote my name in hieroglyphics for me! I like jobs with perks. But who doesn’t? Before I sign off, I’ll leave you with days 2 of the blog challenge:

Day 2 – A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest.

This is a picture of me and my friend Katie at the state fair in Dallas in 2006.

We met in 9th grade – our first year of schooling in Boerne. At this time 9th grade was still housed on the middle school campuses. We were both new to the area and didn’t really know anybody. We were in the same ludicrous P.E. class and bonded over our hatred of dodge ball and running timed laps. I accidentally clocked her in the face with a frisbee one period (I’ve never claimed to excel at sports or anything else that requires depth perception), so we spent that class in the nurse’s office – which was definitely preferable to feigning our ability to play dodge ball and hiding at every opportunity. During high school we avoided school pep rallies, had Burger King and snow cone dates, and we laid out at her pool in the afternoons sunning ourselves and feverishly swatting away wasps. She always came to see the plays I was in or directed and we were in a musical and a dreadful home economics class together. We went on a very memorable and adventurous aquatic science class trip during the summer of our junior year with about 15 other classmates in which we earned a full semester’s science credit, bathed in highly toxic Deet bug spray, counted our freshly acquired mosquito bites nightly, camped out in tents on the beach, studied marine life and sea creatures, pranced like ravenous monkeys to avoid the invisible ghost crabs on the beaches, drove across Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida in hellish white vans, enjoyed beautiful sunsets, and ate soggy sandwiches and poptarts at flooded campsites for two weeks straight. It was a blast! I think some of our funniest and fondest memories together are from those two miserable and simultaneously joyous weeks.

Though we lived hours apart in college, we still stayed close with numerous phone calls and cards. We’d send each other emails, snail mail letters and funny cards with long messages scribbled in colored ink whenever possible. I road tripped to Dallas for a few days for the state fair and her 21st birthday and visited again the following spring break. Recently we were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings and even with a handsome new baby she traveled all the way to Wisconsin for mine! We share a love of books, snow cones, sarcasm, Gilmore Girls, and a severe fear of scorpions and spiders (actually, bugs in general). She’s one of those special friends that no matter how far away we live from each other, no matter how long it has been  since we last saw each other, we’ll always be close and we’ll always be there for one another – the connection just picks right back up like no time or distance had ever elapsed between us. Today is her 25th birthday (Happy birthday Katie!) so it’s a coincidentally appropriate day for this particular blog topic.

P.S. – Today Ted gets his iPad 2 – my wedding gift to him. To say he’s excited is an extreme understatement. He’s been standing in line at the Apple store at Kenwood since 1 p.m. waiting for its official 5 p.m. release. He was 99th in a line of over 1,000. More updates on the new addition this weekend!

P.P.S. – The director of the ill-fated Spiderman production was fired. You all knew this was coming…this show definitely needed a fresh start, or at least some other major uprising to finally cut the shenanigans and kick it into gear. I’m all for supporting something as awesome as this Spiderman project, but at some point if it’s just not working, they need to cut the crap and make some serious changes until they find a way to make it work. Check out this short, funny news-story about it here.

And finally be thankful for every day you’re blessed with! That earthquake and tsunami in Japan really makes you think. We’re so blessed to have been given another day in this world! Thoughts & prayers are with Japan.