What's not to love about winter?

I may or may not have recently expressed to you my dislike for the season we've come to know as winter.  And by that, I mean that I probably have if you've spent any time with me in the recent past, mostly since winter has come upon us.

Let's face it: winter's cold.

So what?

Today my goal is to come up with 10 good things about this 6-month* season in order to combat my general dislike of all things wintry:

1.  Fresh snow is pretty beautiful.  There's no denying it.  Sure, it also brings about thoughts of all that shoveling you're going to have to do or all those drifts you're going to have to walk through, but if you can just see it in all its glorious fresh whiteness, it's pretty darn pretty.

2.  Snow is generally softer than things like concrete, so the fact that it may add slipperiness to your walk is balanced out by knowing that your fall will be softer.  And you can sometimes disguise your clumsiness by claiming you just had an insatiable urge to make a snow angel!  (Yes, I've attempted to use that excuse before when I tripped while jumping over a chain that was approximately 7 inches off the ground).

3.  Sledding!  Sure, there are summer versions of this as well (i.e. slip 'n slide), but there's something fun about whipping through the snow, laughing hysterically at the fact that you have no steering capabilities, coming to a crashing halt as you fly off your sled into the snow, and trudging up a hill to do it all over again.  I kind of want to go sledding right now.

4.  Hot chocolate.  Especially hot chocolate with a scoop of peppermint ice cream.

5.  Walking around your house wrapped in a blanket.  Lately there's been this Snuggie craze, which is basically an attempt to make this "wrapped in a blanket while walking" feat a little easier.  Because everyone loves blankets!  (Note: this is not true, but I love blankets, so that's the only perspective I'm coming from on this one)

6.  Parking lot donuts.  Might have to try some of that out in the MINI this year.

7.  Classic songs would be missing great lines like "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes" if winter didn't exist.

8.  Super Mario would probably lack some of its ice worlds because people wouldn't be real familiar with ice if we didn't have winter.  (Then again, would it be a bad thing if those ice worlds weren't there?)


9.  Ok, you can probably tell I've already been grasping at straws for those last couple of reasons, so let's just leave it at that, and if you've got more good things about winter, feel free to leave them in the comments. 

* Season length varies by location, but in Michigan, I'd say 6 months is a fair estimate.

Moving...

We'll see how this picture of the day thing goes, but for now, I'm moving it to Flickr:

Flickr photos

I'll try to expand the subject matter beyond Waffles, but it's a little tricky if it actually has to be a picture taken today, and it's practically dark when I get home from work.

Picture of the day

Now that I have this rockin' sweet new camera, I'm thinking about starting a new "picture of the day" idea. Which means I will need to take at least one picture a day to post on here.  Hopefully some of them will be cool.

Today, the picture is of Waffles, taken with the pets setting.  Not sure yet what the pets setting really does, but here he is...

Short-term memory

Tonight I put in eyedrops (the liqui-gel kind) and five minutes later couldn't figure out what I would have been crying about.

Tell me what you really mean

It's Christmas Eve Eve, or if you subscribe to the Gregorian calendar, Dec 23. If you subscribe to a metric calendar like the first one proposed here, then it's probably something like December 20th for you, thus being Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve. Or the fifth eve of Christmas. Eve to the fifth.

Anyway, the point is that Christmas is looming, and when this happens, all through the house, people start stirring. Why? Because they're home from work. Who works on Christmas Eve Eve?

I do.

Why? Well, I could tell you a number of common excuses I've heard from people who like me get to work on the eve of the eve of Christmas.

1: Best time to work! All that peace and quiet at the office, not a lot of interruptions, it's time to catch up on everything you haven't been able to get done.
[Translation: I don't have any vacation days left, so might as well make the most of it]

2: I'm sticking around town for Christmas, so I didn't really need to take too much time off.
[Translation: This may be true, but I'd still like the time off, I just happen to be out of vacation days]

3: I've got important projects to work on, so they don't fall behind.
[Translation: Either the common "I don't have vacation days" or "I'm a work-a-holic and will be carrying over about 317 hours of vacation to next year; don't you wish you had some?"]

This has been another episode of "Tell me what you really mean." Until next time... merry Christmas!

Imitate. Mimic. Ape.

Call it what you want, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. An ape would probably not smell very sweet, and I don't think a mimic exists.

Do you find yourself imitating people that you hang out with? It always makes me think of the opening scenes of 101 Dalmations when there are clips of people walking their dogs, and it just so happens the owner often looks like their dog. (Apparently there's also a website doyoulooklikeyourdog.com. Also an interesting article here)

I hear about it with older couples, too, people who have been married for years, and now have many of the same mannerisms.

I can see it sometimes in parent-child relationships, like the way my brother and dad stroll around with their hands in their pockets, often in step with each other as they walk from here to there.

For myself, I've noticed it when I'm talking. I tend to mimic the talking styles/hand motions of people I'm with. When we were at the AP (Andrew Peterson) concert recently, AP did some talking, and as he talked, he used his hands. Later, during intermission, what did I notice? I was talking to Jen using my hands (and my mouth, but you get what I mean). Not that I never use my hands on a regular basis, but not like this.

Same thing the other day when someone pointed out that I was pointing a lot as I talked. Do I normally point a lot? Not entirely sure, but I happen to know that I had recently been talking to a friend who *does* point a lot to get his point across. Interesting...

Sometimes I mimic people's accents, although I generally only tend to do that around people I know well, long after I've been talking to someone with an accent (so they don't hear me butchering it).

I also tend to copy people's writing styles.  Not their actual writing mind you, just their style.  Someone told me the other day that the writing style of a book I recommended to her was similar to *my* writing style.  Why do you think that is?  You're right! -- Someone famous copied from me!  No, I think not.  I tend to write like what I'm currently reading.

Who/how/when do you mimic?

You're nobody till someputty loves you

[Insert picture of my blue hand with caption "I told you my office is cold!"  Picture missing due to washing of blue hand...]

I've pulled out the Thinking Putty again... it's been a while, but my fingers need a break from their usual torture (i.e. shredding the skin around my nails).  I don't know exactly what brings on this habit of destruction, but I would guess some sort of mixture of stress, nervousness, or boredom.  Anyway, the goal of my scarab blue thinking putty is to give my hands something to do instead of destroying themselves bit by bit.

Thus, in no time at all, I will have... SUPER GRIP!  From so much putty squeezing.  Unfortunately, I usually "work out" with my left hand, so I can keep moving my mouse with my right, so I will not be able to provide a vise-grip handshake, unless of course the hand-shaking standard switches to left hand usage.  And we all know that's not going to happen any time soon.  Every one knows what the left hand is used for... oh, maybe that's just in Africa.

Quick plug

The author of one of my favorite non-fiction books "I became a Christian and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" is a pastor who is starting a church in Las Vegas.  The goal is to have a church on/near the strip to reach people who normally don't have anything like that nearby.  I think it's really cool, and you can read more about it at Vince Antonucci's blog: http://vinceantonucci.com. 

You can also donate to starting it up (they're looking for money to lease some space) by going here: http://www.verveventure.org/

If you give now, whatever you give will be doubled by a generous church.

Also, if you're interested, I can give you a copy of the t-shirt book, just let me know in the comments.

We all wanna be loved...

After deep analysis and a trip to the polls, it has been determined that I, Kelsey, am horrible at showing people that I actually *do* indeed like/love/care about them.

My family can attest to this.  So can my friends.  

Case in point: a conversation with a friend moving out of town...

Friend (to my roommate and I):  "Thanks for having this goodbye dinner for us!"
Me: "You're welcome.  And thank *you* for leaving, so we could have this dinner to celebrate!"

Second example: the hug deflector.  I may have been known to dodge or deflect a hug or two over the course of my lifetime.  I may or may not at times try to hold large and/or sharp objects in front of me at opportune times to discourage hugging.  It's mildly possible that I've stuck out a hand for an easy emotionless handshake when someone goes in for a hug.

I often tell people I've missed them like a sore thumb, which currently I would like to experience as I've had a thumb that's been sore since I started playing wallyball a couple months ago.

The truth is that I actually like most people I meet.  And I actually love my family.  And (usually) I enjoy spending time with people.  Truth be told, when I'm *not* with people, I often go a little stir crazy.

But if I told people that I like to hang out with them (or craziness of all craziness, that I like/love/appreciate them!), then all of a sudden I risk sappiness.  Mushiness, if you will.  Showing emotion!  (GASP!)  And this is just not acceptable.

So, does this post excuse me from all of that now that you know what's going on behind the scenes?  I mean, I don't actually have to change, right?  Right...?

Round 2

Second round of random acts of kindess: snow scraping edition.  (Question: Is it really random if I planned it out the night before?)

I knew we were about to get dumped on again, or at least that's what the weatherman said, so I started thinking ahead to what that would mean for the next morning.  Since I walk to work, there wasn't a whole lot to think about other than I might want to find me some boots.  In retrospect, I should have not only thought about this but also acted on it and found/bought those boots.

Anyway, again my mind turned to all those people out there who don't appreciate having to scrape off their cars in the morning after a fresh snow fall.  Raise your hand if you *do* appreciate that?  Yeah, didn't think there were too many of you out there.

Now, there's a difference if you're not trying to get anywhere any time soon or if you're wearing clothes that you don't mind getting snow all over or if you have time to go back inside, take a hot shower, and drink some tea, or if you just really like to use your ice scraper and enjoy the feel of frozen fingers and numb toes.

Since I realized that 3 of the 4 scenarios above could apply to me, I decided that's what I'd do.  I'd be an ice scraper.

The alarm went off at 6:30 and I snoozed it like I usually do, but after about 10 minutes, I got myself up, looked out to see a blanket of snow, and started gearing myself up for some scraping.  After putting on a few layers, a hat, and my glove-mittens, I was ready to go, and I think I successfully confused my roommate who didn't ever see me, just heard me exiting the apartment.  Generally I'm not even out of bed before she leaves in the morning.

I'll summarize the rest with some key points/learnings:

1.  I scraped off about 6 or 7 cars; when I left for work around 8, pretty sure all 6 or 7 cars were still sitting there.  (Question 2: Does it count as an act of kindness if no one's there to appreciate it?  This may depend on the answer to the question of whether a tree falling in a forest with no one around actually makes a sound.)

2.  My $5 Target sweatpants are impervious to the cold!  That's probably not true after longer exposure, but I like the word impervious, kind of like I like the word ubiquitous, which will be my next response to "What's the good word?"

3.  Crocs do not make good boot-replacements.  Even when you're wearing your thickest, fuzziest socks.  I had balls of icy snow forming under my feet in the shoes, which eventually turned to puddles of water as my feet went from nice and warm to not-so-nice and cold to frigid to numb.

4.  In order to avoid the awkward "sorry, is this your car?" type of incident, it's handy to stay somewhat close to your own car.  I was finishing one car and moving on to the next today, when a lady came out of the building.  Since my car was in between the two I was working on, I conveniently started cleaning off my own car.  Success!

5.  There are perks to scraping off cars in the morning!  Now I will only do it for selfish motives.  For example, it warmed me up, and the warmth lasted well into the morning at my normally not-so-warm desk at work.  It also woke me up better than just snoozing my alarm clock.  I'm sure it also worked some sort of arm muscles, as small as they may be.

Round 2: Success.  Just wait until I get me some boots...