The Frozen Tundra

No, this post is not about Lambeau Field. I know that might be hard to believe, but it's true. I'm referring to Logan, Utah. Yes, that frozen desert of a wasteland that I've called home for the last two and a half years. Now this is by no means a shot to all those wonderful people who love Logan and have lived here for their entire lives. There are plenty of great things about this place. The snow, however, is not one of those great things.

I am from Houston, Texas. The most snow I've ever seen there was probably when i was seven years old. I remember I was at school and, out of nowhere, my teacher told us to grab our coats and follow her outside. Once we finally walked outside, we saw what amounted to snow flurries. Of course, us kids thought that it was a full on blizzard. We stayed outside for about thirty minutes, staring up into the sky and spinning around in circles. That is my idea of playing in the snow.

All of this was brought on by the eight or so inches of snow that has fallen here in the past day or two. The stark contrast between the two just blows my mind. Living here for almost three years still hasn't done much to acclimatize myself to all the snow that falls here throughout the year. All I know, is that if it is still snowing here come May 1 (like it did last year), I may just have to relocate to Jamaica or the deep jungles of Brazil. Only time will tell on this one.

Memories of Spring

When I was a kid, I loved going to the park. Usually it was to play football with the other kids from my school, but I was in love with jumping off swings and sliding down slides as well. Of course, that lumps me into a massive group with about ninety percent of other children. Let's be honest though, if that many kids like something, then it must be pretty awesome, right?

My favorite time to be outside was in the Spring. To me, that was the premier time to go to the park and swing or slide in the usually humid city of Houston, Texas. There was nothing quite like swinging so high that you would partially fly out of the swing on your way back down because of inertia and momentum and all that other scientific lingo. Talk about a rush! Amazingly, I think I could count on one hand the number of accidents that have befallen me as a result of being crazy on a swing.

Another thing that I really liked to do was make my way to the highest point on the playground and look down at everything. Back then, and even now, it was hard for me to understand the fear people had of heights. Of course, the fear of falling from heights is a much different matter. Anyway, I remember I would climb on to the top part of the slide and stand up and look out at everything that I could see. I would then proclaim myself the "King of the Playground". Sometimes I would substitute "king" with other dominant words such as "Ruler", "Czar", or "Ultra Dominator". All of them were great fits though, so it didn't particularly matter to me which ones my friends decided to use.

After a long afternoon of "ruling my domain" I would usually find a nice big tree somewhere and lay down underneath it. I would stare up into the branches usually looking for squirrels (which were more common than mosquitoes it seemed) and birds. This, of course, resulted in a great deal of bark falling into my eyes, which I'm still convinced has something to do with the sad state of my ability to see these days. More often than not I would fall asleep for twenty or thirty minutes and then wake up wondering why all of the blankets had been pulled off of me. It usually took me about a minute to remember where I was and what was going on.

Those were definitely the "care-free days" that most people long for. Not much to care about besides a page of math homework and wondering when the next time I'd get to play Mega Man was. To me though, Spring Time equaled Park Time. Nothing quite like it.