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February 18, 2007

Tubing at Tussey

I never thought I would ever in my life be disappointed by a 10-inch snowfall. Yet last week's snowstorm managed to do just that, entirely because the snow switched over to sleet at 9pm on Tuesday, and didn't switch back to snow until 10am Wednesday (stupid warm air aloft, grr...). Much cursing could probably be heard from the denizens of Walker Building on Tuesday evening when the snow became sleet, because that amount of sleet (we got 1-2 inches of it) certainly robbed us of at least 5-6 inches of snow. By the time it was all said and done on Wednesday evening, we'd gotten about 10-11 inches of total accumulation here in State College. Not too shabby, but it could've (and should've!) been so much more! C'est la vie. At least it finally looks like winter around here.

When I finally got around to digging out my car on Thursday night, it took 15-20 minutes just to get all the snow off of it so that I could try to ram/back it through the piles of snow surrounding my car in the parking lot. The snow was level with the base of the door frame on my car, it's been a long time since I've seen that, hehe. I had to use my scraper as a lever to bust through the middle layer of sleet, the snow was just too much to push on its own. It was actually kind of fun to do that, since I hadn't needed to dig out my car since December '05, and that was pretty minimal. I guess the last major snowstorm I had to dig out from was way back in January '05 at Gustavus. Wow, two years between significant snowstorms is way too long. Though I think I'm glad I'm not up in Oswego County, New York, where they had around 150 inches of lake-effect snow a week or two ago. That's a wee bit too much of the white stuff.

To take advantage of our newfound snow, on Friday evening a group of us (Kristin, Isaac, Stephanie, Daniel, John, Ruth & Caleb) from Penn State Christian Grads met to go snow tubing over at Tussey Mountain! They have a special on Friday evenings there, where you can get a pass for $10 to go tubing from 7-10pm, but of course the special combined with fresh snow meant the crowds were rather large, and hence I only made it down the hill 7 times in the 3 hours. It was a bit chilly out, and occasional wind gusts were most unwelcome, but I braved the cold the entire three hours to get the maximum amount of tubing in (I have a reputation to live up to after all, being from Minnesota/Wisconsin and everything, hehe). It was a blast though, I had heaps of fun! As much as I love playing trivia on Friday nights, tubing was way more fun. :-) After we warmed up in the lodge for a bit we went to Isaac's place to play with his chinchilla (it's soooo soft!) and watch a movie. We wound up watching "Running With Scissors," which is very bizarre, to say the least. Definitely not a wacky comedy like the trailers might lead you to believe, it's very dark.

Oh, and then last night after worship team practice (I played piano in church again this weekend), I went up to Houserville to join the Fat Saturday/Mardi Gras party already in progress. Walter was doing a great job playing bartender, mixing awesome hurricanes, hand grenades and mint juleps, among other yummy things. Daniel & Katie also made some awesome gumbo (first time I'd ever had it!), and someone else brought some jambalaya, so it was definitely a New Orleans-themed party way up here in the snowy north. After awhile everyone somehow got in the science-experiment mood. I drove Jeff, Vic and Trivia Steve (yes, the guy who runs team trivia Friday nights at G-Man came out to our party, it was awesome!) to the store so we could pick up two things: Mentos and a few 2-liters of Diet Coke. It wasn't quite as cool as this video, but it was still fun. :-) Other experiments involved lighting a 1-dollar bill completely on fire without it being singed at all. Never trust a bunch of science nerds gathered together in one place, things might get slightly out of control, hehe.

Posted by Jared at February 18, 2007 11:58 PM

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