Winter In My Hand

It's the craziest thing. A while back, circa yesterday, two thousand and gosh darn eleven, Blogger had rich text formatting. I'm pretty sure they had it at the beginning of this fudging entry. Now I have to pretend I remember HTML, and pretend I ever learned> css. Not sure what exactly is going on, but screw it. Let's talk about snowball fights.

As a kid, Calvin was my hero. Not for most of the brattiness (though as the fifth of five boys, I was pretty bratty). Not for the pet tiger (though I STILL want a tiger). Possibly for the vocabulary, though lately in my day-to-day the words "dude," "awesome," and "like" often usurp verbosity.

But definitely for the snowballs. Calvin was a malicious little bastard when it came to snowballs. Whether slinging them at his man-eating tiger or at the fearsome Susie Derkins (with her mean right hook), he always attacked without hesitation or mercy. Me? Any opening shot I fired at my older brothers would result in my own personal snowmageddon. I held more fragile alliances than WWI-era Europe and they were all as useless when anyone decided it'd be funny to hit Jimmy with a snowball. I'm pretty sure Johnny was supposed to be on my side the day he hit the side of my head at point blank range and gave me one of these.

So when I look at the pair of tip jars at my coffee shop, one labeled SLEDDING and the other SNOWBALL FIGHTS, guess which one I pick?

Here we have picturesque and not at all terrifying Mt. Hua, where surely both of the aforementioned activities are common. I don't have much experience with high mountain cliffs, but I have traversed some narrow trails while skiing in Utah, and I'm sure the level of wintry fun is similar.

I don't think you can really consider not breaking your neck a failure in any context, Lisa. Unless you were hoping to be rebuilt as some kind of cyborg.