Snow Daze

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...the only problem is, it's February.

So we've had two consecutive snow days here in Springfield. In a few years we'll all be sitting around and talking about it..."Remember the blizzard of '07? Six day weekend!"

For those of you who do not know, I live off campus just past downtown Springfield. I braved the weather in my good ol' '95 Ford Contour yesterday afternoon to get to campus. It took me a little over an hour to make it to the student government offices (usually takes about 15 minutes). On the way there I saw something that I couldn't help but smile at (even though I did feel sorry for the guy). I saw someone digging out his snow plow. I love irony. Anyway, I really hope everyone stayed safe during the weather.

When it gets bad like this, I sometimes get reminded about the inherent goodness in human nature. Yesterday morning a buddy of mine was leaving my apartment. His car, of course, was snowed in. I grabbed my shovel and we got him dug out a little. He got stuck again and we continue our shoveling.

I saw one of my neighbors get stuck trying to get into the parking lot. I went over to see if he needed a little help, and we tried to get him into the parking lot (to no avail). Then another person came out with another shovel and started helping him, so I went back to my buddy again. We basically just started clearing off the entire alley that leads past our parking lot.

When I got back to my neighbor's car I learned that he had picked up an older gentleman who was trying to walk back home (he lives across the street from us). I helped the man back to his building and returned to shoveling.

My neighbor got his car into a strip of parking spaces at the school across the street (classes, of course, had been cancelled for the day). We finally got my buddy out of the parking lot and on his way.

The reason I really like this story is because of all the help we were giving each other. We ended up having no fewer than 6 people who were working on the snow. We didn't all know each other, but we recognized that we could be useful. I've always been a big fan of service, and when people come together to help each other (as I said earlier) it just reminds me that people are generally good.

That's my snow day story. I'll catch ya later.