Here’s to another goddamn new year.

In high school I got used to snow-heavy winters. I was only as far north as Pennsylvania, but we spent a couple of consecutive years buffeted by storm after storm. Snow, ice on snow, then more snow, then more ice--the yard was like a giant layer cake. Note sure if I remember right, but I'm sure we had less than a full week of school one January. They threatened to extend the school year, but never did. I blame the fact that I'm awful at algebra on that lost month. After those storms you could go out and walk, crunching, across the crust to look at the incredibly uniform jacket of ice around each tree's twig fingers. I'd slip in the attempt to climb over the split rail fence, and have parent-forbidden, brief, and painful snowball fights. This year the mid-Atlantic region seems to be the victim of a similar storm cycle, although so far it's just been snow, rather than the ice storms we had in PA. Maybe I'll just pop open a bottle of bubbly while 2 feet of snow makes me vaguely claustrophobic.