In which I learn how to spend a snow day (or three).

Hello from a brief blogging hiatus! Given my somewhat foreboding snowmaggedon-part-two post from last week, I gathered I should at least say that I am in fact a) in one piece and b) not frostbitten. Wednesday’s citywide snow day quickly turned into a Thursday snow day – and the Friday before a 3-day weekend then became a basic non-workday for any self-respecting lazy Philadelphian.

So, my Friday at the archive consisted of me awkwardly dawdling about as most people were stranded on various trains, and my Mister Rogers-historian going into a tizzy as he tried to figure out how to answer the phones (our front desk person was gone). Not a very historically productive day, but amusing nonetheless.

Since I haven’t really gone to work in a week (I’m rather giddy at the prospect of going back tomorrow. Strange, or awesome?), I’ll briefly summarize how I’ve ever so lazily managed to pass the time.

1) Lauren and I have quickly established this very basic equation for snow days/being camped indoors for more than 24 hours. Cereal + BBC/PBS Masterpiece Theatre, preferably of the Jane Austen variety + Cookie Dough + Naps + NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me = MAGIC. It’s a wonderful thing.

2) A snow day when it’s not actually blizzarding is perhaps the most glorious invention ever. My friend Priya and I took our artsy cameras for a spin on Thursday, traipsed into West Philly, and stumbled upon an EPIC sledding hill. We decided to pretend we were either a) journalists or b) parents in order to justify the amount of pictures were taking of giddy sledding kids. It seemed less creepy when were amidst the jubilance.



3) I trekked up to New Haven to visit Sara and her friend Victoria for the weekend, and very shortly realized one thing: Victoria has an amazing ability to cook epic feasts, we have an amazing ability to eat them. We make quite the triumvirate. We also did classy things like see the opera and spend the whole weekend in the same clothes (that may have been just me).

And, in honor of today’s “holiday”, the AHFOD will be a fun fact about Presidents Day. Because of a Uniform Monday Holiday Act from the 70s, Presidents Day was moved to the 3rd Monday of February, and now never actually falls on George Washington’s birthday, the man it was intended to honor. Hooray! Nevertheless, each state acknowledges the holiday differently. Some, like Washington’s home state of Virginia, officially celebrate the day as “George Washington Day” instead of its now more generic counterpart. Massachusetts celebrates GW, along with all Massachusetts-born former presidents. My favorite, however, is Alabama, who decided to observe the day as “Washington and Jefferson Day.” Somehow Alabama missed the memo that Thomas Jefferson's birthday is, in fact, in April.

And with that...back to the archives tomorrow!