Bring on the Snow Days

When you're in grade school, you have a carefree Summer vacation to anticipate.

When you reach high school and summers are no longer breaks, but opportunities to build your resume, you cherish spring break. 

When you're a lacrosse playing collegiate, and the likes of Spring and Summer respites go by the wayside, you look forward to those first two weeks of school when don't have practice, and the only conditioning you need to do involves your liver.

When you're a young employee in the digital era of corporate America, you get ten vacation days, a floating holiday, and several sick days. But they don't entirely feel like breaks because they carry the burden and vibrations of a blackberry that permanently connects you with office.

But if you live and work in one of the snow-bound cities of this great nation, you do have the potential for a snow day - the kind of snow day that hopefully causes network outages and dis-connectivity.

And this Wednesday, as good luck, severe weather patterns, and kind HR departments would have it, we got just that - a SNOW DAY! Two feet of the fluffy white stuff fell on Chicagoland between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, complete with a newly defined phenomenon called "thunder snow," 70-mile per hour blizzard winds, white-out conditions, and an urgent system message from management on Tuesday telling employees to get in their cars, head home and stay home for the day. On Wednesday around 4 AM, I checked the blinking red light on my blackberry, and realized the dream of young corporate employees with a mere two weeks of vacation had come true - the office was closed and the network was down!

So ... What do you do on a snow day? A snow day where you are caught somewhere in between being a kid and having kids of your own. You don't need to stare glassy-eyed at the continuous loop of school closures on KDKA News to see if "St. Edmund's" or "The Ellis School" make their appearances and your day. You don't have to help your dad shovel, console your mother that it's okay she misses a day of work, or wait till everyone's ready to go play in the mountains of snow. You also don't have to bundle up your own kids and strategically plan a day of snowy activities to prevent the onset of cabin fever. 

You do sleep in. (Okay, for me sleeping in makes wake-up time about 6:30 AM instead of 5:30, but that's still an extra hour.) Then you dig out with your neighbors while comparing stories about the sites and sounds of the night before.

After that, while the macho men of Naperville handle their snow blowers like machine guns, waging a heroic recovery mission for their trophy wives who desperately need to get to their pilates/yoga/barre fusion class, you frolick down the abandoned main streets of Naperville - streets that are usually bustling with people eager to run the girl in the yellow Ben Roethlisberger hat off the road.  You soak up the silence and the apocalyptic feeling of having the world to yourself.

The very first thing that is cleared in Naperville is always the River Walk. Forget about the streets ... save the River Walk!

You get a little too cold, so you rush back home to nestle up and read a book. You do try to work, but Travel Link is down and you can't access the majority of your files, so instead you look outside at the beckoning fresh snow, and decide your efforts are fruitless and bound around once again.

You need some food and beverage so you drive around town until you find a place that's open. But apparently Malloy's Fine Wine and Spirits is the only store that found value in doing business on the snow day - so you give him your support and realize you'll have to work with what's in the refrigerator.
 
You dig a pathway to the grill.

You grill mean strip steaks from Kansas City - Frozen Christmas presents that were strategically defrosted the night before.

You watch a movie, you talk, you drink wine, you laugh. 

You relish the time you have together - post-childhood, pre-parenthood, somewhere in between - when snow days are just about you, your fiance, and the snowy memories you share.

Lo.