Monday, February 15, 2010

The Wrong Type of Snow

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Spent last Thursday hauling snow with this amazing architecturally minded man, Justin. Our original plan was to have a massive snowball fight at Belvadere Castle with 10+ people, but thanks to pretty much everyone we knew bailing, that plan never materialized. So instead Jaclyn, Pauline, Justin and I tried our hands at igloo making.

That's actually inaccurate; Justin and I tried our hands at igloo making. Jaclyn and Pauline just stood around looking pretty and documented the whole thing (and each other).

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You'll note that we didn't actually create a proper igloo. This is because making an igloo is way more difficult than we had anticipated. It also didn't help that we ambitiously tried to make an igloo four feet in diameter. We did quite a lot of work in the time we spent doing it, although in the end we built more of a snow fort. We rationalized it by saying that snow forts are a lot like igloos, just with a very large skylight built into them.

Making a snow fort also has an advantage photographically: they're basically really big bounce boards!

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All in all, it was an excellent and exhausting time. It felt good to play around in the most snow I've ever seen in the city, but it really took a lot out of me. Lifting 30+ pound blocks of ice can be pretty tiring, it turns out. To wrap up, a picture summing up my post-igloo-building experience:

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Friday, February 12, 2010

Burrrrrrrrro!

Snow Burden

This.. I'm just... I think the puns.. it's a genetic problem..

St. Francis of Assisi

Wandered around the neighborhood during the snow storm this past week taking pictures of interesting accumulations. This statue of St. Francis in my old grammar school had a really cool robe of snow. It's almost reminiscent of those royal ermine robes that English kings used to wear (which St. Francis would totally not be ok with, being the patron saint of animals). If you click through there are three angles of it, and it's pretty cool how the different angles/framing convey a different feel for each one.

Cutting this one short for now. Snow forts and swings to come.



Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Abyssinia, Umbrella

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I have a message: On Monday, January ... 25th ... a storm hit .. wrecking over 50 umbrellas. They spun out.

There were no survivors.

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