Erin The Great

 Today is the first day of spring. All I have to say about that is… ahem… ABOUT FRIGGIN TIME!!!

Up until recently, Utah has been a frozen tundra, with no foreseeable thawing. Over the last few days it’s been relatively warmer, and by relatively I mean being 40 degrees or so, everyone is busting out their short sleeve shirts and shorts because it’s like a ‘heat wave’ out here.

Around February 2, or the pseudo-holiday commonly known as ‘Groundhog Day’, millions of Americans waited eagerly to find out whether we were going to get a break from the endless amounts of snow that kept piling on us. I don’t know who decided that a ground hog named ‘Phil’ could magically predict whether or not Spring would come early, but for some reason a lot of people (including me) secretly hoped that he wouldn’t see his shadow in hopes of ditching our ‘Winter-Ablers’ or Wellbutrin, Xanex and Zoloft for a more formidable ally.

Ordinarily I take the endless falling of snow in stride, but this year was different. I waited patiently as February approached and with every hope of a little kid on Christmas, I would look at weather.com and promptly have my hopes dashed against the rocks, as I would see nothing but the annoying forecast of snow. Sometimes you just need to see the sun. It’s like the snow is my kryptonite and like Superman, I just need the rejuvenating rays of the sun to make me feel good again.

As if not seeing the sun for months on end isn’t bad enough, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the power struggle going on between the people who manage my apartment building and everyone else that lives there. My building was sold to a different management firm, and there was confusion as to who actually would continue to maintenance the building. Being Student housing, there wasn’t a big rush to iron this issue out.

After a good snow fall, there would be snow and ice everywhere and nobody to shovel it up. Being a relatively good Samaritan, but more for the reason that I was tired of slipping and sliding every where, I would go across the street and steal my neighbors shovel and just shovel away. After many of these throughout the winter I began to wonder if it would actually ever end. As much as I love being plugged into my iPod, the cons of blistered hands and frozen limbs got the better of me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of activities that you can do in the snow that are fun, but for the most part I really don’t enjoy 6 straight months of it. Really, if I wanted to see snow most of the year, I’d move up north or possibly to Canada. There is good news on the horizon though. It’s been consistently sunny for about 4 days now. Cross your fingers and hope it stays that way.

In retrospect it could be worse. There is a very frustrated Canadian who wrote a very interesting post as to how bad it is up there: Here’s a blurb.

What’s eating you, Mother Nature? Is it us?

‘We know it was wrong of us to stand idly by and let Al Gore show all those explicit photographs of what you’re going to look like 30 years from now. But seriously — ease off. Enough with the apocalyptic downfalls of snow mixed with ice pellets mixed with freezing rain mixed with snow pellets mixed with the frozen tears of sedentary Maclean’s columnists who just can’t lift the shovel even one more time. I’m not saying I’m totally sick of winter, but see that animal’s head mounted above my fireplace? Say hello to Punxsutawney Phil. Shadow-seeing bastard had it coming.’