Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" This is my little slice of "me" time in a very busy day -- so indulge me if you will, and say howdy to some great deities along the way!

Some things you grow out of as you get older. For me, one of those things was Christianity. Another was pro football ... but that only happened after the Eagles blew a chance to win the Super Bowl. I used to love baseball too, and cotton candy. Back burner now. Can take them or leave them.

One thing I have never grown out of is a love of snow. From flurries to blizzards, I just love each and every little flake that descends.

Growing up in the country, I awaited each and every snowfall, not so much for the bliss of a snow day, but for the fabulous group activity of sledding. Ah, sledding, sledding! There was a Mennonite farmer near where I lived who had a gigantic hill. He would clear a path down to the grass on one side, and have a doggone ski slope on the other side, and a big bonfire at the top of the hill. Oh, bliss! And, ahem ... we did our own version of snowboarding way before it was invented, by standing (or trying to) on gliders and regular sleds.

I had a Flexible Flyer that I inherited from my uncle. It was an antique and better than any sled on the hill. Everyone wanted my sled, if only for one trip. Even the adults.

Out in the Panhandle, we had our share of big snowfalls. And when I lived in Detroit, I was in hog heaven, because there it snows a little every day. The whole time I lived there I only saw one big storm, but two inches, three inches, flurries ... there were always flakes flying in Detroit, from November to April.

You would think that the cruel Michigan winters would have cured me of my snow fixation. Maybe they would have, if I'd been living further north, where the stuff piles up like money in a fat cat's offshore account. But in Detroit, it's just a gentle little snowy pattern, the last vestiges of lake effect that blow across the state from Lake Michigan. Loved it!

Here in New Jersey (which just was ranked #2 in the nation for school success), we get these whopper Nor'Easters sometimes. If it's cold enough, a low pressure system can get cranked up over the Atlantic and haul in plenty of moisture. This produces your garden variety blizzard, with high winds, zero visibility, and as much as two feet of snow (in 1996 we got three feet in one storm).

I'm not a teenager anymore, and digging out from a blizzard is hard work to me now. But there's nothing quite like waking up in the morning to white-out conditions, howling wind, and snow inundating everything that moves and everything that doesn't. The fact that I worked at home for so long, and now I'm a school teacher, makes these events even more thrilling.

If you detect a change in my tone from my previous ramblings about the perils of Paganism and snow days, you're right. It seems that our school district -- reeling from last year's winter wildness -- built three snow days into the calendar. We've only used one so far, so I have two more snow days in the bank before I face the dilemma of trying to get a day off work to go to the Fairie Festival.

That being the case, I have petitioned the fabulous Goddess Sedna to send two more ... and only two more ... snow days to break the long march of school from now until Easter. White stuff from the sky. If it isn't volcanic ash, I love it!