Chicago in the Wintertime

Last week, the night before my Microeconomics final, I was sitting in the quiet study room on campus. Normally, the study room is so packed that I can't even score a place on the sofa chairs, much less get actual desk space. But very few people were left there that evening as most of the final exams were over and done with. Only us poor fools with Friday exams. And then the snow started to come down, lots of it. Call me a naive Californian, but I thought it was beautiful. Over six inches came down that evening, and it was pure powder. As I walked to grab a textbook from my friend's car, I enjoyed the crunch of fresh snow and marveled at how pretty the campus looked blanketed in white.

Fast forward about 3 hours to half past midnight. The snow had stopped, my socks had dried by the fireplace after being drenched from wading through the 6 inches (yes, the quiet study room has a fireplace and yes, I actually did dry my socks on it), and I was ready to go home. But my car was buried. So I break out the shovel that I had fortuitously bought just a week before and start digging. And I keep digging, and digging. Note to self - digging snow for extended periods of time late in the night in Hyde Park the night before a final exam is sub-par. A full 25 minutes later, I'm in my car and rolling out of my parking spot to drive home. And when I get home after a slower-than-usual drive, I get to do a bit more digging to park my car.

And since then, the snow has gotten grayer and slushier. Its not so pretty anymore. In fact, its downright gnarly (said the naive Californian). So I guess that I'll have to get used to it, but I still remember how it looked the first time. The initial heavy and unadulterated snow of the season. I may not recall every little detail of my time here in Chicago, but that is one memory that I'd like to stick.