Snow Day: It’s the Nuevo Sunday.
5:30 a.m. – Alarm gently wakes Mr. Nathan Kress to the classic ringtone of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Needless to say, he can relate.
5:32 a.m. – Transition from the rhymes of Coolio to the soothing voices of NPR’s Morning Edition. Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne rattle through the events of the globe until they remind Kress of the previous night’s game. The slightest glimmer of a tear can be spotted at the thought of joy coming to Boston sports fans. Maybe it was just a bad dream.
5:38 a.m. – Cell phone call interrupts Morning Edition. An unmarked 203 number dares to call Kress at the wee hours of the morning. Don’t they know not to wake the slumbering giant?
5:39 a.m. – Mixed emotions. Early phone call was Chris Webster announcing GA is closed due to weather. It was one of those good phone calls. The recorded kind where he doesn’t have to speak, just listen. Feelings are mixed though. On one hand the day is his oyster in a winter freezing-rain-soaked paradise. On the other hand he misses, or at least delays, the opportunity to discuss Putin’s antics with G block. Genuine internal conflict… but not enough to keep him from falling back asleep.
6:30 a.m. – The vague memory of Tom Brady smiling jolts Kress awake. An otherwise great snow day continues to be tainted by a Patriot Super Bowl victory. He grumbles and heads outside to survey the precipitation. As his meteorological prowess suspected, the snow is heavy and crusted with ice. Greenwich often gets this wet stuff, being so close to Long Island Sound and its regulating properties. He wonders if Mr. Fout is coming to the same conclusions at precisely the same time. These are exactly the type of conditions that would require Brady to deflate some footballs…
7:30ish – Without adequate breakfast food Kress creates a gourmet smorgasbord to kick start his daily caloric intake. Stale frosted flakes with questionable milk quickly transitions to dry stale frosted flakes after dubious milk is judged to in fact be well past prime. Cereal is completed with a side of Cup-o-Ramen with “chicken flavor.” In another life he would have been the first to be kicked off Top Chef. In this life he is still a contender.
7:55 a.m. – Kress pesters Mr. Alt, Mr. Gilbertson and Mr. Kallmeyer to brave the weather and meet him at GA for a workout. He ends his text with the hashtag #fitnessislife. No responses.
9ish-11:30ish – Bounce between two books he’s currently reading. The first is called How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Changed the Modern World. He finds the section covering artificial refrigeration particularly fitting for a snow day. Further reading draws a connection, if not causation, between commercial air conditioning and US political shifts. It turns out AC did more to ruin Al Gore’s presidential hopes than “Hanging Chads” ever did.
The second book is entitled Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David. It seems that in order to be a good history book, one must have a colon in the title. The text describes President Carter’s efforts to broker peace between Israel and Egypt. The conference led to Egypt’s official recognition of Israel, but also the assassination of Sadat. Books like this make me challenge cliché sayings like “hindsight is 20/20.” Perhaps the entire discipline of history does this to some degree. Regardless, it’s great to get in several hours of uninterrupted reading. He almost exclusively reads non-fiction, there are just too many real stories out there to spend time on made up ones (sorry English Dept!)… One possible exception: Ms. Stapleton suggested he read World War Z: A history of the Zombie Wars. It just arrived from Amazon. You might be thinking, “Hey, that’s fiction!” Wrong. It’s Pre-History… plus it has a colon in the title.
12:00 p.m. – Pizza man arrives. Kres meets him in the street since driveway is impassable. Large tip for arriving safely with my large pie. Black olives. Basil. Sausage. Garlic.
12:30-3:30 p.m. – Digestion after approx. 2300-calorie lunch. He rounded down.
4:00 p.m. – Meet friend (and guest GA crew coach) “Richard” for a workout. His plan calls for a 60min erg followed by a 75min lift. He calls it a light day. Kress calls him a jerk. #fitnessislife
7:00ish – Kress has returned home and has two thoughts. 1) If Mr. Motland and Schwartz have read this they must be awestruck by the ease with which Kress can switch tenses with zero regard for grammar. 2) He’s ready for another 2300-calorie pizza.
9:30ish – Thinking of how great snow days are… despite the Pats win.
