Sierra Delta

And so it was that a great time to write a post was on a snow day. It was also evidently a good idea to begin the post as though it were a book of the Bible. Today was a snow day of sorts; not for me, because in radio, it could be snowing fireballs and the show must go on. But my roommates took the day off rather than brave the elements, and Ned is on Christmas break anyway. Unable to resist the call of AM EDH, I was roused from my slumber at 9:30. Following three games, we set out, a ragtag band of four young lads, and emerged from the fray as FIRE TEAM SIERRA DELTA: The Power Rangers of Snow Removal.

It was reminiscent of Fire Team Alpha and Fire Team Bravo, two similarly elite strike forces set out to retrieve items on a post-Hobbit excursion to Walmart on Christmas Eve. Fire Team Alpha's mission was to escort a few boxes of dishes, purchased by my dad as a Christmas gift for my mom, out to the van (Alpha for "automobile"), and I was proud to be a member alongside my dad and my brother Michael. Chris, Ned, and Mark comprised Fire Team Bravo, combing the bowels of Walmart's grocery underbelly in search of a loaf of bread (Bravo for "bread"). Both missions were successful.

As the storm beset the Capital Region in the twilight hours of 2012, we were dispatched to help shovel out our respective parents' driveways, stopping first at the abode of my progenitors, where our training was held and we acquired our weapons: snow shovels, each of a different color, to match our... well I don't know what they matched, but they were all different, like Power Rangers. Mine was black, Chris's was blue, Ned's was red, and Anthony's was green. I'm not making this up.

Following swift completion of our task, we then made the trek to Anthony's parents' residence, whereupon we, combined with his brother's silver shovel, cleared out the entire driveway in less than 15 minutes. At that point, we realized our true potential and began naming our trusty shovels. My first inspiration was Mjolnir, in honor of the mighty Thor's hammer. But I realized a more appropriate term was be Elbrus, the Binding Shovel, a homage to a legendary equipment from Magic. And then, the conversation devolved into the dorkiest exchange I've had in a long time, and we just went back and forth substituting the word "shovel" in the names of different Magic cards. For instance: Shovel, the Risen Deep. One of my personal favorites was It that Shovels, but seriously, it was nerdy to the max.

Anyway, the moral of the story is we shoveled really fast.