During one of my classes on Tuesday, I received the following e-mail from Tom Faure: “Yeah, my winter coat’s zipper is broken and I haven’t slept since Sunday. It’s time for a snowball fight. RIGHT NOW. … If you want a chance to throw snowballs at Amanda Sebba you may do so anytime–fire at will–no need to organize.” Putting aside the fact that it is NOT okay to throw snowballs at me anytime, Tom’s idea was great. We didn’t end up having our snowball fight until later that night, but it was worth the wait—and the 26 e-mails that followed Tom’s in the g-mail chain in order to plan the event.
Around 9, about half of the managing board headed down to Riverside Park to act like 8-year-olds. Our snowball fight turned into more of a snow fight, since the snow was too powdery to pack (being from Florida, I clearly know a lot about snowball-making techniques). The scene was exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of editors who have spent a lot of time together in recent weeks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our sports editor decided that tackling people made it a lot easier to throw snow at them. Our online editor took some great photos that might make their way onto this blog eventually, but her camera was hit by more than one snowball in the process. Our finance director made some impressive sneak attacks. And, in case you were wondering, the girls won the fight.
When it was all over—i.e., when our hands were too cold to continue—we went back to the office for some hot chocolate. Finally, we all settled back into our editing jobs and put out the paper, since, you know, we needed to get around to that at some point.