on a day like this

 

with piles of this

we received an email to clean the snow off our rooftops as a safety precaution.

having previously neglected to purchase that essential canadian weapon--the shovel--the four of us ran to the roof armed with tiny kitty-litter buckets

where, faced with snow up to our knees and a snowbank at least 3 feet high, we toiled for a good couple of hours until parvaneh saved the day by buying two shovels at the hardware store--the very last ones, in fact, since 30 cm of snow always results in a stampede of desperation equally matched by the swiftness of the shortage.

we discovered, later, that we had outdone ourselves in the usual Rasitsan-Ashrafi fashion. the email, it seemed, had merely asked us to do our "best." but because neither of us had read it carefully--and because we take these instructions much too seriously--the result was something like this: