They happen fairly frequently, since we don’t live in the desert. But they don’t happen every day, since we don’t live in a rainforest. Although rain isn’t an entirely bad thing, there is a possibility that it might make a fun day into a boring one. Parts of this list, if followed to the letter, will surely end you up in jail. However, they’ll definitely banish those rainy-day blues (or put an end to any period of boredom, for that matter; we’ll could define a ‘rainy day’ as any protracted period of boredom if we really wanted to... although then some of these ideas wouldn’t apply, so only do so at your own risk).

(thus, )

The Rob’s Guide to Rainy Days

Building Things

Some people, when confined to their houses because of rain, will bust out the tools and head to the workbench for some heavy-duty construction work. Most of these people will also waste this precious time building objects such as ‘lawn gnomes’, or ‘shelves’, or ‘tables’, any of which could be bought at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart. A *real* way to productively spend this time is by constructing small tactical nukes. I know that’s so cliched and everything, but, as far as I know, friendly neighborhood Wal-Marts have yet to obtain these. This makes them hot commodities to sell to such groups as friendly neighborhood dictators or friendly neighborhood terrorist organizations. Before such an undertaking, however, you need to have spent a previous rainy day fulfilling the next option:

Stealing Certain Fissionable Elements from that Nearby Military Facility

This is rather self-explanatory. I suppose you could try to find some buried in your backyard, but the likelihood of that is rather low. The best way to go about doing this might actually be to stage a rally at a facility known to have the element. Then you must hope that the facility personnel (annoyed not only because of rain making them bored but also because silly environmentalists are having a rally) will toss chunks of it out of bunkers at the protesters, in the hopes that two chunks will hit each other really hard and reach critical mass. This will rather quickly put an end to the rally, so make sure you leave the general area before this point with a chunk for yourself.

Making Origami things

For the uninformed, origami is the Japanese art of folding a sheet of paper into small objects that look remarkably like the twisted remnants of what was formerly a sheet of paper. It takes a lot of talent, but it also takes up a lot of time, so it’s a good thing to do on a rainy day, or when you’re bored (especially in those annoying little thirty-minute sections of time between class and lab where you feel you really can’t accomplish anything). Plus, when you’re done, you can make them come to life, and they’ll sing and dance all around your desk until you wake up and realize that it was a dream and you just slept through a class.

Playing Computer Games

Computer games are always fun things to play, but if it’s raining and it’s a heavy thunderstorm this could actually be quite risky. Lightning bolts have an amazing propensity to fling themselves at computers and make them do things remarkably akin to the things that your to-be-built tactical nuke can do. Come to think of it, it’s probably better to leave the computer turned off during a thunderstorm... unless, of course, you were about to do some heavy-duty Minesweeping. You know, I can’t even hope to begin to extol all the virtues of that wondrous game, even after so many of these guides, but I’ll leave it out this time.

Playing ‘Flood War’

Although this is a rather one-sided game, it’s still very fun. The first part involves finding a nearby river, flowing high due to the heavy rains and threatening nearby residences with flooding (to give the game the guise of helping humanity). Then, after consulting with the proper authorities, take a trusty shovel (or rather, a trusty backhoe/bulldozer unit) and dig a channel so that part of the river is ‘diverted’ right up to the doorstep of someone you don’t like. Then, sit back and watch the hated person, plus all their furniture and belongings, come flying out of various doors, windows, and gratings in the house as the river invites itself in. As an added bonus, the real estate value of all the nearby houses will shoot through the roof (riverfront property, y’know), so they'll support you when the person whose house you flooded sues you.

Throwing things in the Air and checking to see if they Come Down again

A primary method that I use to waste time, this activity is easily accomplished by finding an object that is not bolted to the floor or anything, and then tossing it up in the air. The object will return in a direction known as ‘down’, and then you can catch it and throw it back up again. Objects of any size or shape can be used, even sharp implements, as long as everyone in the room has agreed that they don’t mind the rare occasion that one of them accidentally catches a knife blade with their head or something. The goal of this, of course, is to witness that rare spectacle when the object you threw upwards doesn’t come back down again. Most of the time, it’s because you carelessly hurled it at escape velocity and it went sailing off into the far reaches of the galaxy, but one time it may well just hover in the air. At this point, you go fetch Dr. Godwin to point out to him that most of your physic grades are irrelevant, and then return to your room and attempt to fly.

Obviously, this is only a small sampling of the things that you could occupy yourself with when you’re stuck bored on a rainy day. I’ve left out many other things, such as doing your homework or studying, but that sort of thing is just so mundane, and only really serves to make you even more bored. To quote a completely inapplicable line from a famous song by R.E.M and randomly end this on a philosophical tone,

Don’t get caught in foreign towers.