Unobtanium

James Cameron wasn't the first to coin this term. For decades, this has been way wonks of various stripes have described that which cannot be found, but would be really cool to have nonetheless. Whether it referred to expensive materials to fabricate a spy plane or a mountain bike or elements that could be found if we only looked hard enough, it probably would be worth at least "twenty million a kilo." That's why some bad humans thought it would be worth killing off an entire race of big blue cats to get their hands on the stuff.
It is also a good way to describe my son's feelings about snow. Not in any sort of cool, hip way. The stuff that falls from the sky in certain climates at specific times of the year. Unlike his mother and father, he has grown up on a planet where this resource is rare in the extreme. One of his treasured childhood memories is a hail storm that blew threw the bay area when he was just a toddler and left his back yard, for a fleeting moment, covered in white. He raced out with his toy dump truck and loaded up what he could of the frozen goodness and watched the rest of it melt away. Was it really ever there?
That's why we have made a tradition out of dragging ourselves up into the Sierras once a year: to satisfy this precipitation itch of my snow-deprived son. Imagine the shivers that went through our household when local meteorologists began predicting that San Francisco and the surrounding area was on a course for its first measurable snowfall in thirty-five years. Never mind the percentages or "chance of." My son heard "snow in the bay area" and started making his plans. "If we get at least two inches, mom and I are going to ski to school," and, "Do you think they would close off the street down the block so we could sled on it?"
On Friday morning, he was up and out of bed much quicker than usual. He was at the window and surveying the landscape. Very wet. Slightly breezy. No snow. His hope was renewed abruptly as the radio suggested that there was still a twenty-four hour window for that exceptional weather event. He began making his strategy for Saturday morning. When he got out of bed and found the frost melting off the grass, he scaled them back. And started to wait for the next time.