Kinetic vs Potential Energy: A tale of Two Snowballs

Ok, so on Friday I had two noteworthy snowball experiences.

CASE 1:
The first happened when Chris and I pulled up to our friends' house, and I realized that this would be an excellent opportunity to bean the first person to open then front door. If it was Justin, the 13 year old of the house, I'd be gold, otherwise I'd improvise. My first mistake was a critical error in timing. I started packing a snowball at the end of the driveway instead of waiting until my scheme would be obscured by the front door. So while I'm walking up the driveway, rounding out my weapon of choice I see two eyes looking out one of the front windows. Crap, so I run up to the front door and try to knock causually. Surprisingly, noone's biting. I look through the window and the eyes are gone so I figure that they've now gone to fortify their position. At this point I realized that Chris had avoided the whole debacle and was already in the house. She had walked through the open garage, and into the house from the side. So I bolt to the garage, and through the laundry room... still armed, cocked and ready to administer a little Frozen Justice.
Now this is where things get interesting. Coming through the garage gave me a significant tactical advantage over anyone coming down from upstairs expecting to find someone at the front door, in this case, Brian. So I find myself behind enemy lines, with their counter-offensive launched and facing the other direction. Time to improvise. So here's my thought process:

"He's heading to the front... Holy crap, Brian hasn't seen me yet."
"He's 8 feet away, you can hit him. You can even aim for his head."
"Oh, he's going to remember this..."
"He can take a joke He won't think it's funny right away but he'll laugh about it later... well not as hard as I will, but... He can take a joke."
"Escape route, back through the garage. Clear."
"Can you hit someone who's back is to you? Any ethical problems with that? No? Just checking. Clear."
"Is that a kitana?"
"Here comes the pitch... Sweet Justice is about to be SERVED!"
"KITANA??!!?!! WTF?"
(Scenes from Kill Bill play in slow motion in my head as I see him trying to unsheath this three-foot blade in the narrow hallway between the stairs and the front room)
"Who brings a KITANA to snowball fight?"
"Is beaning a heavily armed man in the back worth possibly losing a limb?"
"WHO brings a KITANA to snowball fight?"
"This has Darwin Awards written all over it"
"WHO the hell brings a KITANA to snowball fight?"
"Screw it."
"Justice is going to have to wait."

I ditch the evidence, thwarted by superior firepower.

So what do you call it when you're standing there AGAIN with a snowball to dispose of, and ANOTHER happy black lab is sitting there smiling at you? It's just begging for a face full of snow, but it's owner is standing there with a sword? Is that Irony? Coincidence? Sigh... I swear I heard that lab laughing at me. Stupid Dogs. They're much more organized than they appear to be.

CASE 2:
So actually, we were just meeting at Brian's to go over to Sean's and help him move. Sean had just closed on his new house and we volunteered for the second shift of unpacking. So after hauling stuff around for a while, and getting the tour, we sat around crabbing about work and listening to stories about all of the stuff we just moved... like how his wife, a Disney fan, got 8 rolls of Finding Nemo papertowels as a gag gift for Christmas. Or how Sean keeps a bat in the bedroom, unlike the kitana I had previously encountered at Brian's... My problem is that I barely find my own stuff interesting, let alone anyone elses, but I guess I'm just not nosey like that.
ANYWAY, so we're leaving and I realize that this is another snowball opportunity. Unfortunately, I'm the last one out of the house and once again all the soft targets are safely in their cars before I can reload and assess the situation. So I'm standing there with a hunk of snow evaluating my options... I can throw it haplessly at a car... or drop it. And I ask you, where's a freakin Black Lab when you need one? That's when I notice Sean standing in the doorway of his brand new house, waving goodbye like a good host and not weilding a Bat. This time my internal conversation was totally short circuited and I let fly 'The-Glory-of-Snow" (It had to be named, you know, like all weapons of Legend...) to seek out it's destiny. I was standing at the street end of the driveway so Sean had plenty of time to calculate it's trajectory and dodge it easily. However, Sean was thinking like a warrior and not like a new homeowner as The Snowball stayed true to it's course and sweetly flew clean through the front door, and found its mark somewhere on the virgin carpetting of the dining-room. I suspect Sean watched the whole thing in slow motion. But the conversation went something like this:

Sean: I can't believe you did that! There's snow all over the dining-room!
Me (nonchalantly): Guess you shoulda taken that one for the team, huh?
Sean: Now I've got to get this all cleaned up before my wife gets back!
Me: Good thing you've got plenty of Nemo papertowels...

At which point we were all laughing so hard Sean was down on one knee and we could barely drive out of there.
That my friends is how a snowball fully realizes it's potential...