Old Gods of Wrathful Winter tips

It's my second winter here in the desert.

I remember back in elementary school at some point I was told that not all deserts are hot all the time. Sometimes they are bitterly, bitterly cold and their desert status is measured only in their available water to the little critters living in them. By these standards the ice fields of Antarctica rate as deserts as all available water is not available at all, being locked tightly away in solid form as ice or snow.

These tiny bits of knowledge creep up on me every once in a while, usually not helpful at all. I was delighted by the fall in Spokane, a bit of rain here in there and not too much. Bunches of colors from the large decidious tree population. And now this...

I really should have seen it coming, I mean, it is winter every year here. It's just that after all of the hype that last year's winter was the worst winter in (fill in blank here with number of years you were alive minus two or three just to be safe and not claim that you witnessed a blizzard as a fetus) years. I was hoping that the law of averages would kick in, and my fond desert would only become more autumnish and maybe, just maybe only slightly colder. No such luck. Instead we have a fresh group of folks stating that this is the worst winter in X years again. Except what's disturbing is I no longer have 20 or 30 somethings telling me this. Now it's the old-timers peering at me from behind their snow-ridden bifocals and genuine beaver pelt hats muttering about the Old Gods of Wrathful Winter. This tends to up the ante a bit.

So thusly, if the law of averages decides to be in effect next winter, it will be a balmy 65 degrees and hopefully I'll be complaining about the heat, but I can only hope. On the flip side, I'm learning more valuable winter skills that I'd like to pass on to my friends, specifically those on the westside who only have to deal with winter about every other year or so and work with inches of snow, instead of feet.

1. Buy snowshovels in pairs, like shoes. Why, you ask, should I purchase two shovels living by myself. Well that's a fine question. Firstly, most of us don't truly live alone, as we are visited often by friends, relatives and that pesky significant other. Not having another shovel is the number one reason they use to get out of helping you shovel and this rule quickly negates that. Nothing improves shoveling morale like watching somebody else suffer, so what's an extra fifteen bucks?

2. Plan your shoveling carefully. In the best situation, you should always shovel downhill and never shovel over what you have already shoveled. The exception being stairs, where it's often beneficial to work from the bottom up. Size up your shoveling situation step by step. As a plus, standing outside holding hot cocoa and leaning on your shovel while carefully contemplating your first moves counts as shoveling work and helps delay painful backbreaking labor. Also, if you don't have a pattern and use the random-attack method, it often leads to re-shoveling where the snow has just fallen and that quickly leads to raising a fist to the sky and shaking it or attacking snow with your bare hands in frustration, etc.

3. The snow plow is a love-hate relationship. With snow coming down in feet, transportation cannot be taken for granted. Cabin fever can be lethal for one or more of your housemates even if it's only one or two days. It's not unusual for folks to crowd the streets as a plow trundles by as if the plow has just freed their street from the invading Nazi army. On the other hand, with the same movement that has made your street passable, the plow has now neatly created a nice wall of snow directly in front of the driveway you so neatly shoveled. This leads to reshoveling and more shaking of the fist at the sky. Also, if you've neglected to move your car off the street, it is now an impenetrable fortress of ice. You will note that the plow does not just blow snow to the side, but neatly compacts it before depositing. Those nice snow poofs that were slinging so slightly off of your shovel are now iceberg chunks. Hooray!

Hopefully these will help you out. However, as most west-siders don't own a snowshovel or have seen a snowplow, you'll just have to save these tidbits of information for when they are helpful. For instance making sure your buddy only has one shovel before visiting him for the holidays.

...sigh

Fistful of Dollars

It's on everybody's mind.

Everybody, man I mean everybody is sweating this thing out. Admit it. As you lean back to enjoy the nightly news your local friendly tv anchor puts on the concern face and explains the latest economic woes to you in the most eloquent 3rd grade language he can muster. As you go to work you can see the concern faces on your coworkers. Everybody wonders what if I don't have a job tomorrow? You go to swipe your card for some christmas lights and you see the concern face on the checker who you know isn't making enough money, and the concern faces on the folks behind you in line who are mentally crossing out names on the Christmas list and recalculating their spending budget.

And you know what, the damned shame is that it wasn't on everybody's mind a few months ago. I mean really, the last time anybody really thought about any financial crisis like this was when we were assigned to read Grapes of Wrath back in high school. And then once that was over, poof! Out it went, never to return.

People like me are children of the Family Ties 80's and the Sienfeld 90's. We do what we want and we spend as we please. Mom and dad's allowance gave way to a cushy direct deposit check from a large corporation every couple of weeks and the only tax was being forced to be chained in a cube for eight hours a day. I would rant about how we take things for granted, about how we fail to save for the future, how we assume everything will turn out all right, how we ignore finances until we start getting nasty phone calls. I would go on a rant, I really would but it turns out I'm the worst offender of them all. My savings are dismal, my income is now more about treading water than anything. Christmas is looking as the bleakest one yet and if we are to believe anything the news tells us, we'll be seeing plenty more concern faces before this is all said and done.

I debate in my head daily if my predicament would have been worse had I stayed in the big city. Spokane is starting to show the signs of the economy that Seattle has not showed yet. My brief holiday excursion took me to the city that I have in memory; all the businesses are still there, the lights are still on, the sushi is still fresh, and cheap beer can still be found if you know where to look. Spokane has not been as fortunate and there are blocks of failed businesses. Some are scattered here and there. Shops and offices are now blacked out windows and faded signs. It reminds me of teeth knocked out of the losing boxer's mouth. Some are close; neighboring businesses going to the great Strip Mall in the Sky together. The carpet warehouse and the tiling showroom across the street before, and now joined in mutual destruction. 'Til death do us part.

At first it was all fun and games. The Lehman brothers spoof of two dudes making out was viral video at its best. When my bank had a different webpage I was alarmed but still making cracks. Now that it's no longer the investors but the folks on the ground who are being crushed, the jokes are fewer and fewer. The list of people I know who are directly affected grows larger.

At least I have the satisfaction in my head that had I stayed in Seattle it really would have been just as bad. Add a couple of hundred bucks to my current rent, add the cutthroat nature of the cubicle culture, add a bar a few blocks closer wholeheartedly ready to run my tab in harsh times and I'd be in the same boat. It's all hypothetical I suppose, but I know myself. It's not the location I'm in, it's me. I'd be the same financial mess anyplace I'd be.

But it's not all doom and gloom really. The best thing that could happen from this is a new appreciation, if even only for one generation. It'd be nice to walk out of this tunnel a little less spoiled and a little more resourceful. It'd be nice to replace financial ignorace with financial responsibility. Real life is a nasty but effective teacher and I'm at the point in my life where I can no longer afford to fail these tests. I know a lot of you out there are as well.

My hope is that my newfound home rebounds from this mess as quickly as it dove in and that the good things I've found here don't become buried by the pure practicality of survival. The vibrant and youthful voice of a smaller town is usually the first to go when things get bad, but it can be the first to return once things get better. Seattle has the pure insulation from financial crisis of size, but it won't save everything. At least here I'll be able to see what off the wall shops open back up in the open gaps in the strip malls. In Seattle, the neon signs just change.

So why are you still reading? Shouldn't you be transferring money online into your savings account right now? Go! As for me, I'm headed to the bar...

Opening Salvo

Ok, ok.

I haven't even really started blogging and I've already overused the potentially controversial war metaphors. I'll try to calm down going forward.

For those that know me, they know that my online presence is long overdue. For those that don't, I'll try and justify the fact that my online presence now exists. Either way, it'll be up to you to judge whether or not my stories and thoughts belong on the internet, or I'm just taking up valuable server space from http://www.mervalbertfetish.com/*.

In a brief summary. I'm a single white male, unangried and just a few months shy of thirtyhood. I'm fairly undistinguished both in personal achievements and in my career, but I've collected a fair amount of family and friends, sometimes those that blur the distinction, in my previous home of Seattle and my new home in Spokane. For those that really, really have no idea what website they are on, I'll direct you to Google Maps* for a brief geography lesson. I was born in raised in the central district of Seattle, the big city. Although really by any real cities standard Seattle is strictly small potatoes. I went to school in the pleasant little hippie town of Bellingham and have since moved to Spokane, due to unfortunate circumstances beyond my control. Actually, they were slightly in my control. Ok, very in my control. Fine, I was shit-canned by a certain large coffee Empire that rhymes with Lardsucks. Twist my arm, will ya.

But life is not about dwelling in the deepest despairs over a slight shit-canning. Life is about applying for unemployment, and then deciding on a whim to move to a new city and a new life and then possibly apply for unemployment there. And that's the spirit of optimism and hope that I can only pray translates into my newly formed blog, which otherwise may end up being a minefield of sarcasm and pessimissm.

My goal is to have a thought or a focus for each entry and to tell an interesting story or two on the way. You'll have to bear with me about all the details as I recall them, but if you are still reading then I figure I have a captive audience willing to absorb every word I type be it true or not. Dear reader, once you figure out how to use Windows Vista* and successfully navigate away from my page without crashing your entire house, including your toaster oven, then I suppose I am screwed. But until then...



*TWIS is not affiliated with mervalbertfetish.com in any way, and besides I'm pretty sure it's not even a real website anyway. But if it is and for whatever reason you click it, I hope you get lots of viruses that melt your screen, you sick bastard.

*TWIS is affiliated with the proud upstanding organization that is Google, and is grateful that our benevolent overlords have reclaimed the internet from the foul and dastardly AOL.

*TWIS not compatible with Vista. Vista smash.