Okay, enough with the cold already!

Y’know, this is the first house I’ve ever lived in with a basement.  No, really; none of the other houses I’ve lived in or owned have had basements.  To to good side, I find that putting my writing room in one of the lavishly finished basement rooms is strangely comfortable.  I originally thought that the lack of windows (only one small one towards the ceiling) and the rather odd echoes would make the experience unpleasant.  I’m pleased to find that I was wildly mistaken.

Dian, in her professional guise, suggests that the basement feels like being onboard a ship again.  She may have a point.

On the other hand, it is somewhat disconcerting to look up and see the window start to disappear under a blanket of snow.

When I was a teenager, growing up in Los Alamos, New Mexico (town motto: Hell, yeah, we glow in the dark … doesn’t everyone?), I always looked forward to the wonder that was winter.  The ice and snow make everything different, strange, and unpredictable; it kept boredom at bay wonderfully.  I didn’t have to mow or rake the yard, but I did have to shovel the drive.  I didn’t have to clean up my dog’s poop out of the yard, but I did have a hell of a nasty surprise waiting for me when the snow melted.  It turned life around, made it okay to simply sit and read, and – when Nature was at it’s absolute worse – canceled school!  (I never had any school days canceled back in California, the state we’d moved from, and why would I?  Who the hell cancels school because the day is too nice?)

In short, I looked forward to winter.

Okay, so set the wayback machine ahead and there I am, stationed onboard the Mesquite in Charlevoix, Michigan (town motto: We looooove our summer people!) and watching as Winter blew in much the same way Sherman blew through Atlanta … and with much the same results.  The ice got so bad on the ship that one of the chief’s would take the ship’s shotgun out of the weapon locker and blast away at the build up.  (It was the only way to clear a path to the locker that held the sledge hammers that we used to beat on the ice.)  Winter that froze entire lakes and trapped military vessels while they were trying to get to port, necessitating our going out and breaking them a path back to their home port.  Winter that froze me through multiple layers of thick socks, long underwear, snowsuits, and sweats.

Needless to say, I came to the conclusion that people who lived in the North were insane.  Okay, granted, the summers are really nice … but so fucking what?  Having somebody from the U.P. brag about the summer was a little like having a guy falling past your thirtieth floor window brag about the view.  Who in their right mind would live some place, any place, where nature did it’s dead level best to kill you for several months a year?

(Yeah, yeah … I know; hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, blah, blah, blah.  Listen, shipmate, them are Nature’s wild cards.  Catching a hurricane is like drawing to an inside straight, whereas bad winters in the North are as common as low pairs … no comparison.)

So here I sit, perched on the edge of the Great White North and getting ready to rediscover exactly how it got that nickname.  The almanac says that Flatland doesn’t get really bad winters, while the natives brag about having to eat the family pet to survive blizzards.  I don’t have a driveway to shovel, nor do I have to beat on the outside of the house with a sledge hammer, but I still have to deal with winter and, frankly, I’d rather prefer a White Christmas sort of winter to any other.

(And by “a White Christmas” sort of winter, I don’t mean a postcardy snow covered movie type of winter … I mean I’d like to watch it on late night television with a Irish Blessing in one hand and the remote in the other, just in case I get too cold watching Bing and Danny dance around Vermont.)