Blowin' In the Wind

It’s weeks like this that I wish that I had never gone to college and just danced for tips at some bar in Tijuana. I complain about the weather in Boulder often, mainly because it sucks a lot of the time. People up here are always like “We have great weather 3oo days of the year.” That’s great and everything, except there are 365 days in a year. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but let’s do the math. Let’s see, subtract that… carry the one… divide by pi… and that means the weather in Boulder is miserable for almost three months of the year (or if you want specific numbers, 3.75 liters per acre squared).

Normally the weather phenomenon I’m complaining about is snow. But this week, it’s the wind that I’m bothered by. To say it has been a little windy this week would be like saying that Lindsay Lohan might have had a few drinks in her lifetime. The winds were clocked at 69 miles an hour the other day. 69 mph. It’s not even legal to drive that fast in the entire state of Hawaii. There are squirrels dropping out of the sky as far away as Saudi Arabia (by the way, the “Skydiving Squirrels” is the new name of my fictional band). I was trying to walk from my car to my workplace ten feet away, and I struggled, and I am by no means a small guy.

Boulder has bad winds every now and then, but this was crazy. I half expected to see Dorothy chasing Toto while being followed by a pack of stoners listening to Pink Floyd. As any well trained journalist with an insatiable desire for the truth and a need to investigate the unknown would do, I locked myself in my bedroom and hid under the blankets. I eventually deemed it safe to emerge, and I picked up the newspaper on my front doorstep. This itself showed how bad the wind was, because I don’t have a newspaper subscription. Also, the newspaper was the “Albuquerque Tribune.”

Anyway, the cause of these strong winds is something called La Nina, which is further proof that everything bad in the world can somehow be traced back to women. That was as far as I got in reading before my paper blew away, so I’m assuming that La Nina is some sort of mystical, magical entity that somehow affects the weather, like the Bermuda Triangle or Newt Gingrich. Regardless, this thing is going to be around for a while, so we can expect lots of wind over the winter.

This just depressed me. The only thing I hate more than snow falling is snow falling sideways. Now, to be honest, I would probably be able to deal with adverse weather much more effectively if I didn’t stubbornly insist on wearing shorts and slippers everywhere I went. But that is not the point. Just for once, I wish that this whole global warming thing would hurry up. Frankly, I was always confused by the X-Men character Storm, who could change the weater. She always made the weather depressing; like she would kill people with lightning bolts or summon fog. If I had that power, all you would ever see was me walking shirtless in my own little circle of sunshine. Also, it would be constantly hailing in China. Or I could just move back to Hawaii.

Not that I haven’t had my fair share of windy days in Hawaii. There is a place on the southern point of the Big Island creatively named (brace yourself): South Point. Anyway, when I say that Hawaii is beautiful, I generally am not including South Point in that statement. It is always windy and sandy and dirty, so you get all sorts of sand and dust and dirt in your eyes and hair. I remember I went down there on a camping trip once in the scouts, and one of the campers tried to move a cot and made the mistake of turning it on its side. The wind proceeded to pick him and the cot off the ground and fly him ten feet straight into the side of a car. Of course, being Boy Scouts and trained in first aid and medical response, we sat there laughing for the better part of an hour.

So if nobody sees me for awhile, it is because I am taking shelter from this vicious wind. Also, if any of you live in Iowa, be on the lookout for my editing textbook. It should be dropping out of the sky soon.

Walking in Winter Wonderland

So apparently its winter. I say apparently because I’m from Hawaii, so I’m not exactly familiar with the whole concept of “seasons.” But now that I am living in the beautiful town of Boulder, Colorado, I have a new-found appreciation for the changing of the seasons; the colors of the leaves, the sun shining off the snow, the flowers in the spring. Ahaha I’m joking of course. I hate seasons. I lived in Hawaii for almost 20 years and I didn’t spend one second thinking to myself “Boy, wouldn’t it be swell if the weather sucked half the year,” (for one thing, whenever I talk to myself I never use words like “swell”).

The reason I’m bringing this up is that this past Wednesday, Colorado had a bit of a snowstorm. Now Tuesday night, the forecast called for over a foot of snow, so the university considered cancelling school. This of course excited me, and for a moment of temporary insanity I was actually cheering for the snow. But of course when I woke up the next morning, there was not enough snow to cancel school. There was enough snow, however, to make it a pain to walk the 40 minutes to my class. Those of you that know me know that I hate class, hate walking, hate waking up before noon, hate being hungry, and hate putting on pants and shoes. Needless to say, I was not in a great mood that morning. If Megan Fox had walked up to me in a bikini that morning I would have head-butted her in the face.

So while I’m in my first class, the snow starts really picking up outside. That’s when my professor informs me that the school will be shutting down at 2 and that we are all supposed to go home. Now some of you may think that this was awesome. However, let’s analyze this for a second. I still had to walk into school in the snow, and I would still have to walk back home in the snow. I figured that since I was there already, I might as well get to go to class. I always assumed that snow days were supposed to cancel school for the entire day. In fact, the school really was kicking me out into a blizzard because all of their professors were bitching about not wanting to drive to Boulder. So with school officials poking me in the back with their skies trying to make me leave the building faster, I walked back out into two feet of snow to trudge back home.

So now that I realize even snow days suck, I really don’t see any positives about snow. Yet there are people up here who love snow and cheer for it to fall as if it cured AIDS (then again, maybe that’s why AIDS is such a big problem in Africa, it never snows). If you like snow, I have to inform you that you are going to hell. I ‘m sorry you had to find out this way. I’m just going to assume that if you like snow you have never known anything else, kind of like that argument that cows in slaughterhouses are happy because they don’t know anything else. (By the way, I don’t agree with that argument, but I do offer this: who gives a damn? They’re cows. They were put on this world for one purpose: beef.)

I’m going to be honest, I never saw it snow until I was in like middle school, and I grew up just fine. Before that, my only experience with snow was in cartoons like Pooh Bear’s Christmas. By the way, Winnie the Pooh is the greatest cartoon of all time. If you didn’t like Winnie the Pooh growing up I no longer want to talk to you (mainly because it has been scientifically proven kids who don’t watch Pooh growing up become serial killers). Anyway, in the cartoons snow always looked soft and fluffy and you could make perfect snowballs and snowmen and snow angels. Then I played in the snow for the first time and realized what snow truly was: frozen lies. Or at least frozen water. Seriously, my sister made a snowball and nailed me in the head with it and nearly knocked me out. Apparently the second humans touch snow it turns into ice. To this day I have never been able to make a round snowball or a snowman that doesn’t look like some sort of Guantanamo Bay torture victim (my most recent try on that snow day honestly looked more like a fish than Frosty, but in my defense when we found out school had been cancelled we hit the bottles at 3 in the afternoon).

Now every person I meet who finds out I go the University of Colorado always asks me if I ski or snowboard. I find this stupid; just because everyone else here does it doesn’t mean I do. Do you see me asking people who go the University of Florida if they engage in sodomy? No. Mainly because I have a strict policy against talking to people who went to the University of Florida. But anyway, whenever people find out I don’t ski or snowboard they always ask me why I would go the University of Colorado if I don’t. I guess it really is that hard to imagine me making a decision based solely on academics. I politely inform these people that growing up in Hawaii, I wasn’t exactly exposed to the ski and snowboarding culture. It’s like asking people from Nebraska why they don’t like reading.

Of course, these same people then follow up with “but it’s just like surfing.” Which is a great point, snowboarding is exactly like surfing. Except that one takes place on a beach in warm tropical waters surrounded by chicks in bikinis. The other takes place in the snow on a cold, lonely mountain with people in so many layers of clothes you can’t tell what species they are, much less their gender. Now, I have skied and snowboarded multiple times. Which is further evidence that I am a slow learner. For one, the boots are clearly designed for a different species of animal whose legs bend the other way, like horses. Because they are clearly not meant for humans, or at least me. The walk from the lift to the hill was twenty feet long, and it took me nearly an hour to get there. Then there is the whole matter of falling down. I suck at surfing, so I always fall down, but at least water is somewhat forgiving. Ice on the other hand does not give at all. Just ask Natasha Richardson.

So now that the snowy season has begun, you will probably see very little of me outside of the house. Now that I have a snuggie in fact, you will rarely see me off the couch.