A Weather Conversation

In my self-imposed exile from endangering all of you to my written ramblings, I have missed a number of good opportunities to ramble about.

The curse that has been put upon our once great nation in the form of something called an Obama has produced rich material – but has been ignored because it’s just too damn depressing to point out the obvious.

Those of you who are close to me are all too aware of the changes in my personal life. Mark Twain had a habit of writing letter to friends when he was in need of sharing very personal and often sad events. Published in his book Letters From The Earth, there were particularly heart-wrenching accounts of watching his wife Olivia slowly die in Italy and, the toughest, the accidental drowning death of his daughter a few months later when he thought, at his age, he had buried his last loved one. I too hope to be able to write about my long and twisting journey, but I’m not sure the timing is right or the mix of words and thought are developed well enough to do the moment justice. So, I’ll let some of Twain’s musings from the book give a little spice to this post:

“Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm.”

All said, I want to post on something. I was encouraged to write again by an odd clash of history and modern technology. Two years ago, I wrote in passing about a snowball aimed at a particular 10-year-old girl. I had written a Christmas post that included the theory that boys will be boys and whack a young girl on the head with a rock-filed snowball out of affection. I stand by that theory, too. Anyway, the victim – as she still sees herself, lord knows why – did a Google search on her name and my re-telling of history had an interloper. She read the drivel on these pages for a while and when she eventually saw me on another new medium, Facebook, she decided to let me know she had not forgotten the incident and maybe had also not forgiven.

As punishment to you all, she has encouraged me to write more, and so I will. This time about my current adventures on the frozen tundra that is Russia. Most of the days I’ve awaken to 17 degrees below zero. A few days, the high reached a balmy -8 degrees. They use the Celsius format here because they just want to make it seem colder. Under that system, the temperature is -30. As cold as the actual temperature is, the current cold is influenced by a weather pattern from the northwest. That would be the direction of Siberia. So, if you’re facing a certain way, the windchill could be -50 and, at that point, it doesn’t matter if we’re using Fahrenheit or Celsius.

As strange as it sounds, I like taking walks in this weather. How often can one face the fury of Mother Nature? I get bundled up and look something like Ralphie’s brother in A Christmas Story to walk five minutes to get to the grocery store. It isn’t enough. My fashionable jacket – purchased at a discount at an outlet store – holds up, but there are areas where the cold finds its way. Short of wearing a burqa, there is no way the face doesn’t take a frozen beating. And, since I didn’t pack a pair of warm, wooly long johns, there are no pants made to withstand an icy blast. Yesterday, I walked about 25 minutes and didn’t realize how cold my body was until I entered a building and began to thaw. I think my legs suffered some frostbite.

Speaking of Mother Nature, the mayor of Moscow decided to go to war with Her this year. Theorizing that snow removal was costing the city too damn much money, he had the clouds seeded this year to reduce the snowfall. Well, it’s snowed some every day I’ve been here and there are some places where the drifts are 10-feet high. He fought the Mother and the Mother won. Might be a message in there for global warming acolytes.

Regulating the appropriate temperature in my flat is quite a challenge. There isn’t a thermostat in the flat so I have to keep the multiple heaters set by a non-numbered dial next to each individual heater. They are great heaters, but it can turn into a sauna if the valves are open too far. Then, if I try to cool things by dialing the valves down, icicles will grow out of my nostrils. I’ve finally found the right setting by keeping the heaters on full blast with a window left open. Of course the warmth coming from my heaters mixed with the cold blasting through the windows has caused a weather front to form in my room and the thunder and lightening does tend to keep me awake.

I look forward to heading back to Southern California where it takes very little consideration on what to wear when venturing outside. The choice of long-sleeve or short-sleeve is all that faces me. Yeah, I know California had a bucket-full of rain last week and it even got a little cold, but it’s more the exception than the rule. And, as they always say in So Cal, we need the rain.

Well, I guess this is something of a wasted post since it mostly talked about the weather. I’m often told that I engage in too many “weather” conversations; i.e. talking about things without serious depth. It’s a fair observation. I’m at a point where I don’t know how to have an in depth conversation, especially with the people I care about the most. They’re getting impatient with me, I know, but it almost seems I am watching a movie about my life rather than living it. I’d probably give it two thumbs down, so I’ll stick to the weather for now.