the Unexpressed Advantage

I've learned a few things since moving here. One. Apparently starting your car and letting it run for 10 minutes before you drive anywhere is not the "most efficient" method for removing ice from your windshield. Apparently people use something called an "ice scraper". I don't have one of those, so I started using my trusty snowboard wax scraper, which seems to be working well and is completely available as I don't have a snowboard nor have I used one for several years. Two. "Freezing" is a really accurate, effective word. During the winter months (august-june) it's usually around 0 degrees celcius (freezing) at some point during each day. When you're outside and the temperature is freezing, you can really see how the word manages to capture the environment. You immediately are prompted to think, and or say, "it's freezing out here." Then you quickly apply that condition to yourself, "I'm freezing".

Eventually you begin to associate the weather to your inner being, as if you could feel the process of "freezing" taking place on it's most sub-atomic level, going even beyond your physiology to your thoughts and emotions. Whatever freezing is, it slowly encapsulates your whole being, shutting you down. Freezing is kind of like the beginning of dying.

Three. The sun is a precious gift. I think there are a lot of people in the world who take the presence of the giant gas ball in the sky for granted. Having lived in two sun deprived cities, it doesn't surprise me anymore that so many people throughout history have tried to worship the sun. When one lives in a oft-cloudy city like those in the pacific northwest, a day where the sun looks to peek out is a completely different experience than otherwise. On the one hand, a normal, cloudy, dreary, and shutter-shutting cold day is like waking up and expecting that, at best, you're going to be given a meal, some light torture, and maybe some chalk or a sharp rock to express some morbid creativity on the wall of your light-less cell in the musty prison into which you incarcerated yourself when you moved this far north. On the other hand, a sunny day is like…

...a sunny day. It's just that good.

I for one welcome our non-sentient helium overlords

DK