snow etcetera
The above image is an attempt to cope with Boston’s projected weather for the near future. Apparently we’re to experience the unbridled pleasure of a blizzard in not one, but two parts. The first should happen tomorrow afternoon, just in time for me to try walking across some certified-safe architecture in my fancy shoes. Part One’s evil twin should hit late Saturday. I assume that by then I will have transitioned to my unfancy but indestructible boots.
Why do I live here? Why do I put up with this kind of weather? Just because I’ve lived with it all my life, does that mean it deserves the chance to be the death of me every year?
But where would I go? What place in the United States (or any other country, for that matter) doesn’t have some manner of awful weather? The Southeast has to contend with hurricanes. The Midwest gets even worse snow than Boston in the winter and also has the “Has Your Life Been Well Lived?” pop quiz of tornadoes at other times. The Northwest has constant rain, which I’ve heard pulverizes the human soul, not unlike how the Colorado River sliced into the Earth until we got the Grand Canyon. The Southwest has 100 degrees or more of dry heat. You might as well tell me that it’s a dry smothering. The Southwest is a desert, and thus intrinsically uninhabitable. And don’t even try bringing up California in my presence, with its vaunted great weather patterns. One day, probably soon, the whole thing is going to snap off into the ocean like the limbs of a cheaply made action figure, mostly sunny skies or not. When I’m not worried about the ground beneath me shattering into an archipelago, I’ll have wildfires and rolling blackouts to contend with. I’d also have to live with the idea that Paris Hilton is right there.
So, six of one, two dozen of the other. I’ll stay here in Boston, strap on the boots, throw on the Portable Hug, and tough it out. Assuming I successfully make it to my apartment, there’s hot cocoa, mulled cider, down comforters, and other things that would feel terribly out of place in an air conditioned house.
Oh Jon, it is not California that would vex you so, just Los Angeles (and points south and east… and a little to the northeast). There are many wondrous parts of California where you would be guaranteed of never seeing Paris Hilton. You might encounter guys in chaps masturbating though.
The constant precipitation here can only erode your soul if you have one to begin with. You also don’t have to worry about drought, just mudslides/flooding creeks and the occasional volcano eruption.
Of course, some might say you stay in Boston DESPITE the whether, not because you think it’s the least threatening of the weather patterns in the country. This idea I posit: you stay here because Boston as a city is superior to most others in the country. Yeah, you could live in places that get less snow, like, say Jacksonville, Florida – but not only would you have to contend with alligators and floods, you’d also be in FLORIDA. That is a painful thought.