Andy Chase

I know that all I did in California was bitch and moan about the lack of seasons and weather, but I have had an assfull of this April. More snow on the way tomorrow, whee!

As a relatively recent resident of Southern California, I have been repeatedly asked "Bet you're having second thoughts about leaving California, eh?"

Not really.After a startingly mild December, with temperatures in the 40s and even 50s for much of the month, the weather has gotten rather cold over the last couple of days... highs of 20 degrees during the day, single digits overnight, and who knows how cold with the wind chill.

As a relatively recent resident of Southern California, I have been repeatedly asked "Bet you're having second thoughts about leaving California, eh?"

There’s a bulletin board in the break room at work, upon which people often place little newspaper clippings thought to be of interest to the office population at large… they get changed often, and make for a nice diversion while you’re waiting for the god-awful coffee to brew.

But today the newspaper article (I assume this came from the L.A. Times) was titled something like “What to do When You’re Heading for the Cold”, and it was a whole half-page article about preparing to go outside of Los Angeles to one of those scary places with snow.

Things like, you know, dressing warmly in layers? They spend about three paragraphs telling people in Los Angeles how to dress warmly. Three paragraphs telling grown adults that you need to wear warm clothes when you go out in the cold. The article also recommended taking brief walks at night (When it’s usually a bone-chilling 50 degrees or so in the winter) for a few days before your trip to get yourself “acclimated.”

And then - this was the icing on the cake - they mentioned the risks of hypothermia and frostbite, cautioning that “Even a mild case of frostbite should receive medical attention.”

Do people here really need to be told that? Do people here go up to the mountains and play in the snow until the skin of their fingertips actually crystalizes from the cold, and just go back in for cocoa wondering why they can’t feel anything in their fingers? Serves them right if that’s actually the case.

It rained like hell here in the Valley today, and I'd say the temperatures stayed in the 50's well into the early afternoon as a result. I finally got to bust out the off-white ribbed sweater I bought at Goodwill for $4.00 back in July. I remember it well; it was about 110 degrees out that day, and even in the air-conditioned store just touching something as warm as a sweater made me want to crawl out of my skin. But I knew the day would come when I'd be glad to have scored it for so little, and today was that day.

This is a Folgers-drinkin' sweater if ever there was one; when I put it on I feel like I should be out on a porch overlooking a duck pond at dawn, a golden retriever at my side and one foot up on the railing while I sip a mug of Folgers contemplatively and do that serene, eyes-closed archaic smile they always do in those commercials. A right cozy sweater, in other words.

The rain stopped fairly abruptly shortly before sunset, and the clouds blew away north quite quickly. It's always amazing how blue the sky is after a heavy rain rinses all the smog out of it, and how fresh the air smells. And it's still fairly chilly out - this will make for excellent sleeping weather. Speaking of which, good night.

Addendum
I decided to try and find a dumb old Folger's commercial still, but my Google search for "Folger's commercial" turned up something much, much stranger: An MP3 of Paul Stanley singing the Folger's jingle.

Yesterday, the second to last day of October, saw the first truly fall like day we've had in Los Angeles this year; windy and cloudy, and with intermittent showers to boot.

Faces were glum everywhere, and people eyed the sky fearfully before going outside. As usual, drivers seemed to speed up on the slick streets, a behavior I will never understand as long as I live. My friend Chris, who lived here briefly, theorized that they drive faster in a futile attempt to get away from the rain.

It is as though the world is about to end when it rains in Los Angeles. I understand that most of the people who live here relish the usually sunny, usually warm (if not hot) weather, but my god, is a little break in the monotony of baking in the sun under a greenish-brown sky such a terrible thing?

The first "winter" we lived here there was an amusing thing on the news. It was probably Fox. They had a remote reporter someplace relatively close, but much higher up... like Big Bear. It had snapped unexpectedly cold and actually snowed a little bit there, and a sprinkler that had been left on in the freezing temperatures caused icicles to form on the chainlink fence the reporter was standing in front of. The carefully coiffed reporter actually stood live in front of the camera and explained how the icicles got there. I got the feeling I was supposed to discuss this around the watercooler the next day.

"Hey, did you hear that some icicles formed up in Big Bear last night? Yeah, the reporter looked like he was really cold! Boy, you sure wouldn't catch me up there!"

Such behavior would almost be amusing if it weren't usually accompanied by a smug attitude of superiority about living in a place where the weather almost never, ever changes. It's not just a matter of preferring this climate, it's as though people here think less of those who live in places where it snows.

So when it rains here, I like to think that maybe my suddenly improved mood serves to further darken the moods of others distraught by the mere fact that water is falling from the sky.

Addendum: 11/26/2001 - If you don't believe me, read this!

Ahem. Who pissed in my Cheerios yesterday? When I read that last bit this morning I was taken aback - I haven't written with such vitriol since Intercrap was at its zenith. But you get the idea... it's October, and the temperature is in the 90-100 degree range. October is when the leaves turn orange, red, and yellow, and it gets cold enough to have a fire in the fireplace, if you're lucky enough to have one. October is when you go to a pumpkin patch and pick out a blank canvas for the Jack 'o Lantern you'll be bringing to the festival. October is not when you have to leave the AC on 24 hours a day just so the temperature inside your apartment will stay in the 80s.

For the most part, I've made an uneasy peace with Los Angeles... there really are things here that I actively like and will miss when we finally move away. Unfortunately the things I don't like outnumber the things I do, and the unbearable heat of the last week has skewed the like/dislike ratio far to the dislike side, resulting in gems like "smog-ridden cesspit". Maybe I should sleep in the pool tonight.

The ungodly heat wave of the last five days here in the San Fernando Valley is not a “late summer” as I’ve heard people around calling it. It is hell on Earth.

In my five years here, I’ve noticed that there are three kinds of people:

• Those who were born in L.A. with nothing more than the vague notion that there are other states in the country further east than Nevada, and that in some of those states it rains for more than 3 days a year and sometimes it even *snows*.
• People who have moved to L.A. from one of the aforementioned states and have such a pathological aversion to said weather conditions that they’re willing to put up with this smog-ridden cesspit for the rest of their lives just to avoid a little bit of frozen precipiation.
• People who came to L.A. not knowing what to expect, or expecting something other than what they found, only to realize within the first few months that they hate this place with a burning passion.

Unfortunately, a lot of these last people (read: me) get stuck here a lot longer than they’d like. We are the people who find ourselves subjected to the reflexive response of “But the weather’s so nice here!” from the natives and willful transplants whenever we raise an objection of any kind to Los Angeles.

Well, I propose we take all those folks who like to tell people how nice the weather is and put them in a station wagon with the windows rolled up (You know, like some inept mother from Simi Valley) for a couple of hours and see how nice they think the weather is. Come to think of it, maybe they could just spend a couple of hours in my second floor apartment. Of course, upon exiting their first words would be “…but it’s a dry heat!”