Global Climate Change is Good

*
Good News!

Just when a 10-year span of lackluster winters had Flat Stanley resigned to the reality of Global Warming, Global Climate Change came to the rescue, setting snowfall records in the Washington DC metro area this past week. And now, Flat Stanley has discovered how to predict the time and location of the next blizzard. Meanwhile . . .

Last week’s snows make the parking lot behind FS’s apartment building look like an open field dotted with anomalous humps and a lot of broken tree branches. Out front, city trucks with plows attached traveled in threes: The first riding the center line of a four-lane street, the second taking its half from the middle, and the third, herding the snow toward the curb.

This is a city, and they say the city never sleeps, which isn’t quite accurate. Washington and suburbs slept the entire week. It’s the morons driving gas-guzzling SUVs with Save the Planet stickers on the bumper and 16-inches of snow blowing from their roofs that never sleep.

Now Flat Stanley, you say, surely they weren’t the only morons.

And Flat Stanley says, turn about-fair play. You wanna hide your data, I get to hide mine.

Well, what’s a piece of cardboard to do? There’s only so much hanky-panky one little luv nest can accommodate, so FS and spouse bundled up and went walking, careful to stay off the one navigable road. One side street led to another. Eventually we crossed over a limited access highway that leads straight into DC. The plows, the ones that weren’t stuck, were busy piling snow in the access lanes to keep the SUV drivers from killing themselves.

More Good News! After wading through uncharted territory in knee and thigh-deep snow, we stumbled upon a gas station that was not only open, but was also selling off all its beer at half-price. Ever try carrying a 12-pack of bottled beer over icy, unplowed streets? Makes the beer taste all the better.

Spent hours shoveling out, got more snow, damn global warming, spent more hours shoveling out. Saturday we caught the metro to check out downtown DC. FS hopes the city isn’t enforcing parking meter fees, because there’s six feet of snow between the snowbank and meter, and feeding the meter means slogging a half-block to an ice-bank, navigating over the snow, then slogging back to a meter in the neighborhood of your car over an un-shoveled sidewalk at best, icy at worst.

But about this Global Climate Change: It’s not rocket science. It’s Flat Stanley. Follow her moves:

Central Florida, 1983: Unprecedented freezes. Orange crop goes belly up.
North Carolina, 1987: Blizzard
PA, 1995: Blizzard
VA, 2010: Blizzard, record-breaking snowfalls, blizzard.

It’s Global Climate Change alright, but it works like this: When Flat Stanley moves, it snows. Snow is a good thing, ergo, you should be happy about it.
*