"If this is what we can expect from global warming, then we're moving." my partner Bo said to me as we sat in the car on a freezing  St. Patrick's Day morning, a mixture of snow and rain blocking our view of the Space Needle. Like hundreds of other Seattlites we had risen early for a running race, or as an excuse to drink before noon. I looked down at my green shorts and striped knee high socks, imploring their good cheer to keep the gloom away, then I looked at my partner. Stepping out of the car, he reminded me of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner - rain running down his face. Were we in the city of the future, when global warming had drenched everything in constant deluge?

Future or no, this time of year I need some help coping with this climate. Here's how you beat the weather.

Step One: Sweat
Sweat makes me feel like I'm in some warm place. And the endorphine release is a good substitute for the way sun makes me feel - or at least how I remember the sun making me feel. It's been a while. If you can't get to sunshine, find a good hot yoga class. It will stink and you will sweat more that you imagined possible. But afterward you might feel like you just spent a day on the beach, a beach with lots of strenuous effort and lifeguards who yell at you, a beach that leaves you with back pain and a mild dehydration headache. But the sweating, the sweating will feel glorious. Don't think for a minute that your half-assed treadmill "work-out" counts as a good sweat. Buckets people. Buckets if you want to feel that sun substitute feeling.

Step Two: Stare at Your Navel
What was it Alanis Morriset said about gratitude? "Thank you, thank you, thank you... India... blah, blah." As a Canadian she probably knows a thing or two about crappy weather. Introspection is a decent short term solution to gray. Doesn't Morriset thank gray too? Maybe it was kudos to terra cotta - no matter. Nasty weather gives us a good reason to stay inside and really dwell on ourselves, to dwell in the inner dwelling of our souls. Now's the time to read a book, play the guitar, write in your blog. What are you doing right now? Facebook wants to know! Those folks in Miami have their perfect bodies to communicate to the world. We're robbed of this God-given pleasure, by too many layers..of fleece. Our inner beauty can speak in ways our outer beauty, ahem, dares not. Fortunately we've got a solid nine months a year to give birth to ourselves.

Step Three: Work
Someone's got to pay for the sweating and the navel gazing. That person is probably you. Fortunately bad weather makes it easier to sit in a cubicle all day. If you're lucky you'll have no window to tempt you with occasional sunbreaks. Sunbreaks are fickle lovers. Avoid sunbreaks.  Now is also a good time to put in some volunteer hours. If you're really upset with this weather, you might consider volunteering to fight all of those global warming advocates. As Tina Fey reminded us in one of her Sarah Palin salutes, "global warming is just God squeezing us closer." Palm trees and warmer (crazy, erratic) temps here we come.

Step Four: Drugs and Alcohol
After you've tried all of the do-gooder stuff you may still find yourself a bit down. Well that's why we have drugs and alcohol. We're not perfect. The best practice has gotten plenty of folks through a long winter. Take a walk through old Ballard and you will see many who have applied drugs and alcohol through many years of snow and rain. Take a lesson from your elders.

Step Five: Get Outta Town
While I recommend these steps in sequence, some of my friends choose to skip ahead to steps four and five, sometimes doing both together. In fact a few of my friends haven't been seen in Seattle for months. I hear tales of high temperatures in desert locations or feet of fresh powder on sunny mountaintops. You know who you are. I'm too good of a person (and not financially situated) to skip step number three, but I occasionally find myself toward the end of this list, buzzed and hitting click on some travel site. In a few weeks Bo and I head to Mexico for a week of sunshine to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Already my rain-soaked coworkers are warning me about kidnapping and sun cancer. The jealous bitches. 

Step Six: Do Something Completely Ridiculous
It's not quite warm enough to ride your bicycle naked in Fremont, but there are still things you can do for no reason at all. Earlier this winter I found myself on stage singing in an Elvis impersonation contest. Bo and I ran the St. Paddy's day dash in matching seventies running outfits (maybe this crosses over from silly to full-on gay). Whatever your poison, doing something completely ridiculous takes the winter edge off for a while. It's the last resort when you've tried all of the other steps and well, it makes the winter a little more tolerable for everyone who sees you doing something ridiculous, or maybe not if you actually end up riding your bike naked .

Hope you enjoyed this guide to beat the weather. Follow it and I have no doubt that we'll survive enough winters to find ourselves someday, old and drunk wandering around in the rain.