COLUMN: Storm Spotting

Fear not, Quad Cities. Sleep well. You are safe.

At great personal sacrifice, I am now officially certified to protect you all. I've even got a fancy secret identification number to prove it.

What were YOU doing last Thursday after work? Maybe making dinner. Maybe hanging out with your family. Maybe getting an early start to your St. Patrick's Day weekend.

Me? I journeyed to the distant land of Cambridge, Illinois, in order to sit in a windowless basement full of other earnest wannabe protectors of humanity, learning how to warn citizens of eminent danger and ensure that everyone find safety and shelter in times of crisis.

That's right, after a two-hour class, I am now a certified Skywarn Storm Spotter with the National Weather Service.

Pretty cool, eh? You're welcome, Quad Cities. The next time a tornado bears down upon our area, rest in the knowledge that there exist a number of us, perhaps even your friends and neighbors, who are officially trained and certified to proudly and confidently state, "Yep, that's most definitely a tornado." I have found my calling.

In all honesty, it was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and it's a training class that EVERYBODY should take.

As an amateur weather nerd, this was something I'd wanted to do for some time. The annual classes are free and voluntary and occur sporadically throughout the early spring. I hadn't been able to attend any of the ones closer to home, but when I saw there was a class in Cambridge I could get to, I was all in.

Frankly, I'm glad I made the trip. The class was held in Henry County's newly furbished Emergency Operations Center, which is pretty impressive. It's something straight out of the world-ending apocalypse movie of your choice -- a brightly-lit concrete bunker full of tables, chairs, screens, and phones. I felt important just sitting there. If, God forbid, Henry County were ever to fall victim to Something Really Bad, this is clearly the room where shots would be called, decisions would be made, and zombie uprisings would be thwarted.

So what IS the role of a Skywarn Storm Spotter? Essentially, I've now got the training to hopefully identify serious weather threats before and as they develop. And if I notice something potentially dangerous, I've got an ID number and the unpublished phone number required to call a meterologist at the local National Weather Service office, who can use the information to issue severe weather watches and warnings. In the 36-county bi-state area covered by our regional office, there are over 3000 trained spotters that the NWS relies on for eyewitness accounts.

That took me a little by surprise. Why do experts who live and breathe weather and who sit in rooms full of fancy radar screens and satellite imagery need call-ins from locals? As it turns out, radar doesn't always tell the whole story.

"Radar isn't a magic crystal ball," explained Rich Kinney, NWS Warning Coordination Meterologist and our class leader. "We need your eyes to see what's happening on the ground."

Radar is a literal life-saver, but its returns can vary based on distance, elevation, and even the curvature of the Earth. If the radar is miles away from a storm's center, it may only see what's way up in the sky and not what's happening on the ground.

"Spotters are the most vital link in terms of ground truth information," Kinney stressed. "Your calls matter. We could be on the fence about issuing a warning. You could also prevent us from issuing a false alarm."

Much of the class was spent learning how to identify dangerous weather conditions, but almost equal time was spent learning what ISN'T considered a severe weather situation. For the National Weather Service to issue a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, one of two scenarios has to be in play: Either the storm has to be producing 58 mph winds, or it has to be dropping 1" diameter hailstones. Anything less, by current standards, is just a storm.

We've all seen clouds in the sky that look super spooky and a potential one-way trip to Oz. But thanks to the class, I should now be able to identify a storm's updrafts and downdrafts and hopefully spot the difference between something that looks spooky and a supercell with actual rotation and a wall cloud capable of producing funnels.

If I was better at math, I might have considered meteorology as a career. Instead, I'm happy to have a little bit of training under my belt. Maybe one day it'll come in handy and a phone call from me might make a difference to get a warning issued in time for folks to get to safety. That's honestly pretty cool. I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, but if I can help somebody with a single phone call, I'm proud to be a Skywarn Storm Spotter.

It's not too late to join the fun. There's still a few classes being held in the area. You don't need an advance reservation, you just have to show up. To see the remaining schedule for this spring, visit https://www.weather.gov/dvn/spotters#schedule

COLUMN: 80s Shane

Well, that's it, then.

Bad news, everybody. I am officially, proof-positive, one-hundred percent past my prime. There's nothing to do now but put me to pasture and bear witness to my slow slide into irrelevancy.

Once upon a time (aka three days ago,) I still thought I was, by and large, culturally cool.

I mean, look, I'm a realist. When I look into the mirror, I know there's a fat and hopelessly single cubicle-dwelling middle-aged man staring back at me. But I prefer to see what I want: a me who hasn't aged in decades. A me known for being a record store clerk, rave promoter, nightclub DJ, and program director of his college radio station. A me whose cultural worth can still be measured by the depth of his CD collection even though CDs are mostly irrelevant to anyone under 30. A me who is deeply in touch with modern trends and surfs the pop culture zeitgeist with grace and ease. A me who will never be defined by his age.

At least that's what I thought.

As some of you may know, I've been moonlighting a few hours here and there behind the counter at my old stomping grounds: Co-Op Records. The decision was kind of a no-brainer. I'm good friends with the owner and he was short-handed and in a pinch. You get a healthy discount on music, which is never a bad thing. And I generally spend a considerable amount of my free time in record stores as is, so I may as well be getting paid for the privilege.

Mostly I love it because it's a second home for forward-thinking music nerds such as myself. It's a gathering place and natural habitat for progressive pop culture scholars to argue and discuss the merits of music trends, entertainment headlines, and whether or not R. Kelly's alleged misdeeds (which he most likely misdid) make "Trapped In The Closet" any less awesome (it does not.)

So I was excited to learn that a buddy of mine was also going to be picking up a few hours at the store. Until, however, he regaled me with a story from his first day of training. He was working with another long-time clerk and asked who was working this weekend.

"Oh, I think Shane is," the clerk replied.

"Which Shane?" my friend replied. Yes, I know, there can be only one. But truth be told, there's a couple of other Shanes out there who are ALMOST as hip as me, and he wasn't sure which of us was working at the store.

That's when it happened.

"Oh, you know," the clerk told him. "Eighties Shane."

EIGHTIES SHANE?

And with that, my cultural relevancy promptly expired. I can only presume that the gods of pop culture will be calling any moment to rescind my membership card and decoder ring. I have just been kicked out of the Cool Kids Club.

I don't get it. I still read Rolling Stone cover to cover. I watch TV shows clearly written for people half my age. I know every song on the Billboard Hot 100. I routinely have to explain things like Kanye West, Cardi B, and the overall concept of Facebook to my mother. I'm hip, darn it.

But no. For all the hard work and thankless man-hours I've put into staying culturally cool, my legacy is now: "EIGHTIES SHANE." I thought I was riding on the cusp of the cutting edge, but apparently I fell right off that edge on January 1, 1990. According to at least one of my peers, I'm as relevant in these modern times as Boy George and Cyndi Lauper.

Surely this can't be true. If there's one thing I've always rallied against and mocked ruthlessly, it's those people whose musical and cultural tastes stop evolving once they reach a certain point in their lives. People who say they "don't understand today's music." People who go to bed early. That will NEVER be my life and I can prove it.

Why, just last week I put in my order for the greatest holiday of the year: Record Store Day. On Saturday, April 13th, HUNDREDS of over-priced, limited edition, hard-to-find records will be released for one day only -- and if you're not in line by 8 a.m., there's a good chance you'll get left out in the cold. As usual, I plan on spending an absolutely irresponsible amount of money on collectible records I'll likely never even play. It truly IS the most wonderful time of the year.

Would a culturally irrelevant "EIGHTIES SHANE" throw away his paycheck on hip releases like a box set containing ALL SIX original Devo albums on colored vinyl? Or a 3000-copy worldwide reissue of Bananarama remixes? Or a compilation of outtakes from a-ha's first album? Oh... crud.

Okay, so maybe I only ordered a bunch of stuff from the 1980s. It's not MY fault that most music released after 1990 has been terrible. That's not cultural irrelevancy. I say it's just a clear indicator of superior taste.

I'm not stuck in the 80s, I swear it. But if I HAD to be stuck in a decade, it's a pretty sweet one to call home. So call me whatever you want -- my suggestions would be "Awesome Shane" or perhaps "Cooler-Than-You Shane." I'm not going anywhere, pop culture. Just try and stop me. In the meantime, I guess if you need a DJ for your next 80s flashback party, I'm probably available.

COLUMN: Groceries

I'm starting to think I'll never get the hang of grocery shopping.

If there's one quick way to make me feel like a kid again, it's stepping into a supermarket. It's not like I gain a youthful pep in my step or lose the grey in my hair. No, it's just that to this day, shopping for groceries makes me feel every ounce as clueless and intimidated as a kid.

Look around the next time you're at the store. And I say "The Store" because my parents always called supermarkets "The Store," as if there were only one. It didn't matter if it was The Eagle Store or The Hy-Vee Store or The A&P Store, it was always just The Store. "I need to go to the store" always meant it was time for groceries.

But next time you're at The Store, take a good look. Everywhere you go, you see people with a purpose. Everyone seems to have a plan and a clear-cut shopping mission. Some folks are efficiently shopping while simultaneously wrangling multiple children. Some are meticulously gathering ingredients for pre-planned menus in their head. Some are sticking precisely to a budget they've allotted for the trip. Everyone is, by and large, cool and collected and there with intent and direction.

And then there's me. I tend to go to the store only after opening the refrigerator for food to discover there IS no food. I walk in aimlessly and just wander aisle-by-aisle, grabbing anything that looks vaguely appealing and leaving with a mis-matched cart full of food that doesn't remotely go together. I never plan meals or watch prices. I'm generally just an idiot.

I have no idea how to tell if produce is fresh or good. Does it pass the color test? Bananas are supposed to be yellow, tomatoes are supposed to be red except when they're supposed to be yellow, peppers can be yellow OR red OR green but it doesn't matter because peppers are icky. I often find myself poking produce because I think that's what you're supposed to do, but I have no idea what I'm poking for. As long as nothing pokes BACK, I'll usually put it in my cart.

No matter what I'm there for, I always end up spending WAY more than I wanted to. Just last week, I went on what I considered to be a pre-planned, mature, smart-shopping mission. I needed cat food, bath soap, toilet paper, and enough food to make a couple lunches and dinners. No problem, right? By the time I got home, I was $100+ in debt and making three trips to the car to lug in groceries that I didn't really need. How does this ALWAYS happen?

Well, having no clue what food I wanted, I just started strolling down the aisles. Ooh, tilapia. I like fish, so let's get that. But then I head down the next aisle and what do I see? Manwich! Man, I haven't had Manwich in forever. And what's this? A papaya marinade? Yes, please. But I'll need some chicken for that. What goes good with chicken? A bag of frozen veggies. Ooh, riced cauliflower and broccoli? I've GOT to try that. Hey, a recipe on the back says I should add some lime juice and parmesan cheese. Sounds good, I just need to go back and buy some, and hey, I'm out of soy sauce, so I should get THAT... and so on and so forth until I have a cart full of nonsense.

Worst of all, I forgot to buy buns, so at some point this week, I'm probably going to be enjoying papaya-marinated chicken with a side spoonful of Manwich. Mmm.

But maybe sometimes it pays to NOT be on a mission at the store. Last week, I was in the dairy section when I noticed a go-getter with purpose approach the yogurt. In one sweeping arm gesture, she professionally knocked about 12 single-serve containers into her cart before scurrying away. Impressive -- or so I thought at first.

I was raised by a loving and incredibly over-protective mother (and who can blame her? Who wouldn't want to overly protect ME? I'm awesome!) My mom introduced me to the culinary arts with lessons that usually had a arcing theme of, "Cooking is rewarding and can be a lot of fun EXCEPT WHEN YOU DO IT WRONG AND IT KILLS YOU." Ergo, I've always been one to meticulously check expiration dates.

Now, I know that some food is good long past its sell-by date, but I don't like to mess around with yogurt. I'm not convinced yogurt isn't just milk that's ALREADY gone bad, so that's an expiration date I pay attention to. Problem is, it's generally easier to find the Lost Treasure of the Sierra Madre than the expiration date on a container of yogurt. Still, I'm glad I looked, because as it turned out, that woman on a mission failed -- unless her mission was to take home a dozen yogurts that expired in early February. Eww.

Every time I'm convinced that I'm the world's worst grocery shopper, I get to the checkout and start realizing it's not just me. Now, I'm not the kind of nozy, shallow person who checks out what everybody around me's buying -- except that I AM. Call it my natural inquisitive journalistic instincts, but I STILL wanna know why the guy in front of me bought ONE Twinkie, EIGHT whole pineapples, and a jar of gravy. Was he prepping the world's most lop-sided pineapple upside-down cake? Served with a thirst-quenching glass of gravy? The mind boggles.

Maybe I'm not the only one just winging it at the store. If you're a smart shopper responsible for feeding a small army and you're able to stick to a budget, you have my ultimate respect. I have no idea how you do it. You're also NOT invited to my place for Riced Soy Cauliflower Papaya Manwich Surprise.

COLUMN: Basement Leaks

Okay, winter. Enough's enough.

You've had your fun. You've assaulted us with snow. You've coated our sidewalks with ice. You've gifted us with hurricane force winds and -50 wind chills. You even broke my friend's wrist. It's been fun. But look at the calendar, buddy -- it's time to leave your vacation home and head back north.

I'm SO ready for this winter to be over -- and it's honestly not because of the wind chills or the ice or the snow or the tire-eating potholes.

I want winter to be done because I'm sick of the perpetual reminders that I am, by and large, an incredibly useless person.

I have neither the skills nor the fortitude nor the experience nor the common sense to deal with this kind of weather. You know those movies where people get stranded and have to fend for themselves using only their cunning and ingenuity? Yeah, I'd be dead within an HOUR, I promise you. Either my own ineptitude would do me in, or the other castaways would mercy-kill me for the benefit of all involved. Any way it plays out, I would NOT have the starring role in that flick.

I always assumed that as I grew older, my brain would fill with sagelike wisdom that I could offer as advice to a naive and younger generation in need of my guidance. Well, God help anyone who asks ME for advice on anything other than a mixtape or fast food recommendations, because that's pretty much where my expertise ends.

Last weekend, I woke to a text from my best friend -- the one, in fact, who recently broke his wrist thanks to a bad tumble on the ice. He had just discovered inches of standing water in his basement. That sucks.

A flooded basement is one of my worst fears. When I was having my home inspected prior to purchase, I asked about the possibility of unwanted water someday paying my subterranean level a visit.

"I'll be honest with you," he said. "It's not a question of IF your basement floods. It's a question of WHEN it'll flood. Everyone's at risk."

This season has been particular gnarly on basements, and the Great Melting has only just begun. When it hit my friend, all I wanted to do was help.

"Do you need a hand?" I asked him.

"Nah," he texted back. "Thanks though."

Unacceptable. This same friend has bent over backwards for me on any number of occasions, and "nah" just wasn't gonna cut it, especially when he's only got one good hand at the moment. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what to do when one's basement fills up with water other than phone over-priced people who can make it all better. Still, I wanted to help, so I grabbed a box fan and headed over to his place.

By the time I got there, he'd already managed to restart his sump pump and drain most of the water with a shop vac, but it was still pretty gross. I helped as much as I could, which mostly involved standing around, cracking bad jokes, and casting several disparaging looks at the floor. But there was something about the sound of the vacuum against concrete that was tantamount to a thousand fingernails on a thousand chalkboards, so I wanted to help but I also wanted to claw my ears out and run screaming. Eventually I headed home, useless as ever.

I've been helping another friend manning occasional shifts at his retail store, and that's where I found myself the next day. Winter hasn't been kind to his store either, and we've been battling some epic ceiling leaks. There's no fixing the roof of the strip mall until the metric ton of ice up there melts off, or in this case, melts DOWN. So we've been fighting the drips of doom with little more than patience and a few well-placed buckets. The problem, though, is that one of the leaks is collecting in a flourescent light fixture, which is less than ideal.

I'd already gotten a text asking me to check the light and drain it if necessary. Sure enough, there was some gross rusty water pooling inside. As I stood there trying to convince myself it wasn't that bad, I watched as a drip fell and rippled the water like a stone on a lake. It definitely needed draining.

Sadly, Youtube has no videos on "How to drain water from flourescent lighting" (I seriously checked.) So I had to wing it. Knowing it might all end in tears, I waited until the store was empty, then hauled out the trusty ladder, overcame my fear of heights, and shakily climbed up, bucket in hand. As I surveyed the task at hand, I realized how easy it would be. I just needed to position the bucket perfectly, carefully unclip the fixture, and gently let the water drain into the bucket.

So I positioned the bucket imperfectly, carefully unclipped the fixture, and then watched in horror as it, along with about a gallon of rusty water, fell squarely on my head. A half gallon of rusty water looks nasty, but I can assure you it tastes even worse. It ended up in my mouth, my eyes, and up my nose. And then I had to keep working for four more hours, which I'm sure was a treat for all the customers.

So go away, winter, and make me stop feeling inept at life. Of course, spring and summer will probably figure out a way to make me feel incompetent, too. Still, I guess it's not all bad. I'd rather feel useless beside my best friend than self-sufficient alone. And one way or another, I DID get that light drained. Maybe one day I'll learn some common sense. Maybe one day it'll stop snowing. I guess time will tell.