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It was a dark and stormy night …

Paul E. Anna

If you frequent the website weather.com and are prone to punching 81611 into the ZIP code finder, the news is pretty bleak. According to the site, Aspen is in for rain/snow and temperatures in the 40s for eight of the next 10 days. At least. Pretty dismal indeed for the month of May, which, in the last few years, had forsaken its reputation for mud season and turned into a veritable summer stalwart.Deny it, if you must, but the skies are going to be a bit gray for the next few days. So what to do?Well, for starters you can get outta town. That’s right, put the dog in the kennel, write the neighbors a note (one they’ll likely get when they return from their vacation in the sun) and head to Sardy Field for the first plane out. This option won’t be available to you next year when they close said Sardy Field during spring offseason for “improvements.” Improvements that will likely coincide with United’s threatening to make Aspen an isolated and remote mountain burg if we don’t expand the runway to make way for 737s, because of their inability to cut a deal with another airline that flies BA-146s like Air Wisconsin. But that’s another column. If fleeing is out of the question, how about bringing a little Hollywood to your life? That’s right, the movies. Stage 3 and the Isis are both options, and if those choices are not enough, visit the video store and go home with a pile of DVDs.Need a little more action than that? How about cooking? Now’s the time to spend a day making a beouf bourguignon, or that homemade lasagna recipe that was handed down from your mother’s father’s mother a couple of generations ago. Comfort food does just that. It comforts us and helps make the doom and gloom a little easier to bear. It even works with chocolate-chip cookies.And then there is that old Aspen standby, exercise. Do it indoors, or do it out, it doesn’t matter because nothing combats a cloudy day like a full dose of endorphins.And if none of that works, this reporter has always found comfort in front of the window talking to the guy in back of the bar at the Hotel Jerome. Rain seems to fall a little lighter after a good glass of Guinness. Whatever your cure is for the dark-day blues, remember that this, too, shall pass. In time, hopefully a short time, blue skies and green grass will grace all our mornings.