Every year, as the season changes here in Seattle from Wet to Wetter, I go through a Cold Storage Period. As the cold settles in like fog on Elliott Bay, I return to the Panzo Treat Locker and pull out my Sinatra and Big Band CDs.

Every year when I do this, I marvel again at how unbelievably good those old damn songs were/are. This year, though, I've really been taken aback by how little attention I've really paid to the words to, especially, Sinatra's stuff. As I've been looking up lyrics to refresh my memory I've found again, of course, that Francis Albert stamped nearly all of his renditions with his own vocabulary. But what's surprised me the most is how wonderful some of the lyrics make me feel.

I am a hopeless romantic.I'm a chronic cuddler, a kisser, a hand-holder. Miss Significantly Other is not. Oh well. Her loss. But being an HR means that I'm susceptible to sappy lines in swoony tunes.

Take Sinatra's 1939 recording "All Or Nothing At All". It's a song about someone avoiding an unsure thing in love. Afraid that he'll fall anyway he warns the woman he's so foolishly close to to not bring her lips so close to his cheek. Then he says, "The kiss in your eyes, the touch of your hand make me weak."

The kiss in your eyes. I go all gooshy when I hear that line. How totally romantic! I want to be made weak from a look like that!

Romance. It's like water in the desert. It's like snow on a ski boot. It's like mud at a tractor pull.

Ahhh, romance. If I only had some....