but it's not even winter yet!!
That's right - I'm going to be one of those mind-blowingly stimulating characters that blog about the weather. Brace yourself compadres, cuz it's not every day such an exciting topic as the weather gets stage time. But seriously... is hell freezing over? Is Armageddon upon us? We sure as hell don't need to confer with Toto that we're not in Kansas anymore cuz it's pretty obvious that it's been just totally frickin' nuts around here.
Where do we begin? hmm... well I guess it began as we literally waded and hydroplaned through the month of November with our record breaking 15.63 inches of precipitation! I honestly was prepared for my toilet to become a geyser at any moment, having recalled my little history lesson on Pre - "Great Fire of Seattle" when the city was below sea level and drainage was so poor that the household toilets were literal bidets during high-tide. I don't know about you people, but I'm rarely in the mood for surprises when I'm stoopin' on the pot, ya know? November rainfall quickly became snow-fall and snow-pack in the low lands (as in here, us, we, everywhere) and we were pretty much snowed in for 4 days, which is something I've never seen around these parts before. I work for a company with Ops Offices all around the world and the Mid-Westerners were the first to throw blows at us Seattle wimps for not being able to handle a wee little bit of snow fall. The truth of the matter is that we get more than 1 inch of snow and all the major streets, highways and bridges become parking lots. Literally; people freak out, park their cars right there on the highway and walk home. I was quick to point out that we Seattlellites (yah, it's been long enough that I can rightfully call myself that now) are equal opportunity wimps because we can't handle extreme sunlight nor heat nor heavy rain nor gale-force winds either. I read a statistic somewhere once that Seattle has the highest retail sales of sunglasses than any other metro area due to the fact that we lose them for 10.5 months of the year and when even just a wee bit of sunlight breaks through our protective layer of clouds, our eyes get all glossed over, start leaking profusely, and some of us even break out in hives. We Beeline for the nearest crap shack to purchase a $10 dollar pair of shades just to make it through the next hour. So, we're a little ill-equipped for extreme weather, okay? We give good music and fish and have the luxury of gazing upon pretty mountains from just about any place in the city. Isn't that enough?
So moving on cuz this *is*, after all, a post about the weather. Oh... glorious weather! This past week we've endured what to some seems like hurricane status. Sixty nine mph winds and over 1 million merchants and residence lost power across multiple counties; 12 dead and far too many people in danger of celebrating a begrudged candlelit Christmas assuming that they have any candles left after this week. As for school closures, they may as well just call this year a wash and make all the little kiddies repeat their grade level again next year between the snow, flood and wind/power outages. Not that I personally would complain, but you know... some people take that stuff kinda seriously. The wind was loony-ass-crazy like I've never experienced before. Dare I use the word raucous? I mean, it was in a mad frenzy- screaming and howling at the earth and resembling some kind of scene out of a "COPS - Too Hot for TV" episode with a 12 pack of PBR down, wife-beater tank tops a' rippin', white trash brawl from hell. ""EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAOUUUUUUU HOOOOOOOOO HOO HOOO YAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOO I'M COOOOMMMIINNGGG TO KA KA KIIIILLLLL YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU EEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH~!" yah. it sounded *exactly* like that.
Overall, however, Drake and I were definitely one of the fortunate households to only be out of power for just shy of 24 hours, but our neighborhood got hit pretty hard by way of trees and power lines crashed into cars and houses, etc. I actually picked up large chunks of my neighbor's roof off of my lawn while I was on doo-doo duty yesterday. We took the dogs for a long walk this past Friday (the day after the big storm) and we counted over 20 fallen trees within a 1/2 mile radius of our house. Pic above is just down the block from us. Poor guy lost half his sidewalk along wiht those trees. As for the power outage and no lights, hot food or heat - well Drake and I actually fared pretty well under the circumstances. We tend to treat those situations like adventures and attempt to mentally port our minds to a happy place as quickly as possible. My secret is that I just pretend like I'm on the show "Survivor" and it generally does the trick of making me feel less sorry for myself if I can trick myself into thinking that my suffering for a good reason. So our method of coping? We locked ourselves in the basement with the puppies and built a raging fire to keep warm. Then Drake came up with the brilliant idea of sharing an iPod since she has those funky earphones that separate one ear plug from the next with a chord in the middle. I got the right ear and she got the left and we danced around like rock stars and sang at the top of our lungs to every song; and when our ears got tired or the little f_ckers fell out (which happened all too often cuz my ears i guess were not made large enough to fit those thingies), we took turns laughing our asses off at each other at how badly we sing with ear phones on. Now who needs heat or food or light when you can have such a jolly time as that??? :) Another fortunate detail is that Drake makes candles every winter and so we were the most lit up house on the block with about 25 candles all over the room. And on a similar note, I brew beer and happened to have two kegs hooked up so between that and our amply stocked wine cellar near by, we were quite likely the most lit humans on the block too! Go figure.
But really, despite all said, it's not a happy time. Many of my friends and colleagues are still without power and trying to deal with infants and toddlers and freaked out pets, and temperatures below freezing. It's an entirely shitty situation for most in the greater Seattle area, no doubt. I just hope that everybody stays smart and safe and can muster up some comic relief in this over the next few days. Maybe Santa will bring a slew of generators for Christmas? But on one final note - and this really kills me - it's not even technically winter time yet!!!!!!!!
Where do we begin? hmm... well I guess it began as we literally waded and hydroplaned through the month of November with our record breaking 15.63 inches of precipitation! I honestly was prepared for my toilet to become a geyser at any moment, having recalled my little history lesson on Pre - "Great Fire of Seattle" when the city was below sea level and drainage was so poor that the household toilets were literal bidets during high-tide. I don't know about you people, but I'm rarely in the mood for surprises when I'm stoopin' on the pot, ya know? November rainfall quickly became snow-fall and snow-pack in the low lands (as in here, us, we, everywhere) and we were pretty much snowed in for 4 days, which is something I've never seen around these parts before. I work for a company with Ops Offices all around the world and the Mid-Westerners were the first to throw blows at us Seattle wimps for not being able to handle a wee little bit of snow fall. The truth of the matter is that we get more than 1 inch of snow and all the major streets, highways and bridges become parking lots. Literally; people freak out, park their cars right there on the highway and walk home. I was quick to point out that we Seattlellites (yah, it's been long enough that I can rightfully call myself that now) are equal opportunity wimps because we can't handle extreme sunlight nor heat nor heavy rain nor gale-force winds either. I read a statistic somewhere once that Seattle has the highest retail sales of sunglasses than any other metro area due to the fact that we lose them for 10.5 months of the year and when even just a wee bit of sunlight breaks through our protective layer of clouds, our eyes get all glossed over, start leaking profusely, and some of us even break out in hives. We Beeline for the nearest crap shack to purchase a $10 dollar pair of shades just to make it through the next hour. So, we're a little ill-equipped for extreme weather, okay? We give good music and fish and have the luxury of gazing upon pretty mountains from just about any place in the city. Isn't that enough?
So moving on cuz this *is*, after all, a post about the weather. Oh... glorious weather! This past week we've endured what to some seems like hurricane status. Sixty nine mph winds and over 1 million merchants and residence lost power across multiple counties; 12 dead and far too many people in danger of celebrating a begrudged candlelit Christmas assuming that they have any candles left after this week. As for school closures, they may as well just call this year a wash and make all the little kiddies repeat their grade level again next year between the snow, flood and wind/power outages. Not that I personally would complain, but you know... some people take that stuff kinda seriously. The wind was loony-ass-crazy like I've never experienced before. Dare I use the word raucous? I mean, it was in a mad frenzy- screaming and howling at the earth and resembling some kind of scene out of a "COPS - Too Hot for TV" episode with a 12 pack of PBR down, wife-beater tank tops a' rippin', white trash brawl from hell. ""EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAOUUUUUUU HOOOOOOOOO HOO HOOO YAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOO I'M COOOOMMMIINNGGG TO KA KA KIIIILLLLL YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU EEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHH SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH~!" yah. it sounded *exactly* like that.
Overall, however, Drake and I were definitely one of the fortunate households to only be out of power for just shy of 24 hours, but our neighborhood got hit pretty hard by way of trees and power lines crashed into cars and houses, etc. I actually picked up large chunks of my neighbor's roof off of my lawn while I was on doo-doo duty yesterday. We took the dogs for a long walk this past Friday (the day after the big storm) and we counted over 20 fallen trees within a 1/2 mile radius of our house. Pic above is just down the block from us. Poor guy lost half his sidewalk along wiht those trees. As for the power outage and no lights, hot food or heat - well Drake and I actually fared pretty well under the circumstances. We tend to treat those situations like adventures and attempt to mentally port our minds to a happy place as quickly as possible. My secret is that I just pretend like I'm on the show "Survivor" and it generally does the trick of making me feel less sorry for myself if I can trick myself into thinking that my suffering for a good reason. So our method of coping? We locked ourselves in the basement with the puppies and built a raging fire to keep warm. Then Drake came up with the brilliant idea of sharing an iPod since she has those funky earphones that separate one ear plug from the next with a chord in the middle. I got the right ear and she got the left and we danced around like rock stars and sang at the top of our lungs to every song; and when our ears got tired or the little f_ckers fell out (which happened all too often cuz my ears i guess were not made large enough to fit those thingies), we took turns laughing our asses off at each other at how badly we sing with ear phones on. Now who needs heat or food or light when you can have such a jolly time as that??? :) Another fortunate detail is that Drake makes candles every winter and so we were the most lit up house on the block with about 25 candles all over the room. And on a similar note, I brew beer and happened to have two kegs hooked up so between that and our amply stocked wine cellar near by, we were quite likely the most lit humans on the block too! Go figure.
But really, despite all said, it's not a happy time. Many of my friends and colleagues are still without power and trying to deal with infants and toddlers and freaked out pets, and temperatures below freezing. It's an entirely shitty situation for most in the greater Seattle area, no doubt. I just hope that everybody stays smart and safe and can muster up some comic relief in this over the next few days. Maybe Santa will bring a slew of generators for Christmas? But on one final note - and this really kills me - it's not even technically winter time yet!!!!!!!!
posted by E-Rae | 3:31 PM
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2 comments
