Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Arctic Blast '08: Welcome to Snowmageddon!

Toby and Lily when the snow was not deep enough for Lily to get lost in it (as has befallen their gnome friend in the background).

One of my favorite things about Portland are the local winter weather reports. I have friends who play Storm Watch Bingo, so I know I am not alone in this. We Portlanders choose to contrast our many other stellar qualities by being total drama queens about winter weather. Our local news crews sometimes seem to want so fervently for some weather related news that they're all too ready to start warning about an impending snowpocalypse every time we get a 1/4" of snow. So, last week when they started talking about "Arctic Blast 2008", I didn't pay that much attention. I enjoyed the opportunity to telecommute and work in my penguin pajama bottoms and old school grey hoodie when my office closed (0h home officing, after a week working from home, how I covet thee!), but I didn't pay that much attention.

A week and a few feet of snow later and Mother Nature has my attention. It is cold and my car is stuck behind a small snow drift, but it is utterly gorgeous outside and I love it, especially now that I am officially on vacation! The only thing that keeps me from loving the snow enough to marry it is that knowing I can't stray far from home gives me nagging feelings like "I must find a way to get to the store for I am completely out of bobby pins!" Never mind that I don't actually use bobby pins. Or that if it were a normal day I probably wouldn't want to go anywhere. It's the not being able to go out if I happened to want to that creates the sense of urgency. As a long-term couple, snow and I were never meant to be. Sure, we'd put up with each other for a while, but eventually there'd be recriminations and hard feelings and our love would melt. For now, though, it makes an awfully nice Christmas fling.
More to come...

3 comments:

Jen said...

They are so stinkin' cute!!

I need new gnome pictures! Is he completely under now?

Martina said...

He has been m.i.a. since late Sunday! I'm hoping went to the store for groceries (or at least pizza that he is bringing back for dinner as I type).

Anonymous said...

That was a weird coincidence. I had just finished reading your post when the BBC midday news came on the radio and told me about the weather in Oregon. How often does that happen? Well, never. Britain has its own weather, buckets of it.

Apparently Washington and Oregon are "being blasted" by snow. Canada has snow from coast to coast, which is a lot of snow, there being a lot of Canada. The rest of North America was not mentioned, the BBC only reporting the important bits.

I'm now going out into the sunshine, buckets of it, to tinker with my motorcycle before taking it for a ride, just for fun.