Okay, okay, so it snowed a little bit last night - about 1 1/2 inches where I live, increasing by degrees further out from Seattle proper - and the temps today are inching up to around 30. I know, the newspapers and news sites make it sound like some apocalyptic blizzard or some such, that brought traffic in the region to a literal standstill (right, like hosting a Monday Night Football home game WON'T do that!), but really not that bad, and not exactly atypical for this time of year.
Still, it's a bit annoying to hear/read the invevitable kvetching from the midwestern immigrants, who seem to think Seattleites are complete wimps for refusing to drive to work on a day like today. Of course, they tend to overlook the quite obvious fact that we only get this kind of extreme weather a couple of times a year at most, so a lot of people here simply aren't used to driving in these conditions, and it's just plain common-sense to try to dissuade as many drivers as possible from leaving the house today, in order to reduce the number of inevitable accidents, and resulting injuries.
Also, please stop your caterwauling of, "In (insert name of midwestern city here), we would have plenty of snow plows and sand trucks to deal with these situations". That's great, and makes perfect sense - IF you happen to live somewhere that gets this sort of weather on a regular basis, for weeks at a time. But please, enough with the condescention already; we're not urban bumpkins just because we don't see the point of spending tens of millions of dollars on road clearing equipment that would normally sit idle 360+ days a year.
And to all of you complaining that, "I slogged 15 blocks down the hill to my office - and I'm the ONLY ONE HERE!" - get over yourselves. At least this way you get to do your normal daily goofing off, but without the added stress of having to occasionally pretend to be working.
Finally, to the idiots who INSIST on attempting to drive down ice-covered residential streets at normal speeds - if you live in Seattle, please avoid 22nd Avenue between E Union & E Marion: really, you won't save any time trying to use my street as a shortcut, and I would appreciate it greatly if you resisted the temptation to play "automobile pinball" with your SUV, because seriously, I don't need to send my car to the shop for more body repair, just so you can show everyone that you're able to muscle your way to work today - and you, yeah you in the black Ford Explorer, you know who I'm talking about, so don't pretend I didn't see you this morning.
That's it. I'm done. If you were lucky enough to get a snow day today, enjoy yourselves, stay warm, try not to fall down - and watch out for crazy drivers in black Ford Explorers.
Yeah I can help myself To any month on any day now
Added a Google Calendar Feature to the margins (below the links lists to your left), so's now you-all can keep up with my busy, busy schedule. I think there's even a way for you to save items of interest, although it may entail subscribing to Google Calendars yourself (although I believe you can also import them to iCal, you lucky, lucky Mac users), so let me know how that works out.
Still in partial recovery-mode; this bug just seems to linger and linger. Not enough to make me feel legitimately ill, but still having definite respiratory issues, even though it doesn't seem to want to slide over into full-blown bronchitis, either. So, little blessings.
Did venture out last evening to see one of my perenial fave bands on their final U.S. tour stop. The ladies are taking some much-deserved down time, and so it will be at least a year before they grace our shores again. However, the good news is one member of the band, Mel Watson has become enamored of Our Fair City, and has foresaken her native Auzzieland for the soggy Upper Left-hand, so at least we'll be able to catch the occasional solo show.
We're being kicked out of the office early today, and our DSL at home seems to be on-the-fritz (my upstairs neighbors are now talking about ditching our current service for something more reliable, since they do much of their "day work" from home), so I may be off the Interwebby again until Monday, depending.
If so, wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving - stay dry, drive/fly safely, and forget about the calorie-counting for a couple of days!
Made it through work until about 1:30, when the receptionist, ranting something about, "most foul and noisesome breath", or some such (it was hard to hear her exact words over all the coughing), finally insisted I go home.
One dose of generic Robatussin CF later, and I'm feeling much better, but clearly I'm going to need another day or two to really shake this little nasty completely out of my system.
Just as well I left work when I did; one of our now weekly storm fronts is passing through, throwing fistfuls of rain against my bedroom window at near pane-shattering velocity, and so it looks like yet another good night to curl up with a book or DVD and hit the hay early - assuming the flickering of the desk lamp doesn't portend instead an evening spent waiting for the power and heat to come back on.
I'm heading south on Friday for the annual theatre retreat, and I'm just hoping both my constitution and the weather are going to cut me a little break for the weekend.
Well, THAT was an exciting evening! And today has turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day!
And then there's the weather.
Yes, it has been a tad - damp - up here in the Upper Left-Hand for the past several weeks, thanks to a particularly strong "Pineapple Express" hauling in copius amounts of warm, moisture-laden air from the central Pacific, which inevitably drops its load like a California fire fighting plane as soon as it runs up against our mountainous northern coastline.
Today in fact has been the first semi-sunny day in about 12 days, but even that was short-lived. I'm sitting in the dressing room of "The Theatre", and even as I write this, the rainfall has resumed with a savage vengeance, drowning out the auditions on one side, the shakuhachi recital on the other, and the rehearsal going on in the space behind me. (No doubt some might surmise that GOD is indeed a Republican, and weeping at yesterdays election results - I would say, if that's the case, she's a Democrat, and they're tears of joy).
Fortunately, my basement apartment is fairly upslope on the back side of CapHill, and aside from a mess of leaves littering the lawn, I'm not suffering much from the inclement weather. I would be howling a very different tune, however, were I still on the boat.
Ole' Tennessee Ernie might have just been singing a song, but in my case the above is more than a probability, seeing as my birthplace, Tillamook, OR (I swear, Wikipedia has a listing for just everything!), a small farming community on the Northern Oregon coast is the kind of place where "drizzle and rain" would be pretty much the norm for this time of year.
Tillamook is of course most famous for its dairy products (ironically, I would end up working for six and a-half years for their main competitor in the PNW), and in fact at the time I was born, my maternal grandfather owned a dairy farm there. So, like the residents of of Wisconsin (where, strangely I also have distant relatives on my father's side of the family - see a thread emerging here?), I can legitimately claim to be a "cheesehead" (although, really, why would I WANT to?).
Be that as it may, I'm proud to be a Native Mossback, and like anyone born to a specific geographic locale, after 46 years in The Upper Left Hand, it's hard to imagine my wanting to live anywhere else on earth.
Other (famous) People With Birthdays Today:
Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor - 1500 Benjamin Lee, Baronet Guinness, brewer - 1798 Stephen Crane, author - 1871 Gordon R. Dickson, author - 1923 Gary Player, golfer - 1935 Pat Buchanan, bloviator - 1938 Shere Hite, author - 1942 Larry Flynt, pornographer - 1942 Lyle Lovett, singer - 1956 Fernando Valenzuela, left-handed, heat-throwing lava lizard - 1960 Jenny McCarthy, bimbo - 1972
World Events Occuring Today:
1512 - Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistene Chapel first exhibited 1604 - First performance of Shakespeare's "Othello" 1611 - First performance of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" 1755 - The "Great Lisbon Earthquake" kills 50,000 1783 - Continental army dissolved; Gen. Washington gives "farewell address" 1800 - John Adams becomes first president to live in the White House 1889 - North & South Dakota enter union as 39th & 40th states 1920 - Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones" premieres in New York 1921 - American Birth Control League formed; later to become Planned Parenthood 1922 - Ottoman Empire abolished 1924 - Boston Bruins, 1st NHL franchise, founded 1935 - T.S. Eliot's "Murder In The Cathedral" premieres in London 1947 - First and only flight of Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" 1952 - First Hydrogen bomb exploded in S. Pacific 1979 - "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" premieres in London 1984 - Larry Schue's "The Foreigner" premieres in New York
(Many notable theatrical premieres on this date; producers take note.)
