Who wished for a white Christmas???

Christmas is turning out to be a bit of a bummer this year, thanks to the snow. Let me tell you, a “white Christmas” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!! I haven’t been able to do any pre-Christmas festive things like going to see the lights on Peacock Lane, or the holiday decorations at the Pittock Mansion, or the big light display at the Grotto. I also won’t get to go to the Michael Allen Harrison Christmas concert tonight. Greg and I were supposed to spend Christmas Eve together, but that’s been canceled, as has the big family celebration at my parent’s house tomorrow. Assuming enough snow melts by Sunday, we’re hoping to have the big family get-together then. We’ll see

My dad is coming to get me this afternoon (he has 4-wheel-drive) and I’ll spend Christmas Eve and day with my parents at their house. I hope that wherever you are, you all have a safe and happy Christmas! And let’s all hope that the Pacific Northwest never gets a white Christmas again!

Walking, not driving

I did indeed have the day off work today. In need of something to do, and some snacks, I walked 3 miles round-trip to Albertson’s. It took nearly two hours total, including shopping time. There were a shocking number of cars on the road and only about 75% of them had chains. None of the roads in Portland are bare. At best, there is an inch or two of packed snow that’s “easy” to drive over. Some people were driving very moronically and I saw more than one person talking on a cell phone while negotiating the snowy streets. Eek!

The grocery store was total madness. All the pre-Christmas shopping, I guess. I’m very sore after lugging home 30 some pounds of groceries, but at least I burned off some energy. Should sleep well tonight!

No idea if the library will be open tomorrow. If it is, I won’t be driving. My car is totally buried.

Officially winter

Winter officially began today, says the calendar, although I’ve been sick of winter for a good week now. Eight inches of snow yesterday with freezing rain overnight and another inch of snow this afternoon. I went for a walk in the daylight and the dark, but I’m still going stir-crazy. You can only do so much reading and catching up on mail and magazines before that starts to get old. It’s unlikely the library will open tomorrow, so I’ll have a third day stuck at home, bored and alone.

Snow can be fun if there’s somebody around who you can enjoy it with. But my sister is in South Africa, my boyfriend doesn’t around live here, and my friends are snowed in like me. So, this is actually the first snowfall of my life that I haven’t taken active delight in. Normally I can’t get enough of it. Maybe next time.

Weather ridiculousness

The dire forecasts continue, but we continue to get nothing much. The hills are getting more snow, but not the majority of lower-elevation Portland. It’s all getting a little ridiculous, if you ask me. This article sums it up well!

Some Bothered That Portland Gets Paralyzed By Snow
BY PETE SPRINGER
Portland, OR December 18, 2008

It’s no secret that when winter weather arrives in Portland, “the city that works” doesn’t. Schools get closed, workers call in sick, and drivers chain up — even when the pavement is bare and temperatures are above freezing.

As Pete Springer reports, this kind of response baffles Portlanders who grew up in cities that get a lot more snow than the City of Roses.

Cort Medeiros grew up in upstate New York before moving to Boston for a job.

While in Boston, she missed one day of work in six years due to weather – and that was only after a storm dumped six feet of snow.

She says it’s silly how people react to a mere forecast calling for snow in Portland.

Cort Medeiros: “People still get so freaked out about it and, are, you know, paralyzed by it and the whole city is shutdown and, that’s just kind of weird to me.”

Medeiros says constant television news coverage of winter weather in Portland helps fuel this paralysis.

Cort Medeiros: “I was like ‘Arctic Freeze’? It’s 37 degrees outside and you know, maybe it will snow tonight, maybe it will snow tomorrow, but there’s definitely this kind of scare tactic of showing long lines of people at Wal*Mart buying water and batteries.”

Medeiros says if weather shut down northeast cities like Boston the way it shuts down Portland, no one would ever go to school or work during the wintertime.

Portland area school officials say they have closed certain schools this week based on weather forecasts predicting snow and freezing temperatures.

Even though many of those forecasts have been wrong, school officials say considerations about the safe transport of students to and from school makes them err on the side of caution.

But Amy Taylor doesn’t buy this. Taylor has lived in Portland for the last six years after growing up in Boulder, Colorado.

Amy Taylor “I mean I have to give it to Portland, you do have an ice problem around here that we didn’t necessarily have in Boulder, Colorado. But I think there tends to be a little bit of an overreaction to weather like this. People aren’t really familiar with it, but, um, it’s really not that bad out there.”

Taylor says when she was growing up in Boulder, her school superintendent was from Alaska so it pretty much took a blizzard to cancel school.

Amy Taylor “So not only did we live in Colorado where they rarely called a snow day, but our Alaskan superintendent really wasn’t going to call a snow day, so more often or not, we would be bundled up in our coats and ready to get to school.”

Even so, Taylor and other transplants to Portland get a kick over how so many places in the city shut down when a few snowflakes fall.

Amy Taylor “It’s sort of adorable how everybody thinks that the snow is a little bit of a catastrophe when they see it coming down from the sky. Get out there and play. Just have fun.”

That’s exactly what many school kids have been doing this week.

But come June, they may regret all the snow days. That’s because Oregon schools require a certain amount of educational hours per year, and some of those snow days may have to be made up in June.

Weather dartboard

Today’s forecast: SNOW! FREEZING RAIN! MESSY COMMUTE BOTH MORNING AND EVENING! DOOM! GLOOM!

What actually happened? Rain. Cold miserable Oregon rain. I took the bus to work and home again, an hour each way with one transfer. On the way home, I was waiting for buses in the pouring rain and cursing the forecasters for their poor predictions. Greg has a theory that forecasters have a forecast dartboard that they use to predict the weather. It sure seems that way a lot of the time!

It’s only 8:10, but I think I’m going to crawl under my down comforter, read awhile, then call it a night.

Winter continues

It’s not even officially winter yet and I’m already sick of it. On the bright side, though, I found out today that I DO NOT have to use up vacation time to cover snow days at work. If they close the library, I don’t have to use vacation. If the library is open and I can’t make it in, then I have to use vacation, which is fair. We’re due for more snow tomorrow, but if the library opens anyway I’m going. I won’t be driving – goodness no! – but with two buses and 45 minutes I should make it in.

Snow day

It snowed several inches yesterday in the Portland area, creating a winter wonderland. After it was done snowing, the temperature promptly dropped and turned much of that snow into ice. My apartment building is at the top of a hill and my car is now parked at the bottom of that hill along with many others who couldn’t make it up the icy slope. I wish the roads weren’t so icy; I could use an outing. The snow was fun until it started hindering my mobility, and as beautiful as it all is, I’d still take a long, warm, sunny July day over this. I’m convinced that the only people who welcome this weather are skiers (I’ve never been one), people who like to stay home (I like to get out and do stuff, thank you!), and people who own 4-wheel-drive vehicles (definitely not me).

I got a call at 7 a.m. today telling me that the library is closed. You think I’d be thrilled to have the day off work, but I’ll be forced to use vacation time to cover the missed hours. I’m not allowed to use sick leave or just give those hours up for lost. I can try to make them up, but it has to be in the same pay period, so it would have to be by Saturday. With more bad weather on the way, it’s likely the library will be closed again some other day this week, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to make up 16 hours this week. It galls me to sit here cooped up at home using up my precious vacation hours. This is not my idea of a vacation!

To end, here is a video of my cat, Charmin, in the snow. She’s always trying to get outside, sometimes successfully. The idea here was a little negative reinforcement to prevent her from trying any escape attempts again anytime soon. It’s for her own good!  Here’s the video.

Mudbound

I just finished Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan. It’s a WWII-era novel that takes place in the south and is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Laura is getting to be an old maid in Memphis by the time Henry comes into her life. For several years they live in the city, happily married and raising two daughters. But a series of events causes Henry to abruptly the family to a muddy farm in Mississippi. His cantankerous father moves in with them. Henry’s joy at becoming a landowner and working the land is nothing to Laura’s unhappiness at becoming a farm wife. While Henry spends days out in the field, he leaves his ornery father in the house with Laura and the children. Laura often has the help of Florence, who along with her husband, Hap, are sharecroppers on Henry’s farm. Florence is the only thing that keeps Laura sane on the isolated, muddy farm, where there is no electricity and no running water. Laura nicknames the farm “Mudbound” for the mud that plagues them and covers everything.

Soon Ronsel, a local black man who fought in the war, returns home from Europe. He was treated as a man when he was in the army. Now that he’s back in Mississippi he is treated like as a lesser being and he continually struggles with the reality of life in the South. Henry’s brother, Jamie, also returns from the war, healthy in body but not in mind. Plagued by memories of the many bombing missions he flew over Europe, Jamie falls into drunkenness and trouble. Jamie’s and Ronsel’s paths begin to merge and fly headlong towards an inevitable and horrifying disaster.

Being a novel that takes place in the South before the Civil Rights Movement, I found parts of this book frustrating and saddening. But Jordan is a good story-teller and I found the book enjoyable despite the hatred and prejudice depicted in the novel. I look forward to more books from her.

The “other one”

The other day a boy about 10 years old came up to the reference desk.

Boy: “I’m looking for a biography on Neil Armstrong and his comeback from cancer.”
Me: [Know right away this kid wasn't talking about Neil Armstrong.] “Neil Armstrong? The astronaut?”
Boy: “No, no. The other one.”
Me: [Mental eye-roll] “Do you mean Lance Armstrong? The cyclist?”
Boy: “Yeah, him!”

As it happened, we had several books on Lance Armstrong and the kid went home happy. I wonder if that kid even knows who Neil Armstrong is.

Twilight

I just finished reading the Twilight series, by Stephenie Meyer. I read it not out of any interest for vampires and werewolves but because I wanted to know what all the hype was about. I started reading the series in early September and have been reading them on every single lunch break since then. It’s taken that long! I’ll be glad to move on to something else for my lunch break reading.

The first book, Twilight, was actually pretty good. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, here’s a brief synopsis. Bella, a 17-year-old who has recently moved in with her father in Forks, Washington, meets a strange boy at school. At first she pretty much hates Edward but soon becomes quite intrigued by him. She eventually finds out that he and his family are vampires, although she is not frightened by this fact, especially since these vampires are “vegetarians”: they drink animal blood, not human blood. She falls in love with Edward and the two start dating. We get many (MANY) descriptions about how dazzling and beautiful and perfect he is. Ugh. Nevertheless, this book was pretty good. Unfortunately, it goes downhill from here.

In the next three books New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn, Edward leaves Bella then returns to her, Bella befriends Jacob (who turns out to be a werewolf and a sworn enemy of the vampires), human and vampire lives alike are threatened and battles are fought because of evil vampires, and other adventures ensue. The love story between Bella and Edward runs throughout the series. Their love is sweet (and chaste), although it frequently descends into nauseating territory. Bella constantly begs to be transformed into a vampire herself so that she and Edward can live together in eternal happiness, but on the off chance you’ve escaped the Twilight hype, I won’t tell you if that happens or not. Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise!

As with many series writers (J.K. Rowling, ahem!), Meyer let the fame go to her head and each book is longer than the next. The last book weighs in at a hefty 750 pages, and no way did it need to be that long. By the end, she has clearly developed what I call “diarrhea of the pen”, seemingly unable to stop writing long drawn-out descriptions and dialogue for every single scene. Like the end of Rowling’s last Harry Potter book, I was getting rather bored with the drawn-out story by the end of Breaking Dawn. I will say, though, that Meyer is a fairly decent writer and I plan to read her new book, The Host, next.

Don’t know yet if I’ll see the movie now or wait for the DVD. I’m more intrigued by the fact that it was mostly filmed here in Oregon than I am by the story itself.