It’s been snowing for days here in Seattle, effectively shutting the town down. Buses are stranded on hills, schools are closed, and Rand and I have done our best not to go all “Shining” on each other while stuck indoors together (except for a brief bit of hatchet chopping which he really had coming, it’s all been rather pleasant).

Snow rarely happens in Seattle. We might get a few inches over a few days, but it’s been ages since we’ve seen this much snowfall, and actually had it stick around. The first night, the streets were filled with people. The park near our home was a snowball battlefield, and at least a dozen snowmen had been erected.

And … um, speaking of things being erected … (Note: if you work in a particularly conservative environment, you might not want to keep reading) let me tell you about the snow sculpture we encountered in the park.

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There are times when I am reminded of why, despite all my travels, Seattle will always be home to me. I’ll always come back here. I’ll always love it.

It may be true that during our rainy season, a woman could go through her entire gestation cycle and produce a lovely, though Vitamin-D-deficient, child. Or that many of our drivers are suffering from lifelong cases of idiocy. Or that our prices for necessities are so outrageous, Rand and I once paid $7 for a bottle of orange juice (tip: a great way to numb the pain of expensive OJ? Screwdrivers).

But every now and then you will get a sunset like this one, in the middle of January, no less:

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And you wonder how anyone could live anywhere else.

Yesterday, it snowed in Seattle. This is a rarity in the Pacific Northwest. We’re no strangers to precipitation, but not of the frozen variety. A sprinkling of snow tends to shut the entire town down.

So you can just imagine what happened yesterday, when FIVE INCHES of snow fell. Buses stopped running. Streets were closed. People frantically dragged their poor husbands to the grocery stores at ridiculously early hours in order to get food so that they would not starve during the imminent ice age (okay, fine. That last one might have been me. I’m not sitting through snowpocalypse without a run to Trader Joe’s first).

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Yesterday afternoon, and in the wee hours of the morning today, a group of Occupy protesters headed down to the Port of Seattle. There they blocked traffic, attempted to shut down operations at the port, and clashed with police. Eleven people were arrested.

I, unaware of where the action actually was, walked along what was left of the Occupy encampment at Seattle Central Community College (the protesters were evicted last week, but there are a few errant tents and scragglers left over). I’d been too timid to go when there were actually people there – I’d visited the Occupy Protests in London and New York, and felt like an interloper. Now that most of the Seattle outpost was gone, and there was little to see, and few people milling about, I felt braver.

But still, I was an outsider, and the one man who I spoke to made that clear to me.

He responded to my questions in clipped answers. At the time, I didn’t think I was being terribly invasive. I asked where everyone had gone and what was going to happen now. He was clearly bothered – either by how little I knew about the movement or by the suspicion that I was, in fact, part of a bigger media outlet. The truth, had he known it, would likely have gone over far worse: that despite my unemployment and money woes, despite my Converse and old wool coat, I’m married to a CEO. And my life is pretty damn good.

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My head is a little scattered right now.

I just unfriended a young man on Facebook who I’ve known since high school. He was always a fun guy – clever and hilarious and really a joy to be around. I unfriended him because a comment of his on one of my posts left me so angered and so hurt, I simply didn’t want to deal with it or him. Perhaps it was impulsive of me. Perhaps I overreacted. But I’m of the mind that if we haven’t talked for a decade, then you don’t have the right to hurt my feelings.

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From my trip to London last spring, in much quieter times.

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Like most of you, I’ve been following the news about the riots in London. I’ve seen the photos. I’ve searched through news articles. I’ve poured through the twitter accounts of my friends across the pond, all in an attempt to figure out what the hell is going on over there. And there’s so much I want to say, but I’m not sure where to start.

I’m tempted to begin by yelling at the tribes of young, embittered idiots who are running through the city and destroying everything in their path, like a pack of deranged locusts. Though instead of corn, they’re seeking out electronics. I want to slap some sense in them, and remind them that they are from the country that invented manners (and a healthy disdain at a lack of said manners), and their behavior is completely unacceptable. I hope that in a few days’ time, they’ll look at the burning wreckage of their city, and they’ll understand that they’re the ones who will have to live in it. It’s the societal equivalent of rubbing a dog’s nose in its mess.

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Before I launch full-force into my coverage of Boston (the city, not the band), I feel like I should mention the events of this past Sunday, which I bore witness to, and which made it to the local news here in Seattle.

Now, keep in mind, despite being a fairly notable city, Seattle isn’t exactly an exciting news town. Other things that have made it to the local news include: “Bald eagle saved by mouth-to-beak CPR” and “Washington woman in court for trying to sell baby to Taco Bell.” So the bar for a story being newsworthy is set kind of excruciating low in our neck of the woods, but since it happened right in front of us, and wigged me out substantially, I figured I’d talk about it.
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