This is nothing but today.

So although it was absolutely golden and gorgeous yesterday, it's been raining a whole lot lately.

Some of my friends, mostly the Californians, are often at pains to send me that one Oatmeal comic. Some of them send it to me repeatedly, every so often, I think just to hear me growl. I tend to have two reactions to this (and to people bitching about the rain in general), one of which is "look, that's actually not true" and other of which is less coherent but is usually along the lines of "Jesus Christ, if rain makes you actually wish for death, then why the fuck do you live here? GO LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE or SHUT UP ALREADY."

*sigh*

Then I remind myself there are lots of reasons why people can't move out of the city where they live even if they want to. Finances, school, family, spouses, job, lack of job, being under eighteen and forced to live wherever your parents want to (which was how I found myself in southern California for a few years), etc. So instead, to stop growling and add something a little more pleasant to the world, I decided to list for you the reasons why I love the rain!

(Don't get me wrong. I love the sunshine too. Ask my close friends; I'm definitely a solar-powered vixy. How do I manage to be a solar-powered vixy while living in Seattle, you may ask? Because it doesn't actually rain as goddamned often as that. But I digress!)

Why I love the rain! by Vixy, age 40.

* The scent. Oh my heaven, the scent. Or rather, the variety of scents. The baked dusty smell of summer rain falling on really hot pavement. The green mysterious smell of spring rain falling hard. The washed-clean early-morning smell when it's just stopped raining and everything's still wet. The wet wood and gasoline smell when it rains down by the lake on the docks. Wet pine needles. Wet spring flowers. Even the mud, sometimes. (And its cousin, the smell of snow on the air when it's wet out and really cold. I don't know how else to describe it when it's not snowing but the air smells like snow, but once you've smelled it you always know it.)

* Watching it fall. Just watching it against the evergreens. When I was little I could spend just hours curled up in the big green rocking armchair, watching the rain. It's beautiful and quiet and contemplative.

* The sounds! Oh there's nothing like the sound of heavy rain against windows. Especially when it's windy. I've always found that thrilling. But even when it's a calm rain, it's soothing and delicious. Hearing that sound is perfect when curled up with a book or working on an art project or staying up late when everyone else in the house is asleep. Or that particuar whoosshhhh of cars driving by on wet pavement. And oh, there's nothing like making love to the sound of heavy rain.

* Summer rain, when it's warm enough to have the sliding back doors open (when I had such a thing). The sound and the sight of it falling combine and it's like you have your own private room that's outside, like a sunroom with walls of water and light instead of glass, with the sound going "hushhhh."

* Umbrellas! I love umbrellas. I have many, of different pretty colors and fancy prints, and I want more. I love walking in the rain with umbrellas. I'll open my umbrella at the least excuse, even when it's not really raining hard enough to bother, just because I think they're neat. It's kind of that same feeling as with summer rain; it's like my own little portable private room. And again there's a particular sound that goes with it; it's like walking around inside a secret.

* The peace of it. Now, I love sunny days, but they always feel to me like I should be out! doing! exciting! things! Can't waste a beautiful sunny day! For the most part I hate going to movies during the day, or watching movies or TV during the day, because I hate wasting daylight. But not if it's raining. If it's raining out, then curling up on the couch watching old movies feels justified. Rain makes staying in feel just right.

* Playing in it! Staying indoors is all very well, but playing in the rain is FUN! If you never knew the joy of splashing around in puddles or damming up curbside gutters as a kid, then you have my pity.

* Walking in it. Look, I don't care how cheesy the love songs are. Walking hand in hand with someone in the rain, running for a bus or kissing in a half-sheltered doorway... hey, sometimes things are tropes for a reason.

* Feeling it on my face. There's just a certain kind of chill... and there's something about laughing at it, in a defying-the-gods kind of way. If you're ever caught in the rain, try it sometime. Instead of hunching over and hiding your head, try turning your face upwards, feeling it falling in your ace, and laughing. Just trust me.

* The way everything shines. Again, some things appear in songs with good reason.

* Seeing it from far away. When it's not raining where you are and you can see far enough to see a rainstorm in the distance, looking like someone took their paintbrush and smeared the clouds downwards... that's just one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen.

* Sun against rain. Also one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. Where I live, sometimes we get bright golden sunshine against a backdrop of deep charcoal-grey come-to-Mordor clouds. It is the coolest-looking thing ever. Even better than that, sometimes we get bright golden sunshine while it's raining hard. Usually when sunset is sneaking sideways under the cloud layer. Every drop lights up and it's like the sky's on fire.

* The way it makes everything green green GREEN! I've lived where most everything was dusty brown with a touch of green, when it wasn't on fire. I prefer to live where most everything is green and growing. Years ago an old friend put it best; this place *just* *says* *life*.

...heh. Appropriately, that's thirteen things. :D (Though some of those things are actually a whole bunch of things listed together.) And I'm sure there's more. But I've spent the last couple of days pondering what to include, and these are the things I've been daydreaming about mostly while falling asleep.

I'd love for everyone to love my city as much as I do. But if you can't, I hope you find a city that you love as much as I love mine.

See you around. :)

A stuff that made me happy on Friday that I forgot about before:
* finding a couple of beloved old children's books at Balderdash Books & Art, the used bookstore down from Wayward. I like finding old books that I loved and that are now out of print. (I also like giving my business to locally-owned neighborhood businesses when I can.) One of these I hadn't even remembered except for a vague phrase: "You must be a fairy. Only fairies can kiss their elbows." That sentence has always stuck in my head but I never remembered even remotely where it came from. So while poking through the bookstore on Friday, I happened to see a title that sort of kind of rang a bell: No Flying In the House. I picked it up kind of going "do I know this book? I wonder if I know this book," and read the blurb on the back, which talks about a little orphan girl surrounded by mystery, and "why can she, and only she, kiss her elbows?"

Holy cats! I still don't remember anything else about this book, but it's going to be fun getting reacquainted.

Stuff that made me happy on Saturday:
* more snowww! I am a simple fox.
* unexpected text hugs!
* finding the rest of the presents I need to find before Christmas, and patient, patient gfish for driving me to the bookstore and the post office and the grocery store.
* getting everything done in time to be just leaving the grocery store when the snow started again.
* Iron Chef America. I love Cat Cora and Michael Symon and of course I love Alton Brown.
* watching TV with Fishy, which is somehow more fun than watching TV with anyone else.

Stuff that has made me happy today:
* sleeping in
* finishing a good book
* taking a walk in the snow
* not actually having to *go* anywhere in the snow
* practicing guitar (okay I haven't yet but I'm about to.) Special thanks for tips from various people, especially solarbird and omnisti (by way of his brother), on making this process more fun. It's getting through the period where you're just not very good at this that has been my stumbling block in attempts past. And of course thanks to my teacher, tfabris.
* having a warm home, yummy food and hot beverages, and warm loves to keep me company while I watch the snow.

Now to wrap the rest of the presents, just in case Christmas actually happens. :)

La la staying home la!

Yeah, I know it's only maybe an inch, if that, but it's falling steadily and it's supposed to keep doing it all day (if we still have any faith in weather forecasts), and I have very little snow-driving experience, and even less experience dodging all the *other* people with no snow-driving experience. When I called Boss1 she said "I was just about to call you and tell you to stay home."

I'm still partially working-- have the office phones forwarded to my house, and am checking work email throughout the day-- but I'm snug on my couch, watching the snow out my window.

(Our relatives in eastern Washington, where they have just had TWO TO THREE FEET of snow in TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, may laugh heartily at their tender western cousins now.)

-------------

Also, I forgot to post the things-that-made-me-happy yesterday (Day 3)! Here are a few:

* waking up first thing to a text message from a beloved
* tea, the beverage of the gods
* smiling at strangers, who smiled back, every one (even the people in the post office line, which I had to cross through to get in & out the door)
* loved ones willing to be patient and understanding and help me learn things
* an unexpected visit! Star light, star bright...
* all this LOVE!

( Today's collection of random bits (edited to cut because it was longer than I thought): )

Kaleidoscopic recap of the weekend: relaxed, oily, and fed with ice cream; yummy homemade pasta and spicy-but-not-too-spicy-for-vixies sauce; but why is the wine gone?; Munky Brains and the Epic Fails hires a new member; the cake is still a lie (but the Lussekatter are real!); *tsk* you'd have made a better goblin; gmail wouldn't lie to you!; vixy successfully drives in snow; no really we're totally getting up now; oatmeal and cream; ice in the wheel well and the howlin' wind; moon rocks are sparkly!; chai is warm and sweet and tasty; the REAL perils of poly; fuzzy pajamas, footie pajamas, cookies and dead flesh (but no nuts); frickin' cold vs. fucking cold (DOE); don't use up all the internets; ice is less scary if you bring a monkey with you.

(ETA: Rock Concert Movement #237: Taking the audience on a Jungian journey into the collective unconscious by using the shadow as a metaphor for the primal self that gets repressed by the modern persona and also by using an underground setting and labyrinth office design to represent both the depths of the psyche and the dungeon-like isolation of our increasingly mechanistic society which prevents people from finding satisfying work or meaningful connections with others.)

A bunch of only marginally related things:

( Gig! )

( Walking! )

( Makeup! (That's not as exciting.) )

( Weather! )

Vixy & Tony's Schedule

I had no less than THREE compliments on my Tiffany dragonfly umbrella today. Well, I choose to assume that the guy who said "that is a FAR OUT umbrella!" meant it as a compliment. The other two were obviously so.

I love umbrellas. I often use them even when it's not really raining all that hard. There's something about them that makes me feel like I am inside my own little portable room, and the rain is the walls. So I have more umbrellas than I need, and more on my wish list. I rotate them sometimes. Here in my office is the Tiffany dragonfly one and my Caillebotte "Rainy Day in Paris" one, and my Jack Vettriano "Singing Butler" one at home, and my UCSB one in my car. (The Tiffany one was in the car, but I was afraid of it getting faded in the back window.)

I'm fussy. I don't like the mini-ones. I like the full-size long ones with hook handles. Even better if they're wooden. And not just any pretty thing. They have to have a certain something. I'm not so much for gambolling kittens. (I only have the USCB one as a memento from my undergrad.)

In other news, Fishy sent me this today. I found it REALLY interesting! I'm including his moomail to me, because he put it better than I could:

I think you'll really like this. It's an ASL translation of a Marilyn Manson song. Well done, at least in
terms of production values and high level thematic content. It's really interesting from a translation
level, and the disclaimer at the beginning is also neat cause it makes you realize how hard pop culture and
music would be to understand if you can't hear any of it:

(Do pay attention to the disclaimer, so's you can click 'pause' if you have to. Short version: it's got curse words in.)

( And now we see if I can make embedding work: )

I'd never actually heard ANY of Marilyn Manson's music before, I don't think. But it *is* interesting to ponder the idea that there are probably those who think only the good and nice and safe stuff should be interpreted. I like what he has to say about having the whole culture accessible to the whole population, mostly because I'd never given thought to that (more specifically, to how that probably fails to happen) before. And it's interesting to see something pop-culture-y interpreted that's going as much for the inherent style as for the words. We filkers have all seen judifilksign capture the inherent style of our music quite expertly. I'd never given thought to how that would play out in other styles.

And, it's side-line amusing to me that there were a couple lyrics in there that I could not for the life of me understand by *listening*, but figured out because of the signs. :)

Edit: Interpretation in general also fascinates me. I know very few signs, but I did notice, for example, that where the lyric says "Do we get it?" "No!" "Do we want it?" "Yes!" As far as I can tell, what he's actually signing, at least the first time, is "Understand the music?" "No!" "Want the music?" "Yes!" It illustrates how sometimes the interpreter must have to make a judgment call on what the singer meant. You could mean several things by "Do we get it?" He's probably right, by the context, but I mean... oh never mind me, I'm just language-geeking over here. :)

Edit edit: I should add, I find this issue fascinating for all languages. I understand French, some Spanish, and a bit of Russian, and I geek out utterly whenever I watch anything with those languages in. (I was interpreting Call of Duty 4 for Tony last night, until it made me too motion sick to be in the same room anymore.)

It fascinates me to watch things with subtitles, and see if I understand, and what the difference is. Once in a while the choice of subtitles makes NO SENSE to me, but mostly it's just interesting to see the interpretation. Because it's very, very often that a strictly literal translation would not be meaningful or useful, and then you have to apply your own judgment based on context.

Snow snow snow! Though it is rather crunchy and icy now. On the way to our respective works (I love carpooling, because it means Tony drives so I don't have to) we took a bit of a detour when we could see people getting stuck trying to go up the hill. Smart cookies, we are.

The weather people say no more snow, but then, they were all COMPLETELY caught by surprise by this snow. (We left my work at 4:45 and it was pouring rain; by the time we got home at 5 it was dumping snow.) In honor of the day, I am wearing this shirt. Well, and some other stuff, too.

The people across the street have been waiting for the bus for 40 minutes now. I know because the girl in the red-and-white striped scarf was there when we pulled up. I think the others were added later. This main drag is pretty clear of ice, so if the bus got stuck it's stuck waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy down by the college. Or else it's a Northgate bus and it's stuck coming up the hill. Bummer.

I am in an inordinately good mood, despite some minor momstuff going on, because we've marked our last checkbox for "Mal's Song" (see last recording update on my music website)-- Tony finished the bass line last night! And it is OMG GOOD! And that on top of Maya's amazing harmonies on top of the other vocals on top of Sunnie's amazing fiddle on top of Tony's amazing guitar SO OMG GOOD. Holy crap, I cannot WAIT for people to hear this! Seriously, I squealed. Plus, first song with all our checkboxes marked off! WOOT!

Edit: Seriously, I am in love with this song all over again. Do other singers get tired of their own songs? I sometimes get tired of my own songs. I don't dislike them, exactly, but sometimes they get a little old. This is the first time I can remember that I've wanted to listen to one of my own songs over and over and over again.

Position: 67° 56' 12" N, 134° 4' 48.5" W. Updated map here.. If it looks like they're farther inland than they should be when you zoom in, it's because the map doesn't have all the channels of the delta on it. Switch to satellite view and zoom in a bit more; they are about 70 km into the delta, on the east channel.

And the word of the day is: WET.

Apparently yesterday was the day o' rain. They reached Tsiigehtchic yesterday around 6pm, and ran into a guy who offered to let them fill their water bottles and stuff, then offered to let them eat and shower... "'cause that just happens up here." Around 9pm they set back out (it being still plenty light) and then... RAIN. Rain rain rain. Soooooo much rain. They stopped and set up camp at midnight, utterly soaked; they were wet, the gear was wet, the tent was wet (and had some holes in the rain flap from its gymnastics debut last week) and they were desperately trying to stay up on their inflatable mattress thing so that the sleeping bags wouldn't get wet from the ground, and were just generally miserable.

When they got up, the canoe was filled to the bottom of the seat with water. (Okay, it was on a slight incline, so it was pooled a bit more at one end, but still!)

Today it was sunny (yay!) and there were rainbows (yay!) Apparently rainbows stay around a lot longer up there, for jsut hours... maybe because the sun is moving (perceptually speaking) less? We dunno.

The delta is slower going, no current. They figure 2 more days-- 50-60 km tomorrow, camp, then a final morning of paddling and they make Inuvik during the day when things are open. Two more days! And then it'll be hopefully the day trip to see pingos, and after that maybe 5-6 days' drive home.

Critters: arctic terns everywhere! Our heroes seem to have inadvertently camped on a beach that is the terns' turf-- they've been dive-bombed a few times. They (the terns, that is) spend more time in the sun than any other creatures-- commuting from the arctic to the antarctic and back, holy cow.

I mentioned how many of you have mentioned "Northwest Passage" in these posts; not knowing it well, Fishy has had a much different soundtrack in his head over these long days of paddling. A lot of Ookla the Mok running through his head ("Hockey Monkey" in particular), a lot of Leonard Cohen, and, for some reason, a lot of Rocky Horror Picture show. ("You have no idea how much I miss media.")

"Well, it's almost midnight... which means it should be getting slightly dim in about an hour."
"[giggling] 'in about an hour...'"
"I'm serious."
"That's why I'm giggling."
"I miss night."

And on that note, everyone... goodnight. :)

The vixyfish update: lots of noise, lots of branches scattered about everywhere, but the Burrow has power and we're fine.

We lost power last night. Many, many times. I had already shut down Phedre and come down to the living room to read, figuring we were doomed to lose power sooner or later, and planning just to keep reading by flashlight once it went. Fishy put some Mythbusters on the VJ and worked from his laptop, figuring he'd shut down when it went and then read, too.

Each time, the power would go out with a thump, we'd hear the distant >BOOM< of another transformer blowing, and we'd think, "well, this is it." Then we'd have just about enough time for each of us to pick up and turn on our respective flashlights, when... poof. Power! And Mythbusters still playing like nothing had happened. (Hurrah for good UPS's.)

This happened somewhere between eight and ten times. I wonder how many transformers Seattle City Light went through last night. Finally I went to bed when I realized it was 2am and I was still up and WTF. (I guess the power outages kept resetting my internal clock or something; I'd had NO IDEA it was that late.)

Today, my office has power, but nearly all of my adjusters, who work out of their homes, do not. New claims come in regardless; I remarked to Boss1, "well, if you don't mind doing new claims with just a cell phone and a pen and paper..." and she said, "well hey, that's how we used to do 'em..." :)

I feel like I'm in some kind of little oasis, hearing and reading about everything that's going on. Several of my eastcoasters this morning logged on and asked anxiously if I was alright, and were so relieved to hear that I'm okay. It's been so peaceful in my little two-mile home-to-office radius that I acutally had a bit of cognitive dissonance, wondering what on earth they were so worked up about, before remembering, oh yeah, people have actually been getting hurt and killed by this storm, haven't they? We've been pretty lucky.

Later on, you'll expire
'Cause your bus lacked snow tires
To face with dismay
The plan for next day
'Cause you'll be WALKING in that winter wonderland!

It's been an interesting day!

( On the shoulder we can build a snowman... )