…soft and dry and swirling – erasing all traces of people and vehicles in it’s wake.

It’s been snowing since yesterday afternoon, and for us, this only happens in these amounts and sustained time frames every 8-10 years.

Because we live on the Puget Sound, which is nothing but salt water, we usually don’t get much in the way of snow not to mention it’s either negligible or melts right away. This week has been the exception.

Even though we only have between 6-8″ in our neighborhood, we fall short on the overall snowfall compared to other cities in the state.

Thought I’d share a few pics so you can see what fun we are having, ’cause this might happen once more in January and then we’ll be back to our 8-10 year cycle again.

Thursday afternoon around noonish

then around 3:30pm

Friday morning – it’s all frozen and compacted to black ice….

Saturday at 3pm – new snow over the compact ice layer

and at 5:30pm – you’ll notice that the snow is hard to see because it’s small, dry and looks like someone has taken to shaking powdered sugar all over. We never had any big, damp flakes for more than 10 mins. it’s all this powder that compacts beautifully!

and 9:30pm

This am around 9:30 – a bridge to the beach…

And yes, the snow is frozen on the sand of the beach.

The little candle light on mom’s deck.

The poor dog got high centered 3 times, because the snow had about 1/4″ of frozen snow on top – she’s slide then break through the top layer, sink up to her chest in some areas, splay out and overall was not pleased. Because her back knees have both been operated on and she has rubber ankles, she was pissed off that I had to pick her up and move her to a better, shallower spot to try and do her business. By the end of today, she figured what this snow was up to and how to follow the paths already made by other dog owners in the complex.

Needless to say, it’s been snowing here since 10 am and hasn’t stopped…

My seester is a Filipina. We’ve known each other since H.S. and have stuck together through thick and thin. We look exactly alike except that she’s 5’1″ with black, pigtail curled hair (natural folks) and I’m 5′ 11″ with naturally blond hair.

I guess she’s out shopping right now ’cause this was what I received via a phone picture message.

“This is what I wanted to get you for Christmas, but alas the price for Asian Families went up and are now too expensive!”

I love her!

…when you can enjoy it indoors like my folks did today.

Apparently, when my step mom went out the sliding glass door off the dining room to turn on the Christmas lights, she left the door open a bit too long.

Unbeknownst to her, she had allowed a Junco to gain access to the house. As she was washing dishes in the kitchen sink, she heard a “swoosh” go by her head with inkling enough to say to my dad, “Honey, I think a bird just flew by my head!” To both their surprise, this lone Male Junco went flying around from room to room – stuffed bunny head to lamp shade to china cabinet, looking for an out.

After my step-mom took pictures of it sitting in all these places inside, they tried to shoo it out the front door, which it was having none of, so my dad opened the slider again and turned off the lights. That seemed to do the trick and the little Junco eventually flew out the slider and back out into the snow and the cold- leaving all with a fun story for people and birds alike!

A male Junco

If you have children and are lucky enough to live in a house, please make certain to teach them about being considerate of others when they are in an apartment or condo.

Here are a few things that people in houses forget about:

1. You can hear people stomp up and down stairs or jumping around on the floors. Teach them about how in apartments/condos, there are other people who share ceilings and walls – most apartments/condos do NOT have 2 foot thick walls that would lessen the vibration and noise from tromping around like an elephant.

2. Don’t run with all your force across the floor or walk on your heels or jump off of furniture when you are in an upper unit. Again, shared floor/ceiling…makes it sound like the people above will end up on top of the people below.

3. You can hear and feel it when a door is slammed shut. Teach them about the proper way to open and close a door without slamming it off the hinges. What kind of long term damage may occur to the hinges and the door frame after years of abuse.

4. Use your inside voice while travelling to and from a unit. Because people live in close proximity to each other, talking as if you are screaming to each other across a house outside or in a hallway to an apartment/condo can be very jarring and especially annoying if you have a grating voice.

5. Turn down the bass on the surround sound or stereo. Better yet, teach them about how to place a woofer on a small stand directly off of the floor. That way, the booming sound won’t travel through the floor or even the wall next door when watching a movie.

Having been raised in apartments all my life, I learned at an early age to be considerate of others people living nearby, but notice how many folks have no clue. Just something to teach kids that will benefit them in situations OTHER than just visiting an apartment / condo. It works in hotels/motels too.

If I can teach my nieces, nephews and friends children these little things and have them respect and remember to be courteous, I think that others might be able to as well. Nuff said.

Now I don’t feel like ours is the only neighborhood in the entire state that didn’t get any noticeable snowfall. It’s only a couple of inches, but I’ll take it. Don’t need a few feet.

Whew! We’re not losers after all.

Social network sites are an interesting phenomenon indeed.

I joined a couple for one reason really – because my siblings and best friend kept telling me about the “pictures I posted on my (insert appropriate site name here) page” or, “Log in as me on my (insert appropriate site name here) page and read what so & so is up to.” My moniker for all of these sites is the same, but I only really participate in two of them and even then, I only have 27 total “pals” on one and even less on the other. For a reason.

I think it’s amazing how much time folks spend on these sites because for some in particular, it’s like a place made specifically for collecting. The collecting of friends and acquaintances, old and new in one spot where you can show them off to the rest of the community as if to say “look how many pals I have”, “I’m cooler than you”. I KNOW people – they post comments and poke me etc, etc.

The amount of time one has to spend keeping these online relationships going, a person could spend that time in their REAL interactions at home with a loved one or family and actually have the potential to maintain or even improve upon them.

To quote from EBN-OZN’s song “AEIOU Sometimes Y”: There are 178 parent languages on our planet with over 1000 dialects… It’s amazing we communicate at all.

After this week, I’m going to close one down that I only had open for a week. It’s just not necessary. I’m going to go interact verbally with my spouse now.

For those of you who were not in the military or married into the military I thought I’d remind everyone of a few things.

1. He was responsible for integrating the once sacred and revered beret from the elite forces to all general army personnel, (Maybe it was his way of getting back at SF for not letting him in) under the guise of “every one is equal in the Army”. Tell that to a Delta, SF or even a cannon fodder Ranger.

2. He was responsible for the hover-tank (I mean Stryker Brigades) The LAV v.3 that was turned down by other, superior branches of the military for being a rolling death trap (that tips, gets stuck and can’t be readily deployed, unlike how they were supposed to fill that gap), that they didn’t like the first two times it was presented. A vehicle that needed the troops to figure out how to surround it with “picket-fences” to help keep them alive when incoming rounds hit it….

Just had to put that out there…. since my spouse served in the 1ST SBCT (now the 1st ABCT) we have had some fun exposure to the brilliant ideas he has helped to encourage and implement.

Tip of the Spear alright. Humpf. Nuff said.

For folks of a certain generation, December 8th, 1980 is a day that will live in infamy.

On the night of 8 December 1980 Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon in the back four times (the fifth shot missed) in the entrance hallway of The Dakota. Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman earlier that same night.

Now, what makes this night infamous for our family revolves around this event in a related, yet separate way.

My mother’s cousin, “M” (who used to babysit Matthew Broderick as a little boy) and her husband, “A” lived in New York at the time. Dec. 8th is their wedding anniversary.

My mom and her second husband (who was a super John Lennon fan in his own right) were in New York visiting “M” & “A” that week and that same Monday evening were supposed to go to a party at one of “M” & “A”‘s pals’ “P” & “L”s. “P” & “L” lived on the upper west side near Central Park between W. 66th & W. 72nd off Central Park W., which was about 2 blocks from The Dakota on W. 72nd & Central Park W.

“M” received a call earlier that night from “L” saying that they were going to have to cancel the party because they had to “12 Step” (now called an intervention) one of their pals. “L” said that this pals wife had stated many times that, “He’s boozing, sleeping around and coking it up and it has to stop, otherwise he won’t be President.”, so that’s why “L” said they had to do this intervention that evening and she was sorry to have to call “M” and cancel on her. The person about whom they were speaking was our current-soon-to-be-former-President George Bush himself.

So, instead of going to a party at Central Park West at “P” & “L”s house, my mother, step-father, “M” & “A” decided to wander around the town and amongst other things, took a walk through Carl Schurz Park, a block away from Gracie Mansion,(officially the Mayoral residence), only to get mugged. The robbers stuck a gun under my step-dad’s chin and robbed him, as well as took a 100+ year old edition of Convivio that “A” happened to have in his pocket, threw it into the river and then quickly left when they realized my mother had gotten away. (my mother was in front of the group & the robbers, so she got away in a pair of mules, a fur coat and a 20 lb leather purse through bushes, without running her nylons – but should have turned left instead of right and would have run into some cops.)

All the while, John Lennon was then being murdered across town….all on a cold Monday night in December, 1980. Yeah, it’s a night that none of our family will ever forget…

What a fun way to start your day, with a Marc Shaiman song and dance!

Now people will argue that even though the Bible has inaccuracies in it, and that at the time eating shellfish was more dangerous because of filtration issues and what not, homosexuality can still be argued as an unsafe lifestyle.

Well you can argue any point you want. With that thinking, let’s add coupon clipping as an unsafe lifestyle since the majority of items you buy with coupons are for highly processed foods, with large amounts of chemicals and fats which cause major health issues in the long and short term and help to raise insurance rates due to obesity, diabetes and heart disease from poor diets.

As Linda Richman would say “I’m getting verklempt. Discuss amongst yourselves.”