The Calm Before the Storm

This may be my last post for a few days as we are forecasted to have another, BIGGER storm come in tomorrow. Where some places might receive a few inches to a few FEET of snow, we probably won't get much additional accumulation. Why? Because we sit at the foothills of the Cascade mountains and we're forecasted to have sustained winds of 50-65 Miles Per Hour with gusts between 75-90 MPH and higher. YIKES!

We are so used to wind here that the 50 MPH estimate doesn't bother us. That's what we normally get for gusts on a regular basis from October to March. Gusts coming every minute or so and howl through the downspouts, shake the windows...and in effect make you feel like the roof might come off at anytime. At that speed, we can hear the wind shoot through the mountain pass and right at us like a freight train. It actually sounds like a train. I could give you a whole lesson on the air pressure in the Easterly wind combined with warmer air this side of the mountains, as it shoots through the pass...but I want to hang onto my few viewers, so I'll spare you the science.

Anyway, the strongest we've had since building our house was in 2003, our first winter here, when we hit 75MPH. That windstorm downed countless trees, knocked out power, and caused general mayhem in our still under construction community. There was roofing and construction materials rolling down the street, lawn chairs,fence panels, bbq covers, garbage cans, etc., basically travelling at freeway speeds down the residential streets. That was 70ish wind. What will 90 do? Thank goodness we don't have levees to worry about. We're at 1000 feet elevation.If only we could build a wind farm up here. We'd solve all of Obama's energy problems.

The next question is "why don't we have a generator?". Well, after several major outages in our almost 6 years here, we've decided we don't need one yet. Truthfully, most people who buy $300 generators at Home Depot expect it to allow them life-as-usual, which it will not. The model we would want is way out of our price range right now (a trip to Maui in September is more important). Not sure what it will take to convince us...Maybe a major outage with a 2 year old? Probably.

So today, after 2 days cooped up with a toddler, Ian and I ventured out to go see Santa. Surprisingly, we were only 3rd in line, but I was a little disillusioned at the matter of fact way they got us in and out of there. It was a great looking Santa, but he didn't interact with the kids at all. They basically put him on Santa's lap, snapped the picture, then put him down. No asking what he wanted for Christmas, no Merry Christmas...Nothing. Not even any kid to Santa eye contact. I was P.O.'d. I was even more perturbed when I went to pay and it was $50 for the smallest picture package and we won't receive the pictures in the mail for at least another week...That would be after Christmas. I didn't even get a chance to preview the pictures before deciding if they were good enough to pay $50 for. Apparently, they use regular film and they claim it generates a higher quality picture. I so don't believe that. Last year, Ian got his Santa picture in Arizona, and although the Santa looked like he just finished doing pull tabs at the local tavern before starting his Santa shift, it cost $20 and we had our pictures in 5 minutes...and it served it's purpose. These things better be damn good. Can you tell I'm ticked? Especially since we drove on frozen roads to get there. Ugg. OK. I feel better now.

We didn't play in the snow today because Ian is really congested after his outings yesterday. Probably the most congested I've heard him since we picked him up in China. I definitely don't want it to form into an ear or respiratory infection, so we're staying inside for now. Especially with the expected winds, I'm not willing to play around.

Needless to say, I didn't get any pictures today, and I wanted badly to post a couple of video clips from yesterday's snow play...but Blogger is just not cooperating and 3 hours later, I still can't get them to upload. I'll post them as soon as I can figure out what's going on. Wish us luck as we brave our hurricane tomorrow. Hopefully it's a big false alarm and we'll be laughing at our liar liar weathermen on Monday.