Weather Girl

I live in the Emerald City for many reasons, not the least of which is that the weather here just freaking agrees with me. Given that I grew up in Saudi, went to college for a few years in Texas, and law school in goddamn Indiana, I have no tolerance for extreme climates. I was apparently more adaptable in Saudi, as I don't remember hating the heat, but I do recall being so irritated with the heat and humidity in Austin and as far as Indiana goes, the whole middle of the country can suck itself dry and impotent. I don't understand the idea of living in a place where it is uncomfortable to be outside 9 months out of the year. Perhaps my idea of comfort is just out of whack, but if you cannot comfortably jog a few miles without your lungs crystallizing in the winter or without becoming drenched in the summer, it just isn't comfortable to me.

Seattle has about ten days a year where the temperature rises above 85 degrees, and another ten where the mercury dips below 30. For the most part, fall days are in the 50s and 60s, winter days are in the 30's and 40's, spring somewhere in between, and summer between 75-85 degrees. For all the hoopla about rain, we actually get less annual rainfall than most major cities, and the rain is rarely activity defeating. Sure, you have months of bad hair days and the gray days can wear on the seasonally sensitive, but those days just make our four month summer that much more kickass.

We do tend to get one or two days of nutty weather, usually windstorms or a freak snowfall. The local media goes batshit, the city shuts down and the locals get a chuckle. Today, however, we got wind and a shitload of rain and it was a clusterfuck. Check out the photo galleries to get a good sense of how bad it was. I think I heard that it was the second most amount of rainfall in a day that Seattle has withstood. And usually, the fallout occurs in the 'burbs and outlying areas, but this morning?



For the few of you who read this who haven't been to my place, this is approximately 150 feet from my building. The road in front of my house was closed until 4pm this afternoon and there are still workers trying to get things under control. Not nearly as dramatic or cool, but this is what it looked like at noon today (and most of the day) outside my office window:



Nasty. Still better than what the middle of the country deals with, and certainly not a hurricane, tornado or any other such bullshit, but certainly more than we usually deal with.

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My work malaise continues and I am starting to make some decisions. Watch this space for professional growth.

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Charlie Brown Christmas is on. Brings back a pretty traumatic memory, but not one for tonight.

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Finally, last night, I got home from my weekly dinner and Dexter at the pea's and I was uncharacteristically restless. I putzed around for a while, then, at approximately 10:30pm, I got a wild hair to cook something I had seen on the Food Network over the weekend (my parties on the couch are positively rock star). It was a filling for a steak that I decided would taste great in my morning burrito, so I fired up the stove top and sauteed garlic, onions, shallots, pancetta, parmesan and drained and thawed frozen spinach. I can only imagine what my neighbors thought about the wafting smells at that hour, but I was right - it did work well in my morning burrito.

Emboldened by this success, or perhaps a wee bit buzzed by the hot water, bourbon and lemon cure for the sore throat, I decided it was a fine time to try out a recipe for smashed cauliflower, which, when done properly, tastes remarkably like mashed potatoes. Of course, I had to fortify it with more sauteed garlic, shallot and onion, so my place smelled like a bistro around midnight. I didn't eat any of it, mind you, just a cook's taste, but this morning as I made my morning burrito, it was pretty damn cool to have a few tasty add-ins. I wasn't hungry again until around 3pm, when I had a tragically boring grilled chicken salad.

Let's see, I covered weather, my job, what's on television, and what I had for lunch. I can haz boring blogger?