Here is Seattle, we are in full-on winter mode.  It’s rainy.  It’s gray.  And it’s COLD.  The local ski resorts are already open, which is evidently kind of unheard of around here.  We’ve turned on our heater and we’ll eventually learn how to program the piece of crap thermostat.  I’ve whipped out the Northface jacket and Mike has started talking about finding a warm jacket FOR REALS this year.  (We even made a shopping trip on Sunday, and Mike got a bright blue vintage Lacoste windbreaker instead.)

I’m not going to lie, winter up here is not easy for me.  I don’t have much to compare it to, except for the great Snowpocalypse of 2008, which resulted in us being stranded on top of our hill and spending Christmas sans any family.  But it’s really not the threat of massive snowfall that freaks me out- it’s the fact that I’m going to be drinking hot Americanos until May, that I need to buy some special running hear so I can run outside and not get frostbite and the fact that no matter how many pairs of socks I wear, my toes will go numb whenever I am wearing cute shoes outside for more than 15 minutes.  (Okay, that last one isn’t COMPLETELY Seattle’s fault- I do have the worst circulation ever.  I suffer from Raynaud’s Phenomenon.  Or at least I self-diagnosed myself with it.)  It probably doesn’t help that work has been crazytown the past couple of weeks and doesn’t promise to lighten up any time soon, plus I’m staring down the barrel of my 29th birthday in a couple of weeks, which sounds terribly ominous to me right now.

So when I get down, I usually find it’s best to focus on the happy things.  Thankfully I am very easily entertained, so it doesn’t take too much to break me out of a funk for a few moments.  Here are some of the things that have de-funkified me in recent days:

• I found the world’s best sweater tights on sale at Nordstrom’s Rack yesterday.  Seriously- I wore them today and felt like a stuffed animal was hugging my legs.  So happy.  I really want to go buy an argyle pair, but I’m not sure I can pull those off.
• My co-worker’s twins, who were born 7 weeks early, are doing really well and rocking the awesome elf hats I made them.  Talk about swagga’:

• I absolutely love the boots I got last week.  What’s better winter therapy than boots?  I certainly don’t know.

• Even though I have to bundle up when I go outside, I can still wear awesome headbands with giant rosettes:

• The holidays are coming, which means that I can start theoretical shopping for friends and family.  We haven’t actually budgeted out Christmas presents yet, but I think I already found the best gift ever for a certain bovine-loving domestic goddess:

• The holidays also mean trips back home!  We’ll be in Socal Nov 23-30 for Thanksgiving.  It actually proves to be fairly calm, with both of Mike’s parents out of town this year.  I’m still trying to find out a way to for the Bach family to gather and bond at some point- maybe we’ll actually have a tension-free meal for once.
• Speaking of the Bachs, Amy sent me this picture today and it absolutely made my freaking day:

I cannot think of a better note to end on.  Good night.

So Blizzardwatch 2008 is officially on.  Since we live at the top of a really steep hill in a city that has never bothered to get their act together re: snow, we are kind of stuck up here.  As a result, I’m going a little stir crazy and you get another awesome snow post.

We look so cute bundled up.  Meanwhile, my toes were completely numb.

Mike won’t go wine-tasting with me, but he will do some snow tasting.  Disgusting.

On Thursday I tried to sled.  This plan didn’t work so well, considering my sledding materials of choice were the following:

Yeah, that’s me, rocking Marc Jacobs galoshes but still to cheap to buy a real sled and opting for the lid of my CSA bin and the top of our trash can instead.  I have awesome priorities.

And finally, for Mike’s friend Justin and my fabulous parents who will be visiting us soon:

Bring a jacket.

These are things that I’ve heard over and over again during the past couple of months:

• “It doesn’t snow in Seattle.”
• “Eh, it may snow for like, 3 minutes, but by morning everything will melt.”
• “It NEVER snows here in [insert current month here].”

Obviously, people are in denial.  Or they are just liars.    Just look outside our office window:

I was awoken at 5:00 am by thunder and lightning.  Huh?  Is that even possible in conjunction with snow?  My boss emailed everybody on my team telling them to work from home today due to this outbreak of “thundersnow.”

This weather phenomenon is just confirming my belief that Mike and I do, indeed, have some sort of magnetic attraction for all things strange and random.  Seattle, I apologize for the deep freeze, but I think we brought it.

Confession: I didn’t do a lot of research on Seattle before we decided to move here.  I knew it rained a lot.  I knew there was a lot of coffee.  I was aware that I would probably have an excuse to buy more jackets than I did in SoCal.

But snow?  I had no idea it snowed.  We had been here a week before somebody made an offhand comment about how little it snows here, to which I responded, eyes agog, “Wait a minute- it snows in Seattle?”  This person probably thought I was an idiot.

So once I started making friends and I mentioned my snow-phobia, everybody assured me that snow in Seattle is a total anomoly, practically a myth.  They said there were about two weeks a year that the roads would ice up a bit, people would get in a ton of car accidents, and then it would be over.  Seeing acutal white stuff on the ground, they told me, NEVER happens.

Then I looked out the window last night:

I was wary.  Especially considering that I had signed up for the Jingle Bell Run on Sunday.  Running in the SNOW?  People don’t do that.  I got nervous.  But then I remembered how everybody says that snow always melts during the night, so I’d be fine.

Then I looked out the window this morning:

Hmmm…  not exactly melted.  I didn’t want to be a total flake though, so I bundled up in as many layers as I could manage (including 2 of mike’s mismatched knee-high snowboarding socks.  I couldn’t find a matching pair for the life of me) and headed over to my friend Barrie’s house, where her very awesome and very brave boyfriend was there to drive us downtown.

I always hear people complain about Seattlites not knowing how to deal with snow.  Well, Barrie and Dominic are evidently the McGyvers of snow- here they are scraping Dominic’s car windows.  We didn’t have an ice scraper, so they used sticks:

We made it to the madhouse that was the race.  As should be expected, there was a bizarre error on my number identifying me as “Angie Bach,” a 22 year old who lives in Federal Way.  I was too overwhelmed by the sheer number of people to try and argue.

How many people were there?  Well, here is a picture I snapped as our heat started:

So yeah, there were a lot of people.

The race was good.  Considering that I’d been having visions of falling into a snow drift and having my corpse shoveled out days later, I was pretty happy that I ran it in 32 minutes (the thing was definitely too crowded to do much passing.)  Theoretically, I would like to subtract some time for when I slipped in an ice patch, scraped my knee and tore open my running pants right at the knee- now they have a cute “grunge” look to them.  Very Seattle.

I still finished the race, where I met Barrie, who had already finished and managed to ravage any freebies within a 3-mile radius.  I think she ended up walking away with 2 lbs of bananas:

We look cute, huh?

After the race we grabbed breakfast, where I saw the reason why print journalism is failing- this headline:

It’s going to be a fun winter.

Last Monday, while Mike and Justin went out to eat… yeah, you guessed it, Thai Food, I ditched the boys to attend a Soup Swap organized by my friend Barrie.

I’d heard of Cookie Swaps before, usually around the holidays, but the idea of a Soup Swap was totally new to me.  Basically, everybody shows up at somebody’s house with 6 containers of homemade soup that has been frozen in disposable containers (or at least containers you don’t care about ever getting back).  You make tags for each of your sou containers, throw them in a hat, and pass them around.  Voila!  Everybody suddenly has a whole array of soups to take home.

My soup booty:

I took home Vegan Tom Ka, Portugese Bean, Matzo Ball, Chicken Tortilla, Acron Butternut Sqash and Cheesy Cauliflower.  I had brought Chicken Tortilla as my donation, it was the only repeat in the bunch.

A Soup Swap is way better than a Cookie Swap!  I’ve never actually swapped cookies, but I still think soup wins because a) I’m admittedly not a great baker, b) soup is usually healthier than cookies, and c) it’s cold here and i need things to keep me warm.  (Don’t mock- it is 52 degrees outside as I type.  To me, that is cold.)

I know I’m late in posting about this, but it’s been a busy couple of weeks.  However, in the spirit of soupy goodness, I’m enjoying a bowl of Matzo Ball Soup as I type.

Cheers!