A cold and snowy day in Seattle

Seattle got it's once a year snow this week; a chance for us New England expatriots to remember what winter is like for the old folks at home :) I realized today that six inches of snow in Seattle is the equivalent of the Blizzard of 78 in Boston... businesses were closed and people abandoned their cars on the side of the road.

The day dawned cold and frosty. For those of you keeping score, this picture of the sunrise was taken at 8:56 AM when the sun was just coming up.

Sue dusted off the snow shovel and gave it a go. This picture of Sue was taken at 1PM and the sun was approaching the horizon... we get sunset around 3pm. This is exaggerated by the mountains around us, but it is still a pretty short day.

The one saving grace of the cold weather is that it made the sky clear out and we had some nice sunshine.

What 10,000 cubic feet of water per second looks like

This week we went up to Snoqualamie Falls to see how it looked after the flooding rains from last week. It was an amazing torrent of water (which isn't done justicew by my cell phone camera :)

My Life in the Junk Shops

So, we've been spending a lot of time in Junk Shops this week; Sue is looking for a couple of small things to use when we "stage" the house to sell. These shops are also known as "antique" shops...

I'm coming to the realization that my childhood is now officially classified as "antique". Every shop we'd wander into, I'd find myself saying... "hey, we used to have one of those in our house....". Two notable cases stopped me in my tracks....

Number 1) The Fisher Price Barn, complete with all animals and a "mooooo" sound when you opened the door:




Number 2) the exact same table and chairs that we have painted with our names (well, my name anyway...:)

The best historical perspective on Terrorism

Last month I read this article in the NY Times describin the parallels between events that occurred in ancient Rome and our curent times. Way back then, pirates attacked and burned the city of Ostia. The leadership at the time used it as an excuse to implement broad "emergency" powers and ultimately chase the senate out of Rome.

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30E16FA3C540C738FDDA00894DE404482