Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I'm alive


It was too weird, as soon as I hit publish on that last post my mom was in my office to get me home because everything was shutting down. All the bridges were backed up except Victoria, which people hate using at the best of times. Victoria Bridge looks like this:



Except of course now we have cars. But you get the point. You might think that's a terrible choice during a blizzard, especially since maybe there is a foot between you and the oncoming traffic, and that there is a steep hill on the other side. But no one was using it and it was actually really easy to go over.

It is still blustery and terrible. Basically the whole city is shut down, and if you know Saskatchewanians you know that's serious.

Vancouverites are wimpy. I remember when I moved there and I was trying to get a job at A & W, the day of my interview an inch of snow had fallen. MAYBE three inches. The entire city was shut down, I don't think even transit was running. I got a call to not come in for the interview, even though I just had to walk 10 blocks. I could look out my apartment window and watch a car drive up a hill and then slide back down, over and over, in a fit of modern day Sisyphean terror.

Extreme weather is pretty commonplace here. Even folks from Montreal quake in fear when they face -65 degrees C. We have the same climate as Siberia basically. In fact a fruit grower here sought advice from growers in Estonia, Finland, Moscow, and Siberia.

My mom told me a story about how Gramma used to make the family drive towards the mountains during blizzards so that she could marvel at the snow, ON THE HIGHWAY! She likes storms. So do I. Nothing gets me more excited than a vicious thunderstorm with power loss and broken trees.

Schrodinger tried to go outside to play in the snow, but it's about three feet now so he was unsuccessful. Silly kitty.

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