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January 30, 2006

THE MOST DEPRESSING THING IN THE WORLD

That would be the five-day forecast for Seattle. Basically, it's rain, followed by rain, and then increasing rain, then maybe a little less rain, then more rain, then, for the weekend, rain. I don't know how people here find the strength to go on. I would take my hat off to them, but my head would get wet.

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Dave, have you ever spent any length of time in England or Scotland? It's downright depressing. At one point during the week we were there, the sun came out and our friends who we were staying by closed the window shades because they said it was too sunny. We hadn't seen the sun in a week.

dave, send some of that stuff down here.

thanks, in advance.

Yes!

Also, as an aside, I read that the suicide rate is higher in places where there's less sunlight, such as Alaska in certain seasons, and in England and Scotland during the rainy season. So don't do anything rash, Dave, and call me if you need to talk things over.

That's why the Seahawks are excited about Detroit - at least it's dry.

I spent three months in Seattle, and the only weekend it didn't rain was the weekend my wife came to visit, so naturally she didn't know what I was complaining about. It was very depressing, but the food was wonderful. Go down to Ivar's on the water, and indulge in the local seagull-feeding ritual: Order some fish & chips, and stand on the pier with a french fry in your hand, above your head. A gull will come by and delicately pluck the fry from your hand. Or take off a finger. Either way, it's very memorable, and the fish is fantastic.

Brian

And this weather forcast in unusual in what way?
Soggy in Portland

dave, in sympathy, it has decided to rain today in florida. not that that helps, but we're miserable too.

I would take my hat off to them, but my head would get wet.

Yes, but think how non-poufy your hair would be - Dave, the Wet Head.

I will break tradition and repost my thought from yesterday...
Our TV Weather guys are real chipper around here - I can only imagine the ones out there being manic depressives about their job.

Anchor - Lets go to to our meteorologist Bill Lameass with the exclusive InstaWeather forcast

Bill - Exclusive my ass... every freakin station in town is telling you its going to rain. Back to you!

Anchor - uhh Bill, dont you have a map or something for us?

Bill - Look out the window ya freak it's STILL raining!!! Whats the use in telling people what nice weather there is somewhere ELSE?? Back to you (jerk)

Anchor - uh yeah well...

(Off camera) BANG

Anchor - We have breaking news from the set of Action News this evening.....

Dave, I'm experiencing flooding here in sunny SoCal, but apparently it's just a broken sprinker pipe.
Regardless, I feel your pain. :)

Ermmmm ... that isn't weather ... that's just climate. We won't see the sun again until mid June.

We'll let you know if something unusual happens ... like a dry sunny day.

Hey..just a few days ago i wrote a report on "The Economic Effects of Flood"...coincidence?...Yes

Dave

Brian's idea of seagull feeding may sound like fun. I would (on behalf of my wife) recommend keeping the hat on for that event also. She has been seagull-bombed twice-and is not likely to forget it!

Wasn't even feeding them-maybe THAT's the problem!

Still, ew!

Eleanor - I had the same problem! A cute little puddle in the yard. As I fixed it, some mud got on my Ugg boots, so I took another nap in the sun. Yawn...

Remember the character Rob McKenna (later dubbed the Rain God), the truckdriver from Douglas Adams' So Long and Thanks For All The Fish, who chronicled the types of rain he encountered every single day no matter where he went throughout Europe? When challenged by Arthur Dent that it must be a gross exaggeration to say that it rained every single day in his life, McKenna counters that it's all true and documented, even when he went to visit his brother.......in Seattle.

Still, Dave, it's better in your hair than someone else's saliva.

upstate ny is pretty much like that too. syracuse, binghamton - all similar to seattle in weather....pass the starbucks.

Dave, come on down to Texas where winters are perfect and summers ARE DAMN HOT, MISQUITO INFESTED AND MISERABLE !!

What? It's raining?

Feh. Hadn't even noticed.

I'm looking a bit pale, I should go work on my rust.

People waiting in line for a week to buy $295 shoes they won't wear - that's depressing.

Wasn't the most depressing day of the year last Monday?

Dave, check they're feet. Supposedly they get so much rain they start to web!

Speaking of Duck? Where's Fed when you need him?

AnnieWBH - you fixed your own sprinker??!!
WOW, I'm impressed - I had to call the gardener:(
Will you marry me? I could really use someone handy around the house. :)

Speaking of disgusting, can you do something about the toenail fungus ads now infesting the blog? Maybe it's in keeping with our Seattle theme, but eeewwwwww...

THEIR feet.

dang...more bad spelling day....

Sure, I'll marry you, Eleanor! I was kinda waiting for TCK to ask me, but hey, I'm not getting any younger.

Actually, Dave, the most depressing thing in the world is my checking account the day after payday. Which is once a month.

Here is a true/factual story: I live in a town next to Akron, Ohio...Also next to Akron is another town called Ravenna..During World War Two, the military brain trust decided that a munitions armory for production and testing of ammo needed to be built..They researched the country for the perfect location and it came down to two sites: Seattle, Washington or Ravenna, Ohio..Well, Ravenna won..Why ? Because it has the most overcast days per year so it would be harder to find or bomb..Yuk!

Annie, I was in Hamtramck yesterday (a city within the boundaries of Detroit) and it was raining all day.

Just like home, for them 'Hawks.

This month so far, there have been 5 out of 29 days of measurable rainfall in Seattle, with rain predicted for the last two days of the month.
And I don't like it when there are just so many consecutive cloudy days. Yikes.

Annie & El - obviously I can't marry both of you at the same time, so we're gonna have to figure out a way to resolve this. My suggestions:

1. Jello wrestling - winner gets to reject my proposal of marriage - loser gets to, um, well, let's discuss that part later...

2. We could just shack up. I'm going to want to invite a few others tho (southerngirl and Bumble come to mind right now) - but don't think of it as a harem so much as one big happy family :)

The only time I've been to Seattle was in 1992 or 1993, and they were having such a bad drought that all the public fountains had been turned off. I hear it does rain there from time to time, though.

GREAT food there, though. Especially the Dungeness crabs. Mmmmm!

How do you tell the weather in Seattle?


  1. If you can see Mt. Rainier (comparitive of Rainy?), it's going to rain.
  2. If you can't see Mt. Rainier, it's raining.

TCK - silly boy - I didn't say I wanted to marry you - I said I was waiting for you to ask me. That doesn't mean I'd say 'yes.'

LOL, Annie!

TCK - The WIQ (women in question) will be having a private meeting in an undisclosed location to discuss your - er - um, proposal, such as it is...

Hint: Don't hold your breath.

I knew that Annie - that's why I said the winner gets to REJECT my proposal of marriage...

Hey, Dave. Stop someone on the streets in Seattle or Lake Forest Park and ask them to point out two active volcanoes. You know you've found a local in Washington when this is possible even on a cloudy day.

*Points south with one finger and west with another*

To make matters worse for them, the Steelers are going to beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday!!

Sounds very much like an East Coast forecast. "It will be overcast with light showers, changing to drizzle in late afternoon with a 60% chance of rain in the early evening."

I thought NS was the only place that had 15 different words for "rain".

What's more depressing - having rain 24/7/365 or not having any at all.

I can only imagine that the ground is nice and soft out there in Seattle. Whereas here in Sunny Sierra Vista...well...let's just say there's a reason why I call it sunny, k?

To me, Dave, it sounds like you're in paradise.

DIT and LTT I'm sure will confirm, right now we in Texas envy Seattle's rain -- 5 days in 29? I don't think we've had 5 days in the last 290.... as a result, arson and open fires have been banned.

Yes, you read that right, ARSON has been banned due to the wildfire hazard, per Houston's freeway traffic message boards recently. Presumably arson will be ok again once we've had some rain.

(Things that make you wanna go "HUH?")

A very apt description of this phenomenon can be found here.

Down in Texas - it sounds like we live in the same place. I didn't even wear shoes yesterday... how 'bout you?

OMG, I'm going to be invited to be part of TCK's harem?? I can't tell you how excited I am. I mean, the thrill is just too much for my heart to take!

*regrets that she is unable to express sarcasm as eloquently as El*

Dave, you are being very hard on Seattle. It only rained twice last week - once for three days and once for four days.

They have the same kind of rainy weather in Vancouver BC to the north of Seattle. The long standing joke there is that a visitor comes to town. After a week of nothing but rain every day he sees a small boy as he is walking down the street. The visitor asks the boy, "Hey sonny, does the rain ever stop and the sun shine around here?" The boy replies, "How am I supposed to know, I'm only six."

A friend who moved to Seattle way before it was "cool" always threatening to write a book called "It'll Burn Off: or How to Speak Seattle".

She also joked that you could spot the local optimists because they drove convertibles even though they could only put the top down a couple of days of the year.

That said, I have to admit that on my two visits (admittedly, during the summer), it rained only once and only for about 10 minutes. Still, I only saw Ranier from the plane on the flights in and out.

My mom moved to Seattle from Florida and the continuous month-long rainfall has been driving her insane. Fortunately, my mom and I don't get along so I am glad.

southerngirl - glad to hear you're excited - I'll take that as a:

"YES! OMG YES!"

southerngirl - We could start our own harem with El. But I should warn you - I look ridiculous in a dress.

Brainy, I'd bet you look better in a dress than TCK does! AND, we could play with
paper dolls and our
Barbie and Ken dolls and we could have
tea parties!

Sound like fun to you?? :)


El! You swore you'd never discuss that whole dress incident in public!

Besides, it wasn't a dress, it was a kilt!

Hmmmm. Well, even Dave has been known to play with Barbies....

*scratches head*

Can there be tanks?

El, you forgot to mention the part where we sit around in our underwear and fix each other's hair and paint our toenails.

Brainy, I think tanks would be ok. But remember, if El and I are sitting around half undressed, your dress has to come off, too.

And I think we should invite Artic Al, you know, to round things out? He's always lots of fun.

"Arctic"

*damn*

It's so wet here in Seattle, we are considering buidling an ark. Not only do we have rain, but we have avalanches in the mountains, so the main mountain pass is closed. I don't think this will ever end!!

Yes TCK, you tried to tell us it was a "kilt" at the time, but the
bodice you were wearing with it sure made it look like a dress!
just sayin'

Sorry Brainy, we're pacifists so we can't have any tanks.:(
How about this? You could make cookies for the tea party? :)

s'girl, I didn't see your post about tanks before I made mine. Let's trade the tanks for toenail polish AND ArcticAl (in his underwear of course!)

What do you say?

As a life long resident of Seattle (where our food is spectacular) I want to thank Dave for pointing out the weather. You see it never fails when we have a nationally televised sporting event (i.e. the 2001 Baseball All-Star game) the weather is perfect the city looks more beautiful than your wife on your wedding day (or for us single men a picture of Angelina Jolie naked)(or for Judi a picture of Brad Pitt naked). And the announcers say how beautiful it is here and how great the people are. Now normally for any other city this would be great. But here is what happens. The next day 5,000,000 southern Californians who watched the game the previous day move to Seattle in one big migratory group. Well they all show up and wouldn't you know that it happens to be raining. Well since they all came from Socal none of them know how to drive in the rain and they all complain saying we had no idea the weather was going to be like this. So we have to listen to this for months and months until finally they get the picture and move back. But wouldn't you know it the day after they move back we are on TV again with the beautiful weather and they all come back. So again Dave...
THANK YOU FOR TELLING THE TRUTH!!!

P.S.
THE HAWKS WILL WIN THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Oh, we're pacifists, now?"
"Yeah! You got a problem with that??"
"I, um...well..."
"Don't MAKE me open up a can on you!"
"Yeah, ok. 'Cause I don't want bugs on me."

El - at least it wasn't pink

Brainy - just say no (trust me on this one - I've been to one of El's tea partys - you show up all happy, thinkin' "I'm goin' to a "tea party" with just me an' a coupla hot chicks" - next thing you know, you're wearin' a dress, and tryin' to convince eneryone it's a kilt))

El: How about this?

Hmmmm. Not really my color. Do you have anything more blue, or perhaps, on fire?

Just so you know, right at this very minute, it's NOT raining in Seattle.

Brainy, it isn't blue, but it's on fire!

sg - Now you're talking! You know your (and you're) hot stuff.

Dave, what you have witnessed is not "weather", it's just one of the Northwest's two seasons, "Rain". Come back after July 4th but before September 1st for the other season, "Summer", when everything will be on fire.

This year in Western Oregon, "Rain" has been replaced by a new season, "Flood". Last night, I was jolted awake by the sound of every appliance in my house beeping as the power went on and off. I had been having a bad dream in which my house was floating away in a thunderous torrent of water. I went back to sleep, much relieved, after confirming that the creek was indeed still a full fifteen feet away from the deck.

-Carol


"upstate ny is pretty much like that too. syracuse, binghamton - all similar to seattle in weather....pass the starbucks."

queensbee, you took the words right out of my mouth. I grew up in Rochester, NY and couldn't wait to get out of there. When I visit now, I'm shocked if I see the sun.

Brainy, thanks for the compliment. :)And although this one isn't hot, it's certainly blue!

Another reason to leave Seattle? Bend Oregon has 280 + days of sun a year.

Heh. 'Flood' has been fun.
Anyone else remember the movie "10 things I hate about you" A fairly dull movie. It was based on the Seattle area. The problem was there was not a cloud in the sky. The entire film did not have a cloud.
Making all these references about living there. But no rain. Ever! They even had an out side paintball torunament next to the sound.

My boss moved away because he stopped noticing the rain. He drove a convertable. So did I.

harems are illegal in the US. It will be fought off by the military if needs be. You might need those tanks...

When did the Hawks learn how to win?
John- Don't worry you will always have the Red Wings to fall back on.

A little off-topic? Hard to follow this thread with all the blatant flirting going on. (Just jealous, I guess, old married woman that I am.)

We drove from Ilwaco, WA to Portland yesterday afternoon in high winds and pouring rain, bridge at Astoria only a few feet above high tide water. Scary. We (northwest coast) are having flooding, mud slides, much worse than normal. Ground is saturated, cannot hold any more. Last year we had a "drought," according to news media. It was nice.

I was glad to be reminded that this weather might have an up side--send some of the Californians back to where they came from!

And we do get "breaks" like the eye of a hurricane, only last longer. For example, most of Saturday at the beach was free of rain and even saw some sunshine, briefly. Better than getting drenched constantly.

Tamra - don't worry about being off topic - it's encouraged and expected - in fact, I can't remember the last time I was actuall on topic

TCK, there are topics?

Yes, there are rules, and they are strictly enforced.

Staying on topic is the #1 Rule.
There is however, one exception.
Page 121, Paragraph 34, subsection A, sub-sub-section (c) 41, which states that when a quorum of bloggers become bored with the topic and there are no new posts by Dave or judi, in that case random posting is allowed.

*snork*

But seriously, (and still off topic) we have had bloggers in the past who have taken people to task (what does that mean anyway?) for going off topic!

It's a good thing TCK wasn't here then...

Chairwoman El - they wouldn't scare me - I'm not scared of you (well,not very scared anyway), and I'm sure you're waaaay scarier than they were

Thanks for setting me straight. All the rain has made my brain soggy.

Maybe there was something to that news item about January 23 being the worst day of the year. Although, they forgot to mention that Valentine's Day looming doesn't do much for people's moods, either, since for guys it is so difficult to remember, and for women it is usually one more opportunity to be disappointed, and for single folks, wow, don't even go there (unless they are currently in luvvvvv.....).

I do get a kick out of the blog, soggy or not

Tamra - valentines day is just an evil plot hatched by hallmark and the flower shop cartel to sell more cards and flowers - the only way to defeat these terrorists is to completly ignore valentines day...

(note: i've tried using this argument for years to cover for forgetting valentines day - so far without success - so you may wish to take my comment with a grain of salt - or just talk to El, who will undoubtedly tell you to ignore me, as I am usually full of crap)

Tck. Seems to me I have heard that before....

So, you have brown eyes?

Tamra - you've heard my crackpot valentines day conspiracy theory before? or that I'm ususally full of crap?

BTW - I do have brown eyes - why do you ask?

I don't like Valentine's Day either. And it doesn't make any difference whether I'm in a relationship or not. It's just so phony, as TCK says.

I do however, like heart-shaped boxes of chocolate....but skip the card.

Brown eyes usually denote that the person is full of...er...brown stuff. You said yourself you are usually full of it. Brown eyes is proof!

I usually wait a few days for the guilt and remorse to set in, then I hit him up for extras. Nobody as generous as a guilty man... Then I get two heart shaped boxes, dinner out, jewelry, etc. Works every time.

aahhhh - guilt and remorse - been there, done that - life's so unfair - thank God for jack daniels

I prefer white zin. Gotta get back to work here.

Life is unfair, no doubt about that. Of course, we get guilt trips from men also--have to be a good mom, a good wife, a good wage earner, a good lay, a good cook, a good driver, a good neighbor--hey, the list goes on and on... Depressing just to think about it... raining or not. See, it is possible to stay on topic, sort of...

happy blogging

Topics? Topics? We don' need no steenkin' topics!

hey U.O. - glad to see SOMEBODY agrees with me today

TCK ... I'm glad that you're glad ...

Perhaps Seattle-ites should see if they are Cosmic Ray Magnets.

Crap! I just realized - I meant to write 5 out of 29 (now 31) days without rain!! Crap!

_ < / crap >

We now return your to your regularly scheduled blog.

Well I have to admit I have a had a blast reading this thread thanks to my brother Writer Dude. My name is Super Sis (yes if you have read my brothers blog you know exactly who I am) I live in Granite Falls (have for 3 years), which is North of Seattle and gets even more rain than Seattle as we are smack dab in the middle of the convergence zone.

Considering I came from a state which was in an 8 year drought - home of those so wonderful *snicker* Broncos - It's actually kind of nice (no it sucks!!)

Anyways I just want to say that it really is nice here( it sucks!!) in Washington, mudslides (beautiful forests), flooding (gorgeous rivers), volcanoes(magnificent mountains), bad drivers (fabulous country roads), cost of living is high (GREAT FOOD), housing prices even higher(beautiful country living) - Oh yes have I mentioned all the Micro-softies? (Okay they do suck) I have never seen more porches and bmw's in 1 square mile in my life -really people, it is not good here :)

With that said - Have a great day all and thank you for the laugh!!

PS: GO SEAHAWKS!!!! (Sorry Bro)

Well, it's a good thing that there's so much rain in Seattle... that way, no one will be able to tell when the Seahawks come cryin' home.

LOL Good one Kate!!

When cosmic rays hit the atmosphere they produce charged particles which seem encourage the growth of cloud droplets.

I think it's so sweet of the cosmic rays to encourage all the little droplets. We all need encouraging: "C'mon little droplets, if we all work together and make a game out of it, we can make a cloud! Wouldn't that be fun? You are such attractive little droplets, I KNOW you can do it! Just repeat after me, 'We can do it, we can do it....'"

Um, SuperSis -- I'd like to think some do, but many haven't. I was only a (shooting) star here last week, when His Daveness was in Denver. The Blog marches on, and hopefully the cute little buffalo finds his way to Sophie via The Blog's book tour suitcase. And also hopefully, The Blog gets some sleep along the way on his book tour.

Review: The Blog = Dave. My blog = many stay away.

All clear? ;-)

Late to the party, but had to comment on this:

"Yes, you read that right, ARSON has been banned due to the wildfire hazard, per Houston's freeway traffic message boards recently."

That must be a statewide thing; I did a similar doubletake when I read about the arson ban on one of those message boards here in Dallas.

well thats an easy question. we LIKE the rain.

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