And so it begins

This morning I woke up at the most glorious hour of 10:30 (I don't work Mondays) and much to my chagrin my roommate had opened the blinds of one of our windows, letting in much more light than I will ever be comfortable with having spent most of my life living in a basement. (I just recognized my first run-on sentence! Not the first one I've written mind you, just the first one I've recognized.) So I looked over at the window to discover where the immense source of light was coming from so early on a Seattle morning.

This is what I found:

Now to many of you, this may be seen as a momentous occasion. Snow! On my day off! Oh the joy!
However, this is not the case. To understand my true torment at the thin veil of white death that now covers the greater Seattle area I must take you back to a simpler time, my freshman year of college.

The year was 2007. I had just started at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, where I would be spending the next three years learning everything I could about Theater and English writing, and then ditching that Popsicle stand for the real world. Then October happened.
It snowed, hard, forever. Which my SoCal roommate couldn't get enough of, and I had been dreading since I moved up to the great white north. Being from Kennewick, snowfall is something that I'm used to, but only for about a week at a time. Then it stops snowing, sticks around for a few days, maybe a week if we're lucky, then either melts or gets blown away and we have either slightly warmer winter weather, or straight up Spring. It also only typically snows later in the winter, like in January, and once on Valentine's Day, but the next morning it melted.
We don't get snow for months on end in the Basin, it just doesn't happen, so even though I knew it was coming, by halfway through Janterm I was ready to call it quits. Never mind the fact that it was the worst snowfall Spokane had seen in over 50 years, second in record only to 1950, and then only by about an inch.
But gladly, by May the 92.6 inches of snow was all gone, though it left the grass molding and the students thin and pale and depressed looking. We'd all made it through, and next year would be better. As I had been assured by my parents, grandparents (who actually live in Spokane) and many of the Spokanites at Whitworth, we wouldn't get snow like that every year. It was just one of those things. 
The following year I believed them, starting off school ready for anything and so excited to be back with friends and professors. We made it clear through November with minimal snowfall that all melted in a few days. Nothing major, nothing I wasn't by now used to, and nothing like the year previous. Then we all went home for winter break.
Winter break was late that year because we'd started at a weird time, and so I couldn't wait to get home and see all my friends who had already made it back from school. I packed up, and as I was blessedly heading out a day early because my finals had lined up well, a light snow began to fall on the unsuspecting streets of Spokane.
Between December 12th and January 8th, Spokane saw the worst snowfall it had ever seen, breaking records every other day within that three week period. Between December17th (the day I left) and the 18th, it snowed 23 inches. On Christmas Eve it snowed half that again and in early January it snowed more. With little to no break in the general snowfall, and the bigger storms in between, by January 12th, when we were all back in our Janterm classrooms trying not to freeze as the temperatures dropped to single digits for a week straight, Spokane's total snowfall had reached 80 inches in a little under a month.
So much for a better winter next year.
The next year (2009/2010) actually was better. The winter was mild. It was warmer than it had been and there was rain as well as snow which kept the actual accumulation to a minimum. Too bad I wasn't there to see it.

I was in England on a Janterm trip to take in all the theatre and music that London could offer in a single three and a half week block. Early on in the trip, we took a Big Bus Tour in order to get our bearings and enjoy the sights of this new and wonderful city. It was rainy and cold, but it was January in London, nothing weird there. Some of the students on the trip, myself included, decided to by same day passes to the Tower of London with our bus passes because it was cheaper. It turned out to be an excellent idea because by the time the tour got to the Tower we were all freezing to death because we'd sat on the top open air area so we could see better. We got off, spent some time wandering around the different buildings in the tower and looking at torture devices and walking past the crown jewels, and then walked back to the bus stop so we could catch our tour bus back to the tube station back to our hostel in a blizzard.

One of the ravens at the Tower of London hanging out in the snow

 By January 6th, southern England had received 16 inches (40 cm) of snow since the beginning of December, and it wasn't done snowing yet. It didn't get quite that bad in London, but it closed schools, roads, and buses for much of the time we were there, accumulating in the worst winter London had seen in 20 years.

Shot taken from my window moments ago

All this to say, Seattle, I'm sorry. You're going to have a rough winter, nothing I can do about it. Apparently I just cause bad weather, like the way I attract cats just because I'm allergic to them and really droolly dogs just because I hate being slimed.