Tropical Seattle

You know that annoying part of the year where you have to put on long pants and a sweatshirt in the morning or freeze, but by noon, you're suffocating and longing for your shorts? It's back. The summer of unbelievably fine weather (for Seattle) and lovely sunsets draws to a close. Even though I'm still wearing flip-flops, the rain comes back tomorrow and the unseasonably warm temperatures start falling. I'd be sad about it if the piles of clothes we have stacked around to accommodate chilly mornings and frying afternoons weren't driving me nuts. (Fun fact about Marcella: Want to drive the writer insane? Won't take much of a push, admittedly, but the fastest route: Clutter. O_o This makes me officially Not Easy To Live With.)

Halloween decorations started showing up in the stores at the end of August, but none of us can contemplate pumpkin flavored anything when it's still 80 degrees. I keep seeing photos on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest of all the fall themed baking other people are doing. I get inspired and determine I'm going to make some fun treat-like thing. Cake. Bread. Something. But the weather has been so consistently, uncharacteristically tropical that turning on the oven isn't an option. I've always wanted to live in Hawaii. This year, I got Hawaii's weather without having to leave Seattle. Added bonus: No centipedes in Seattle.

So while I lurch through my days having to change clothes a dozen times to keep from roasting or freezing, regale me. What fall goodies are you baking or making?

Note: I'll be sending out my first attempt at a newsletter in the next few days - once I figure out how to get along with the software. If you're interested in pointing and laughing at my nascent newsletter attempts, sign up here.

Snow Day

We've had several questions about what it's like to be aboard the boat in the snowy, blowy weather currently hitting the pacific northwest. In general, the answer is - not a whole lot different from being in a house - except that when the wind blows, our house bobs around on the water. We have heat. So we're warm and cozy inside. Outside, not so much. The wind has risen to 20-25mph. Snow is still slanting in, hissing over the fiberglass. It sounds ominous. We take the hint and venture outdoors as little as possible. The nice thing about Seattle is that we aren't particularly good with snow because we don't have to be. We can hunker down for a day and wait for it to go away. That's the forecast. 40 degrees and raining by Friday. Yay. Seattle isn't built for this nonsense. Now. On to the photos:

 

This is the view out the starboard side window. You can see the snow is melting off the boats - all of the boats have some heat inside and little insulation. So our heaters end up melting the snow. We went from solid white windshields this morning to rivulets of snow melt this afternoon.

This is out our door. You're looking at my neighbor's dock box and dinghy. Yes. The sky really is that color and it's a solid, unbroken mass of that color with small, stinging pellets of snow driven on the wind. Not much accummulation, really, but it is more than it looks like in this photo.

Same shot, wider angle. This photo is crooked because I'm standing on the boat and the wind is bobbing us around on the water. Yeah. The water is indeed the same color as the steel pole in the foreground. 

This is our dinghy. Resolution isn't what I'd like, but really. That's 3+" of snow on the seat...at 1' above sea level. I can't say this storm is a nonevent - because there will inevitably be a series of hilarious and painful Youtube videos about people who attempted to drive in this stuff. Hilly terrain and wet, heavy snow = auto insurance nightmare. But really, about the only thing we'll get out of this is a really spectacular flood on Friday, Saturday and Sunday when the rain comes back in to wash it all away. A bunch of the farmers in the flood plains are already bracing.

For us, though, it's a lazy day of tea and comparing notes with the family to see who still has power. By Friday, this will all be a memory. Which is good. I need to go to the grocery store.

Ode to a Dead Camera

It's a fabulous, sunny (if chilly) day in Seattle, one of those rare mid-October sunshine breaks that lights this area with gold. Yes, okay, it is a bit of poetic licence maybe, but really, from a physics standpoint, at this latitude, it works. Height of sun in the sky - or lack thereof - plus angle of light passing through atmosphere leads to the yellow, orange and red wavelengths getting through and altering the color of the sunshine. The sky turns an amazing, deep blue. But the only way you're going to get warm in this sunshine is if you're in an enclosed greenhouse. Most of the heat gets shunted away with the shorter light wavelengths.

Trees are changing color. Liveaboards at the marina are putting up Halloween decorations. It's all festive and lovely and I can't take a photo. My digital SLR was a casualty of our cruise. It was sitting on the table when we hit some truly crappy sea conditions. We were so busy managing the boat, I didn't have a chance to get that camera tucked away. We hit a wave sequence and wham. The camera bounced from the table to the floor. It won't take pictures at all now. Autofocus *tries* but the lens won't move. Off to find a repair shop. Hoping the camera can be fixed and that it won't cost me more to fix it than it would to replace it. Turns out that after living without it for a little while, I really miss it.