On the third day of Christmas...

We finally have the great meltdown. My street is 99% clear, and even the BMW that was parked in the illegal spot opposite our building for over a week has disappeared.

Dirt-encrusted snow boulders still line the plowed streets, but they will go away eventually. Now the danger is flooding and avalanches. At mid-day there was a 5-mile backup on I-90, as traffic was halted for avalanche control in the pass.

At Christmas I like vintage. The wreath is actually a 4-inch metal ornament we've had around for years. None of us can remember where it came from or when - it's just there, in the decorations box. A few years ago I started hanging it on the front door. Who said a wreath had to be huge?

And here's a vintage Christmas greeting, from "Private Screening," an elegant second-hand shop in Fremont. The image is embossed on heavy paper, with the name of the senders engraved inside.


Posting it is an excuse to link to my favorite Christmas poem, Eliot's "Journey of the Magi." Even when you know that Eliot borrowed some of the best lines and images from a sermon on the Epiphany, delivered by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes on Christmas Day 1622, it's still a moving poem, full of wonder and sadness and regret and imagination.

Two days before the First Day of Christmas...

Here's a great post-modern Christmas tree, mounted in what looks like an underground parking garage. It seems appropriate for this odd, torpid, unusually snowy holiday season.

Snow hasn't melted yet. L & D are still in Florida, so far as we know. This is the day they hope to get back, so we are thinking positive thoughts. The airport is slowly getting back to normal, according to radio reports.

I'm going to I and Z's house tomorrow night, taking along an overnight case (besides a bag of presents - that should make me the least popular person on the bus.) Current forecast is that we'll get more snow - or worse, freezing rain - just in time for Christmas Eve.

However, it's warmer than forecast already today, and weather in the PNW changes in the blink of an eye.

Yesterday I caught a bus home from downtown, after watching a string of Metro buses squeeze by an articulated coach that was stuck at a stoplight. SRO, but a nice Willie Nelson lookalike insisted I should let him "be nice for a change" and gave me his seat.

One reason I ride the bus is for the stories. On yesterday's ride, a man standing nearby told me about his uncles, who once upon a time, during a long-ago hard winter (sometime in the 30's, he guessed) pushed a Model T from one side of a completely frozen Lake Sammamish to the other.)

"They were smart enough not to drive - but I'm sure they were both drinking."

Lake Sammamish is not small. That must have been a notable winter.

Happy Thanksgiving, continued

I was tempted to reference Christmas in the heading for this post, but resisted - never mind that it's now less than a month away.

Soon the Christmas ships begin four weeks of evening parades, a welcome brightening of our dark season. Many participating boats live in marinas along the lake below this building, so we get extra chances to check out their colorful decorations. Grand finale happens December 23 at Gasworks Park, at the north end of the lake. That night so many boats crowd close to shore that it looks, from here, as if you could walk right across the lake without getting wet.

Listening to NPR on the aftermath of the carnage in Mumbai, I realize that since 9/11 I've grown used to hearing an interesting group of international commentators from the Middle East and elsewhere. A few speak the measured, precise English that most Americans can't manage any more - others are more difficult to follow. It's all good ear training.

In Transylvania, we become de facto English tutors for our interpreters (especially for the ones whose English teachers give them time off because "you'll learn more from working with the Americans.") It's true - we correct past participles, tangled syntax and pronunciation when we can, all the while complimenting these ambitious 17 and 18-year-olds on their proficiency. I think English must be a fiendish language to learn, but our Hungarian/Romanian speakers just laugh and assure us that French and German (which they also study) are MUCH more difficult.