There's Snow Business....

This is my photo of the beautiful Northwest snowstorm. We had an hour of snowfall last night in Portland (unless you live in the west hills, in which case you still have a ton of it).

This is so typical, every winter -- the big lead-up by the weather/news folks, the anticipation, preparation, a day or two of snow/rain, sleet, snain, teasing us into believing that maybe this time.... Last night around 10 it snowed quite hard for an hour or two. I thought, "This is it! Finally, we're getting our snow!" Then at midnight I opened the door and could hear the telltale drip drip drip of 33 degrees... and then the rain. So by morning we're left with puddles of slush; sleds are put away again, children trudge off to school after all but being promised a snow day.

The odd year that we do get a real snowstorm, the media hype is so extreme you'd think it was a cataclysmic event - how many ways can you show cars sliding and people slipping, and does it warrant 24 hour coverage to tell people to stay home??

You may be wondering about this pile of stuff in our back yard. This is the contents of our basement, which is in the process of getting a good cleaning out after an extended family of rodents squatted there in the fall. The cleaning crew told us they'd have a canopy over everything, which turns out, as you can see, to be a rather flimsy blue tarp. They took everything out before the snow/rain started; they were supposed to finish up today but called and postponed. Maybe they were someplace with enough snow to build a snowman.