Snoqualmie

Inclementine.

It's been hovering around 60 degrees for the last couple of days, and I've been mad as hell about it. I've just adjusted to the idea that it's December in a sort of half-assedly northern latitude and I should be wearing five layers of clothing at all times. I've dug out the Shit I Never Wear box from my closet (I knew I shipped it here for a reason) and started using its contents to achieve the necessary warmth. I am 3/5 of the way through knitting myself a pair of fucking awesome stripey leg warmers. And now 60? It's an outrage. It's an insult. Fortunately, today it's dropped 10 degrees since yesterday and tomorrow it's supposed to drop 10 more.

I recently devoured a book of David Foster Wallace essays, the oddest of which was a stoically lit-review-y essay about Dostoevsky with more or less all of humankind's desperate soul-searching questions about love and self and meaning inserted in sneaky italics between paragraphs. It's unkind of me to say they looked cheesy -- or it's just excellent support for DFW's thesis about modern readers -- but they looked cheesy. Here is my italicized interjection re: the last sentence of the previous paragraph: Am I really saying this? Doesn't this go against everything I've ever believed? What's happened to me? Don't I want to be happy? Comfortable? Warm?

Possibly not. Have I mentioned that I've been biking to work more regularly since the weather turned grim than I did during all the warm, bright days of summer and fall? (No technicalities about it still being fall. If you have to wear gloves and a scarf in the middle of the day it is fucking winter.) Rain is another story, but the cold, the fog, the icy wind, and all of the Willamette valley's other unfriendly tricks just make me want to get on my bike and ride around going "brrr" and rubbing my freezing hands together at every stoplight. Or go out for walks and shiver and try to keep my scarf from blowing off. My roommates are probably sick of my habit of opening the front door to see if it's still cold and turning around with door still open to announce gleefully that, yep, it's cold.

So this morning it was pea-soup fog and I was delighted -- I couldn't see from one side of the river to the other, or even from one bridge to the next -- and by Friday night it should be back below freezing, and I am downright ecstatic. And no, I don't know who I am or what I've done with Dianna.

Speaking of which.

Click for pictures of people you don't know (and mostly I don't either) rocking some quite excellent costumes. The hats alone are worth a look.