Dreary

I’m generally not one to complain about the weather. What good will it do, right?

And besides, you’ve got to keep things in perspective: here in Seattle, we’re not having earthquakes or tornadoes, and as I’ve long thought after moving from Minneapolis, the local climate might make you want to kill yourself, but, unlike in my old home town, you’re not going to actually die out there from the cold.

But, still.

It is fucking dreary here.

I’m home from India two weeks now and there hasn’t been a single day on which it hasn’t rained at least a little and for the last five mornings in a row, extending pretty much through the afternoon and evening, it’s been drizzly and cold, the sort of chilly weather that makes you feel like you’re living in London in the late 1940s when the world was still in black and white and no one ever got warm.

It’s usually better when you get out in it and so I’ve been doing my best to make sure I take a couple bike rides every day, and while it does tend to be my experience that the rain looks worse from inside your house than it is when you’re pedaling around in it, the whole business of getting geared up and then, even worse, peeling off the wet things when you arrive at your destination, is really tedious. I’m sick of gloves that smell like cheese and am fed up with my sodden toes never quite drying out.

Of course, I know that all this precipitation is good for us; Washington state snowpack levels are up, but still tend to be below average; wet socks are a small price to pay for irrigated crops and clean drinking water come summer.

I realize, as well, how tiresome is a guy sitting inside his dry home ranting about wet weather; if the sun would just come out, though, I’m sure I’d feel better.