Ramblings from a lingophile, pseudo environmentalist, former bus driver, and DC transplant.

Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

4.05.2007

Singin' In The Rain

Maybe it is too cliché to say this, but I love the rain. I love the smell. I love how it makes everything look shiny and clean. I even love how it feels to hydroplane through it on the road. It is raining right now and I think the sound of the rain on the roof of the house is probably one of the best sounds to go to sleep to. Someday in another life when I am wealthy and can build my own house I think I will build some sort of rain machine that will shower water onto my roof whenever I want for an on-demand rainy sound. But then maybe I would become too desensitized to it if I could just turn it on and off whenever I wanted to. Or maybe instead of building an artificial rain device, I could just move to Seattle (since I want to anyway). Allegedly they get lots of rain there (It has always been beautiful and sunny when I've been there). I wonder how much is "a lot" and how long would it take for me to get tired and annoyed by it. Being from Colorado I bet that my idea of "a lot of rain" isn't even CLOSE to "a lot" of Seattle rain. In Colorado it doesn't usually rain for more than a few hours straight, and then it often clears up and the sun comes out and makes everything nice again and so rain is sort of refreshing and cleansing, but I bet that in Seattle it can get to feeling kind of stifling. I guess I wouldn't know unless I lived there...

Anyway, in other news, the bus driving gig is nearing its end (sort of) and I'll be going to Europe for a month in just a few weeks (is it that soon already?!). As for summer plans, the only two suggestions I got on the previous post could be combined into one road trip to the East Coast; bring my uncle Dwight his stuff from his college days, and help my Aunt and her hubby with remodeling their house. Lately I've also been thinking that maybe I would like to try to go to Rio de Janeiro to study Portuguese for a month or two, but that is probably the most expensive thing I could do this summer. I have also been told that I can get as much work as I want driving the bus, which pays pretty well. I should probably also try to take the GRE this summer. Then, I am going to try to get a job in Antarctica for next season. So maybe I'll drive the bus to rack up enough money for a trip to Rio, go to the East Coast for a couple weeks, go to Rio, and then hopefully go to Antarctica... Yeah, that kind of sounds like a plan.

Today's video is a kind of F-ed up Antarctica-related video by Of Montreal called "Wraith Pinned to the Mist."

11.28.2006

When the Weather Outside is Frightful

I've had a pretty hectic day today (haha, I say that as if it's in the past tense... *sigh*), but then the snow came and it seems to have made everything better because in weather like this you just can't rush things no matter how badly they need to be rushed.

Most of my day was spent rushing though. I rushed to school to skip my first class to work on a project that I turned in at the beginning of my second class and then skipped the rest of that class to work on the homework for my third class and to work on the presentation that I have to give tomorrow but that I was supposed to turn in to my teacher on Sunday. Naturally, I also forgot something at home this morning, so between finishing the project that I skipped my first class for and the time that the project was due, I had to rush home to get the thing I forgot. Of course I decided not to take my bike to school today because it was cold and I felt lazy and I had an unusually large backpack load today, so I took the bus instead even though the bike is ALWAYS faster (ALWAYS). So coming home to retrieve the forgotten item took almost an hour on the bus as opposed to maybe half an hour on the bike. I could continue, but the point is that it was one of those rush-rush-rush sort of days.

But then this evening when I decided I had had my fill of being in the library for one day, I went out to catch the bus either home or to Basemar to get some dinner and some coffee. But when I got there, it seemed that the busses weren't really running because the roads were so bad and I guess they were probably getting stuck and stuff, so I decided to walk even though I didn't really have that much time to spare. But that's where the beauty of the snow comes in. On a normal day I just don't have the time to take a nice leisurely stroll home like that, but on day's like this it's actually the fastest way home for me, so I like to take advantage of it.

As I walked down the hill towards Basemar, all the traffic was struggling with the ice and the gravity. Once bus was stuck diagonal across the road. It made me feel a little bit more nervous about when I start driving a bus in Vail where I will probably have to drive in the snow quite often. I hope I don't get stuck...

When I got to Basemar, I decided to go to Whole Foods and agonize over how expensive their food is. After much agonizing, I settled upon an over-priced but delicious chocolate cookie, and an over-priced but slightly less delicious Odwalla Super Protein bar. Then I continued walking down Moorhead towards home.

I considered hitchhiking down Moorhead to Graham Ct., but then I thought that it would be weird. I wonder if I would pick up a hitchhiker on Moorhead... probably not, but I would be more likely to pick one up there than on the side of the highway. So with my hands in my pockets I continued walking and actually it was a pretty nice walk. Just as I was getting to my normal bus stop, the bus went by. So it took me just as long to walk home and take a pit stop at whole foods as it would have taken me to stand there and wait to take the bus home. I'm just glad I live close enough to school that I CAN walk home. The whole way home I was hoping to witness a car accident due to the ice, but no luck. I'm not asking for any major carnage here, but even just a little fender-bender would have been appreciated.

Something like this would have been perfect. I don't really understand why these people think that it's a good idea to bail out of their cars before making impact though: