This state is full of pansies.

[rebeccafrog]

Or, as Pat Rothfuss far more charitably calls them: delicate Northwestern orchids. I love living in Washington. The people are nice, the summers are gorgeous, and the winters are mild. There is a very narrow temperature variance here. When it hits 90°F for a couple days in the summer, NPR tells you to check on your elderly neighbors: no one here

Comments

[angelsmom]

Pansies indeed. Monday the wind chills were between -30 and -40 here, and they didn't cancel school. I felt they should have, and offered Angel the opportunity to stay home if she wanted to. She opted to go, saying the amount of work she'd have to catch up on would be too much. Hm. Quite noble for an 8-year-old, but I'd have totally taken my Mom up on something like that.

[kastinkerbell]

Just wait until it snows!!
That was the most fun I've ever seen. People were sledding down the hills in Capital Hill on whatever they could find: woks, bits of cardboard, whatever.

The buses were trying their best to move people around, but the routes would spontaneously change, so if you saw a bus, you'd just get on it and hope it got you closer to where you wanted to be. Drive? While I had ABS and traction control (and took drivers ed in winter), I knew nobody else had a clue. Wasn't going to risk getting smashed into by somebody who had no idea how to drive with a little powder...and it had to just stay on the ground because why have plows?

I always thought it was funny that people pulled out puffy coats when it hit 40. I was fine in my sweatshirt. The problem is that I was out there long enough to get acclimated to it. It sure took a long time to get used to Minnesota when I got back. I had become a pansy.

[baliset]

Sounds a little like Northern Virginia. We have actual winter here, but it snows rarely so when there's even a rumor of snow flurries, people freak out. Schools are closed or delayed, people run to the grocery store and buy canned food, bottled water, and toilet paper, etc. It's really pretty amusing, because if it actually *does* snow, we get maybe two or three inches, max.

[snarffalita]

We had a couple of snow days because the roads were iced over and people here have NO idea how to drive in snow or ice. I do find it hilarious that some of the kids here go out in shorts and even flip flops when the weather is 10 degrees, though. One girl in front of my house was completely bundled up from the waist up, but wearing shorts and shoes with no socks, and she was intentionally trying to slide down the sidewalk. She fell HARD.