If anyone sees the month of JUNE could you please tell it to return to the North West USA, the Puget sound, exactly -- It has fled and we are left with the month of February !!!!

I am supposed to believe in Global warming, I am supposed to believe in Global warming.... !!! Please look at the nights for this week. They are predicting snow - HERE in the N.W. lowlands. Sure, its warming up. I can feel it now, its warming up, its really, really, really, really ---- warming UP !!!!!!

Need more be said... snow in the low lands of the Puget sound region are extremely rare... but its been very cold (not by mid-west standards or even Rochester, NY standards!) here for about 2 weeks and they predicted snow all weekend.. we had a lovely but cold day yesterday, but finally, on Monday morning... a very fine snow is falling. This entire winter is the coldest we have had in a while.. it snowed a few flakes on Christmas day but now, it is sticking because the ground itself is frozen. Well, more coffee and do some housework. Be of good cheer. I think I will go put some seed out for the birds.

So, global warming... wow, we are just sweltering up here, anybody got any moss retardant? The moss between my toes is growing.

This one is way too interesting to be ignored - well, surprise, surprise - what we have all known our entire lives, science now explains ... why does science bother with answering the questions that no one asks? We all know what flu season is...  We spend a lot of the winter either dreading the Flu, living through the Flu or recovering from the Flu, don't we?  A couple of years ago I was sick all of a January with the Flu. All of it. Didn't start feeling better until February. I don't know how others fare but I have spent way too many Thanksgivings, Anniversaries (mine is December 20th.) and Christmases totally and utterly miserable. So, a scientific and logical reason  for Flu's preference for the holidays?
Oh, yes, people, there is !  The raw Science behind miserable, sick holidays.

If you have never read about the 1918 flu epidemic (called the Spanish Flu by the people of the time.) I suggest you do so, but read it with the lights ON. Its pretty horrific. It is one of those times you will be glad you missed - just under the Rape of Nanking and the winter of 1348.
 My own parents lived through it - my dad being born in 1910 and my mom in 1913,  but both were so young they did not understand it.
If you don't know anything ... here is a thumb nail from the top of my very cute Italian head :
At the height of the 1st. World War - just as America entered the war and millions of American men were entering the armed forces, a Flu strain appeared. The first American outbreak was in an army camp in Kansas, I believe. The men - all young and strong began to die like fleas on the back of a dog treated with flea soap. The flu may have had several names back then but it was no more a surprise then than it is now, but this strain was the very worse in a 100 years, perhaps more. It spread quickly, of course, men were traveling towards Europe and reaching Europe... It was world wide. It favored everyone but it seemed worse for the very young and the very strong. Men and women were literally dropping dead as they left their homes for work. It killed millions because it was so virulent. It wasn't the flu, itself, that usually killed the victims of the 1918 Flu pandemic. It was the pneumonia that followed the flu almost every time. It was very deep in the lungs, it was still nearly untreatable, and it killed quickly and very efficiently. It was an awful end for the those victims, but it could also be a very sudden death. They literally drowned in their own fluids.
The pandemic more or less ended WWI as soldiers on both sides of the front lines, died. The trenches of the First World War were a perfect place to breed this strain of the Flu. Modern Science has been obsessed with the 1918 flu pandemic because it was a grand test of the science of the time (Just when modern medicine was being born in the labs both in America and Europe.)  and science scored a big fat '0'. They have found samples of lung tissue from soldiers of the time and they have even dug up victims buried in the frozen tundra of Alaska to search for information on the Flu strain that killed so many... They have identified it and cataloged it - but they never defeated the beast. The beast defeated science. If you want to read more about this I suggest the library : key words : 1918 pandemic, epidemiology, epidemics, Spanish Flu. Also, the net offers some information, of course... though, I always suggest books if you want to really understand a subject !
Wiki's 
PBS
 http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/
CDC
There have also been some documentaries on the subject but they won't give much more than I just did - there was  one on the 'American Experience' a while back that will send shivers up your back but won't add to your wealth of knowledge, to any great extent. I do suggest you watch it as an introduction, though.
On a different subject : My honey got home so late last night from Boeing I made him homemade biscuits and soup. I am making soup now because I found out that many canned soups have Sugar in them. I have no idea how many calories dinner had but I had only 1-1/2 biscuits, a little margarine and a 1/2 cup of soup. I think the only thing that truly drives me crazy about dieting is the doubt when I eat - the number of calories, the proper portions, that sort of thing.
 

Wednesday is Mail -Day. Help me, oh, Lord ! I have to wash and pack everything we made - and I am still working on several projects. I erred,too,  when I wrapped several hand made items before photographing them - I wanted them for bragging rights, here, but also as a help in future years so I don't make the same exact things in the years to come.

All my dearest friends and family seem to be across country. Leon's brother & wife, for instance, are in Virgina, his home state. Other friends, we met here are now scattered across the country in such varied places as Boston, Michigan and Indiana - so everything must travel at least 2000 miles - in two cases, 3000 miles. Really, sad, in a way. It is far more fun to hand a gift to a friend and watch them open it, particularly when you made it, yourself.
 I miss them all both friends and family.

The snow fell but disappeared by morning. The low lands here are not prone towards snow in any large amount - a real snow storm is a very rare thing and even those tend to melt in a day or two as warm tropical air from the Pacific, again, asserts itself. We must go the foothills or the mountains to really see snow nearly every year. As it is I am shivering some as I sit here.

After all this work is done I will settle down some, clean and dust the house - put away a lot of yarn, at least for now, and then, decorate !  I can barely believe another year is its decline. It doesn't seem possible.
Well, the dishes await my presence with a stink rarely smelled in civilized society so duty CALLS !
Sunday afternoon: they are predicting a windstorm tonight or tomorrow.  Just what I need ---- a windstorm ! The chimes outside have been ringing all day,  as it is.  They are saying 60 MPH on the coast but they aren't saying much about inland, that means it could 60 MPH inland or it could slow down to 40-45 MPH. <sigh>
So do I have the clothes washed ??? Are cats carnivores? completely washed - just a few washcloths and I think I will wash those, too - heck I may even iron some, now that the kitchen is caught up! 
I am going to massively irritated if we lose power.

To the above picture, please add rain streaks and puddles, Thank you.

Its been raining off and on - oh.... a week ? I lose count, I really do. We actually have two seasons here in the northwest, so don't believe the Hype - please don't believe the hype !! Oh, yes, the ever green state, such a lovely place, mountains - do you ever wonder why we are evergreen ? could it have something to do with our weather?
It either rains or it doesn't - its either cloud cover or its blue sky. Our summers sometimes fail to start hardly at all.

When it rains in the 'winter time' the temperatures stay somewhere between 50 -35, well, most of the time. Snow is very unusual which is one reason why Seattle shuts down during a snow 'storm'. I am not kidding ... the snow storm of the century up here is an average of 5 inches. When it rains in the 'summer' time it is usually 6o or there-abouts and you can walk home soaking wet wondering if it was raining or misting or if you had just forgot to take off your clothes when you took a shower. Very cozy.
(Please notice when I use quotes I am doing it for a very good reason...) a snow storm up here can be oh... 2 inches of the glorious white stuff - drives the natives crazy.
Funny video of Seattle drivers in a snow storm.
Please notice how little snow was on the ground. Very bad things can happen when you mix complete ignorance with 5 tons of metal and the hills of Seattle !
I do not know what would happen if it really actually Snowed here ... you know, like it does in upstate New York? Winter up here in this god forsaken corner of the world can be any time from my birthday (Yes. tomorrow, I am going to be 56 - and, no, I am not sure HOW I feel about that ...) on until May or June or even early July of the next year, and NO, I AM JOKING !!! Winter of 2 years sometimes collide up here on July 15th. We do have a weird week sometimes in February or late January when it stops raining and it warms up for a short time. Clear skies, nice temperatures can drive me crazy because it seems that winter has ended - early. But only for a week. It only warmed up for a very short time this year and it is already cooling down and the rainy season is upon us, I suspect for real this time, I don't expect another reprieve, I really don't. It rained ' late' this year and we had only ONE week of gloriously hot weather. ("Oh, my god.." everyone screamed. " A week of hot weather - 97 degrees - we are all going to die ! Even I sat close to our fans and drank iced tea for hours. Everyone else was screaming "Global warming, Al Gore is correct ! " )
Best movies to watch when it's hot : Tremors or 7 year itch.

Oh : for the scientifically undereducated. Tree leaves don't turn colors because of temperatures or rain fall. They turn colors because hours of day light are fewer. The northwest does not have an autumn. The rains come and stay there are very few days that it is both clear and cool when the colors of the leaves can be admired and (Another reason why we care called the evergreen state!) we don't have the great forests of hard woods that the Northeast.

The vital truth of it is that summer is dying and fall is falling down on us like a ton of ... of .... rain. Not eventful rain, no thunder, no lightening that rattles the world and shakes the soul down to its most private place. No rolling clouds of fire and ice that scare you and make you think the end of the world is near .... no, these are gentle rains for the most part ... we had only one down pour and the rest is a rain that is more like a mist. We are having the endless cloudy skies that seem like someone turned a large gray bowl on the northwest, also, no break for days upon days. The world turns dark but not dramatic and you just sigh and turn away to fold more clothes because of the sameness and boredom of winter rains.
No, summer ends, the rains come and NO, I am not happy about it, but winter like middle Age happens.

I have lived in this state for nearly 27 years and someone - perhaps, God, owes me a real summer before I die : June to September, plenty of gloriously hot weather, fireflies, cloudless skies full of stars, dinners out on the Patio Ice tea, salads and sandwiches because it is too hot to eat anything else - and most of all, real thunder storms, the kind that rattle the windows and my soul. Wonderful nights when you just wish you had air conditioning but you secretly love the feeling of a summer's night on all your senses.
P.S . And yes, the sun is out today, for now. Don't blink, though.