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When I left my house today, it was kind of misty out.

You know, that jolly West Coast “keeps my skin moist!” kind of damp stuff that Vancouverites ignore because hey, it’s what makes us green.

But that didn’t last long.

No, by the time I was two blocks from work, we were in the midst of a full-on downpour that flooded the streets with Lake Erie-size puddles and raging rapids that seemed more suited to rafts than boots.

I had my umbrella in my bag, so only the wind-driven drops managed to catch me (of which there were many.) But other people were not so lucky, and looked as though they’d showered in their clothes as we stood in line for coffee.

Then the sky turned blue! By the time I got into work, of course.

Now it’s a strange yellow colour, and I’m waiting for the locusts.

Happy Wednesday, Vancouver!

It’s raining in Vancouver.

HOW NOVEL.

I know that no one needs to read another post about how soggy it is here, but GOSH.

I can’t believe — even after spending years and years and years on the West Coast and breaking at least 30 umbrellas in windstorms (and one in an escalator, but that’s a long story) and owning galoshes and even sporting a yellow rubber coat when it was less than chic to do so in my high school years — just how WET our winters have become.

Every morning sky is gray like a sodden wool sock. Every patch of grass is a mini-swamp, roiling with ecstatic worms. Every street is a minor river system with lakes born of leaf-plugged gutters.

If you have to be outside in it at all, you’re going to get a little damp, even if you have a GoreTex “system” you bought at Coast Mountain or MEC for $700.

Why?

Because it’s also WINDY. No matter where or how you stand, you’re guaranteed a shower of droplets across your face and body. You can’t hide from it under awnings or overhangs, either, because the wind will blow the rain in at you. My open bedroom window even offered a small weather system this morning, with sprinkles of wet across the side of my face not squished into my pillow.

It’s COLD, too. Why is it so cold? According to the temperature, it’s not that cold, but I think the wind and the rain sink into our bones with a special kind of penetrative power (did I just say “penetrative power”? I think I read that phrase in my Spam Folder) that facilitates a day-long chill.

All in all, I’m kind of done with it. You can’t arrive at work dry unless you go from underground parking to underground parking, you can’t walk across a sidewalk without drenching your shoes straight up from the soles (goodbye, sweet Pretend Uggs), and you can’t make plans to do anything outside unless you’ve got towels ready for the drive home.

Ergh.

I’m lucky to work inside, I know. And I’m lucky that my city is so green and fresh and alive. Really, there are lots of people who LIKE the rain, including my wonky upcoming Californian house guest. I don’t even hate it when it’s more of a mist or a shower… or anything other than a fire hose as soon as you walk out the door.

But I wouldn’t mind a bit of nice, fluffy-dry snow and a nose-rosy day that didn’t send rivulets of water down my neck into my underwear.

(I know. Mental picture. You’re welcome.)

I’m not planning to move anytime soon, so I guess I’m going to have to learn to deal with it more effectively. I just have serious resistance to capitulating to weather systems I can’t stand, much like I have serious resistance to buying books with the “O” on the cover.

But this is the city I live in, and they put it on Faulkner. So.

Someone pass me a blow dryer. And a robe. And some waffles, just because.

Hello peaches!

(Do you mind being referred to as a fuzzy fruit that bruises easily? No? Harvey Fierstein jokes notwithstanding…)

It’s Monday already, and despite the fact that it’s sunny and fresh and cool outside in Vancouver, I’m feeling a little… oh, I don’t know… sluggish? Snailish? Decorative rock gardenish? Something likewise still?

Everyone goes on and on about how hard it is to get motivated at the beginning of the week, unless they happen to be one of those people who says things like I SLEEP THREE HOURS A NIGHT IN FIFTEEN MINUTE SHIFTS and I’M JUST THANKFUL FOR ANOTHER WEEK TO FOLLOW MY PASSIONS and LIVE EVERY DAY LIKE IT MIGHT BE YOUR LAST and MY NAME IS DAVID AND I’M A SPEED ADDICT.

I’m generally fine with week-ginnings. I’m just bloody tired TODAY for some reason.

So how about we make it easy? This blog post, that is.

Tell me…

1. What’s the weather like where you are?
2. Do you have pants on?
3. What’s the last thing you ate?
4. If you could get anything at all for Christmas — $1,000 limit — what would it be?
5. Do you like your middle name?
6. Any questions?

And really, once we were on the boat, the lighting was nearly nada.

During the course of the night, I managed to do all of the following:

Take a couple cabs with super-chatty cabbies, one of whom said, “Well, hello, party girl!”
Get approximately 1,563 compliments on my earrings
Lose a blinking snowman in my dress
Choose from a buffet on a very, very rocky boat (watch out for tumbling prime rib!)
Dance in red, red shoes (that’s in the store)
Ride on a school bus
Get my ass grabbed
Buy pizza for a homeless guy

As far as I’m concerned, a complete evening.

This morning, I was on Battle of the Sexes on 95Crave (95.3 FM) in Vancouver. Before I’D EVEN HAD MY COFFEE.

I co-hosted with radio ninja Buzz Bishop (also available at Cyberbuzz.) Buzz lets me jabber on the radio now and then — partly because he’s a nice guy, and partly because he enjoys listening to me sound like a complete ass “in front” of thousands of listeners.

(You can hear more of our antics by clicking on the “radio radio” category down there to your right.)

The point of the game is for both hosts — a male and a female (usually Nat and Drew, the usual morning drive folks) — to choose three questions to stump the opposite sex.

In fact, on Nat and Drew’s page, it says something about Battle of the Sexes deciding which gender is “smartest.”

But I definitely don’t think that’s what Battle of the Sexes is all about. Doing well at trivia contests is much more about exposure to culture (and memory) and a certain kind of upbringing/nurture than actual intelligence.

I mean, I know a lot of trivia, but that doesn’t make me brighter than anyone else… I just tend to fixate on random details, rather than large, useful concepts.

(Just ask my PoliSci profs.)

I asked the following questions this morning of my “stumpee” (poor guy probably wouldn’t like THAT title too much…) Chris:

1. When a woman gets “threaded”, does that involve:

a) Getting something sewn for her wardrobe
b) A sort of hairstyle
c) Getting hair removed

Chris, to his credit, got it right (c). I was impressed! And that’s all he needed to do, apparently, because his female counterpart, Janelle, batted .000 on Buzz’s questions. The only other question I got to ask was about Mr Big’s real name on Sex and the City (he didn’t know: John.)

(I knew all of Buzz’s answers, by the way.)

We had an ongoing competition like this at camp, and I used to be called in as a ringer to help the junior girl staffers, since the boys couldn’t knock me out with their questions.

I think I was successful in part I have a brain for randomology… but I was also raised by parents with diverse interests.

My dad loves sports — which is apparently “guy knowledge” — but he also loves fashion (A topic that eludes a lot of men. A LOT OF MEN. GET LONGER PANTS NOW.)

My mom can knit or sew circles around most people (do you need a knitted circle? let me know), but she can also wield a power tool with extreme proficiency (back off, boys… she’s taken.)

I don’t think either of them fits any kind of gender stereotype very well, even if my dad DOES love his car to be obsessively clean and my mom DOES bake a mean pie.

Ew… even TYPING those stereotypical roles made me cringe.

That’s why this whole thing has me thinking: Is there really such a thing as “gender-specific” knowledge? Or does it just have to do with how you grew up? How “cross-gender literate” is any of us, overall?

So here are my questions for you:

1. Do you think your knowledge base is gender-specific?

2. Do you ever refer to certain information as “girl stuff” or “guy stuff”?

3. What is the most stereotypical “gender topic” you know well?

4. What subject area do you know a lot about that might surprise people, given your gender?

4. Were you raised with ironclad gender roles? Or were the people in your life “generalists” of a sort?

5. Got a “boy question” to stump me? I promise not to Google.

(And try to make it something that most guys would know, not just something you happen to know at the same time as you happen to be a guy… like the serial number on a small part in a Nissan RB engine, or your middle name. Yeesh. Unless you’re like… Richard Dean Anderson.)

We made all the snow disappear!

Overnight!

With nary a wave of our hand or a twinkling wand, we’re back to being a sodden, gray, moldy paradise.

This morning, my walk to work felt like whitewater rafting.

Without the raft.

Now I’m sitting at my desk with bare feet and rolled-up pants, wishing that I was shivering but NO, IT’S ALREADY TOO WARM FOR THAT.

Honestly, I know that everyone who comes to Vancouver is like AAAAH! VANCOUVER! I LOVE IT! IT’S PERFECT! LOOK AT YOUR MOUNTAINS! OMG, TREES! OCEEEEAAAAANNNN!

I know we’re popular for our natural beauty. Every time Eric comes from San Diego, he takes 14,000 pictures, gasps at Douglas Firs, and claps his hands like a little girl on the drive to Whistler. I have seen firsthand what our environs do for you people who are Not From Here.

And I know that the rain is the reason we look so lush all the time.

I also know that there’s a decent possibility I will step on my lawn one of these days and just SINK INTO THE SODDEN EARTH NEVER TO BE FOUND AGAIN.

Come back, Mr. Sun.

But that didn’t stop your intrepid Vancouverites from hitting Bright Nights and the Christmas Train at Stanley Park.

Even if we got completely soaking wet and I had to wear my old-school GoreTex and BRRR…

It’s worth it.

And we saw a couple other strange things, too…

Um.

It SNOWED.

Okay, well, it snowed other nearby places earlier this week, but finally?

I SAW SNOW.

ON MY OWN DECK.

ON MY OWN STREET.

And a lot of other places, really. Which is nothing short of AWESOME.

I’m not sure the rest of my fellow Vancouverites feel the same way, after witnessing a few grim looks (and vehicular near-fatalities) while out and about today.

Vancouver has a complex relationship with snow.

We don’t get it too often, because our temperatures don’t generally drop below 0 C. I mean, yes… we’ve had our freak storms and bizarre drops and icy outflows and blizzards, but they are infrequent, to say the least.

So infrequent, in fact, that we speak of snowfalls by YEAR, not by date or season.

That’s why, when it actually happens, we’re either totally excited… or totally beside ourselves.

I’ve put together a little “Who’s Who” of snowed-upon West Coasters to illustrate my point further:

The Lifelong Vancouverite Who Will Never Leave

Wearing: Raincoat, in firm belief the snow will turn into rain soon. Sketchy gloves from 1987. Shoes made to hold out water, not gain traction. Confused expression.

Driving: Erratically. Refused to get all-weather (read: snow) tires on SUV, because WHEN DOES IT SNOW HERE? Experiences radical road rage at everything from child on sidewalk to bus driver to own family in car. Listening to all-news station waiting for reports that the rain has started SOMEWHERE, FOR THE LOVE.

Heard remarking: “Is it raining yet?”

***

The Lifelong Vancouverite Who Pines For Seasons

Wearing: Giant parka purchased during cruise to Alaska in 1988. Expression of complete joy.

Driving: With expression of false confidence. Does donut to avoid hitting squirrel. Pulls out ice scraper with glee every time he gets back in car, though there never was any ice on his car.

Heard remarking: “Man, this is nothing. I don’t know what those folks on the Prairies are talking about. This is a piece of cake!” (shortly before falling on ass in entryway to Whole Foods)

***

Vancouverite Who Moved from the Prairies or Ontario ON PURPOSE

Wearing: Hooded sweatshirt, flip flops, expression of feigned ignorance. What? This won’t last. This is nothing. Seriously, it won’t last, will it?

Driving: Just fine. It’s like riding a bike. Sigh. Deftly avoiding actual Vancouverites.

Heard remarking: “Honestly. It won’t last. It never does. I’m from Swift Current. You don’t KNOW snow.”

***

Vancouverite Prairie/Ontario Transplant Missing Home

Wearing: Down coat, scarf knitted by Grandma Penner, cellphone stuck to ear calling mom in Winnipeg, starry-eyed expression skyward.

Driving: On very expensive, very optimistic snow tires. Just in case. Dad said he’d pay for them.

Heard remarking:“I don’t know. Maybe I COULD find the money to come home at Christmas…”

***

Vancouverite Child

Wearing: Giant puffy jacket just purchased at Old Navy, ridiculous fleece hat sewed by quirky Aunt (never previously worn), rainboots and three pairs of socks.

Driving: … their parents insane.

Heard remarking: “When can we go out? Is there enough for a snowman? I can’t use a baby carrot for the nose! Is school canceled yet? Can I go outside before bed?”

Heard remarking tearfully, two hours later: “Mommy, why is it raaaaaining?”

***

Vancouver Tourist From Much Warmer Place

Wearing: Coat purchased from hotel boutique, umbrella, inappropriately heeled shoes, camera around neck to document that YES, I KNEW IT, THERE WOULD BE IGLOOS!

Driving: No driving. Tour bus.

Heard remarking: “When do the penguins come out?”

***

Meg

Wearing: Puffy coat, pashmina, Uggs, aura of total joy.

Driving: … her stomach into oblivion with Gingerbread Lattes on endless snowy walks.

Heard remarking: ‘AAAAAUGH! #$%@!” (while falling down steps) Then: “No! I’m okay! Seriously!”

***

I have to tell you… we don’t do snow like anywhere else on earth.

But here’s to the white stuff until Monday, when the forecast calls for “Rain, heavy at times.”

Sigh.

Well, hello there!

My body continues to fall apart rather charmingly, but I’ve decided to say FINITO! to complaining about it or dwelling on the fact that my $#%@stomach@#$&$knee@#*&$lungs@#&$head hurts.

Pain is a part of life, right? If we never hurt, we’d never know the sweet relief when that hurt passes away.

Yeeeeah. Uh huh.

But enough of the whining. Moving along.

Today is a glooooooriously sunny day.

And when I say gloooooriously, I like to use a different amount of ‘o’s every time.

I love it when Vancouver spends a few days being crisp and cool like my home of yesteryear, the Canadian Prairie.

(Cue noble, sweeping music and an aerial shot of snowy fields…)

Now, when I say that I lived on the Prairie, it sounds like I was all Laura Ingalls Wilder in a dugout in the middle of nowhere, when really, I lived in actual towns and cities. With running water and electricity and nary a wall constructed from sod. And cable. But no internet, since there was no internet yet. At least not an internet for everyone. It was just for geeks back then.

Mmm, geeks.

I’m getting off track here.

Clear and cold weather is my favourite kind of weather, in a near tie with clear and warm weather, which is kind of ironic, since I live in the Clouds (I’m enjoying capitalization today!)

The Clouds have lifted for now, though. I celebrated the Lifting (see?) with a Peppermint Mocha (now it’s just getting out of hand) which thrills me with After Eightish deliciousness (why is there a Wikipedia entry about mints?)

I’m also thinking about all things Christmassy, including the Christmas Train (I HAVE TO GO THIS YEAR, DAMMIT) and my work Christmas party (I’m trying to think up something to wear. I’m not big on buying some spectacular new dress, since all the rest of my holiday parties are of the jeans-heels-pretty shirt-giant earrings variety, rather than the cocktail variety. You feel me? Okay, maybe you don’t, but any suggestions for how to work up the same black, v-neck, mildly cleavage-y, sleeveless, knee length little black dress? I’m thinking a cute red wrap and some heels and an ostentatious piece of jewelery… and also thinking this is much too long for a parenthetical remark.)

If I could be doing ANYTHING today, I’d be on a sleigh ride somewhere snowy, wrapped in blankets and all cozed in behind horses puffing steam out of their noses. HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE? I love that stuff.

The last “ride” I was on was on a cardboard box behind my grandfather’s LeBaron on country roads outside of Devon, AB. He attached it to the car with luggage straps and whee! we were on our way.

To this day, I have no idea why my mother was okay with this. I mean, one sudden brake and I’d have been one with the undercarriage of his car. But I think he was careful. Maybe? A little?

At least until he threw me off the box into a ditch full of brambles on a sharp turn. Did I mention I was six? Yeah.

My parents were watching from the front window of my grandparents’ home and were ready to run out and get me, but then they saw my little snowsuited body emerge from the ditch, running at a full clip. My grandfather spotted me in his rearview and slowed down (how kind!), at which point I hopped back on the box and rode for another half hour. Awesome.

Well, awesome until I walked into the house and the hot air hit my scratched-up, frozen little face. Then I was a scene from Carrie (I was going to link to an image there, but EW. EW.)

Really, I’ve always been this way.

I was putting together a Holiday Online Shopping Guide for my blog, since I am the shopping link queen on Facebook, but then it occurred to me that EVERYONE ELSE WAS DOING THAT, TOO. Meh. We’d probably all end up linking to the same things, right? And I don’t shop much online… I just BROWSE LIKE A PRO.

But if you want some holiday shopping links, I’ll post them later today.

This mocha is still awesome.

Love to all!

I’m a little wonky today for a number of reasons related to both my disorder and my gender (what? I don’t know what I’m talking about either) so posting might be a little wonky as well.

Granted, now that I’ve said that, I’ll inevitably post 90 things during the course of the day, which will lead six people to leave the comment that “we thought you weren’t feeling well?”

Which may lead to me raising an eyebrow and waggling my finger at the screen, but you won’t see that, will you? No, you won’t.

But, because I love you, I’m going to link to six old but fun — just like William Shatner! — posts here, just in case you needed something to read. I care about your reading needs, you know… I really do. Much in the same way I am concerned for your dental hygiene and iron intake. And the cleanliness of your underwear.

Consider me your cybermom.

Wait, no, don’t. That’s creepy.

Anyway:

Donettes, yo.

The infamous “Dear Him” letter.

Apparently, I’m an easy lover.

Remember?

No real excuse for a photo of Ryan Reynolds. But a lot of opinions.

A manifesto.