folks here in portland don’t think it’s supposed to rain in the summer.

pretty much not at all.

i have learned since arriving here that summer is considered oregon’s best kept secret (oops!!), because everyone’s first reaction to the idea of living here is “but the rain!” and oregonians are just fine with encouraging that, because seriously, the summers are amazing – clear, dry, warm but not hot, berries so numerous as to be considered weeds, and rivers full of salmon and an ocean and mountains in which to play. not much more to ask for, really. it’s like california, but cheaper, and with fewer californians. and the californians are people like victor and sharon, and we like them. :)

the tradeoff (and the source of the weather stereotype) is that it rains all winter, but i prefer water that falls from the sky to water that just hangs in the air as humidity anyway, so that seems a better tradeoff so far than indiana summers, where it quite honestly feels as if air is something through which one must swim. also, the corollary of there being more rain than snow in the winter is that it doesn’t really get all that cold, which appeals to many. since i actually love the snow and embrace the cold as a good excuse to drink hot beverages and wear fuzzy clothes, i expect that if the rain annoys me it will not be because it will make the sky grey and the world wet, but because i will not be able to throw it at my friends or sled upon it. aforementioned mountains might help with that, though, so we’ll see.

in colorado, it rains every day in the summer. for five minutes. accompanied by booming thunder. and that is one of my favorite features of colorado. oregon is winning points with me for being less dry than colorado (yeah, i’m picky. colorado? too dry. indiana? too wet. oregon is like the baby bear of humidity.), as i appreciate things like moss and mushrooms and the ability to grow produce, but it loses points by not having thunderstorms. because that’s the other thing i didn’t know about the rain here. have i blogged this already? it rains a lot. but there are never thunderstorms. and this is very, very sad.

but anyway, yeah. in the summer? it’s not supposed to rain at all. i know this because it has been doing so this week a fair bit, and people are grumbly. you would think that rain would be such a part of life here that people don’t notice much, but apparently that is only because they know what they have to look forward to on the other side of the calendar, and it doesn’t take much to make them feel swindled. because it’s not even raining that much. drizzle, i would say. it is making our pre-burning man construction projects more difficult, but i have heard dismay from all of my local friends in all of their various undertakings, so it seems to be striking everyone as against the laws of nature.

which is an interesting reaction to the workings of nature, isn’t it?
;)

off to run rainy errands i go.