Brian’s Brain

We just had our week of winter. While there wasn’t a storm on MLK day itself, the week of cold / snowy / slushy / icy mix has already started blurring together in everybody’s minds. We’ll remember this as the MLK Day Storm in a few years, so we might as well start calling it that now.

Everything started prettily enough. Saturday, we had enough snow to dust things white. Sunday, it came down hard but didn’t accumulate too much in our neck of the woods. We lit a fire, walked through the neighborhood, and in general had a good time.

But what stands out about this storm is, aside from too few hours on Tuesday, Seattle parents were unexpectedly stuck with their kids for a week. Perhaps some parents spent the whole time reliving the magic of snow days through their kids eyes. In our house, that magic had all worn away by Thursday. Partly that’s because our kids don’t like going out in the cold that much. Sledding had lost its thrill. Thursday’s coating of ice made it hard to make snowballs or snowmen. Come the afternoons, it was hard for me to muster the willpower to put on all those layers and get the kids out of the house for what I knew would be just a short excursion. When we did get out of the house on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, it was hard to walk anywhere quickly because all Alex wanted to do was be a Mammy Wooleth (the way he still says Wooly Mammoth). He’d tromp around on all fours, breaking through the ice crust over the snow, like he was an Ice Age mastodon. But we were luckier than many. We kept our power through the whole experience, so we could use movies and iPads to entertain the kids when we ran out of other ideas.

As pretty as the first snowfall was on Saturday, the first snowmelt on Friday was even prettier!

The Barnes and Noble at University Village was one of my top five favorite bookstores. (Rounding out the list: Powell’s in Portland, Elliott Bay Books, Third Place Books, and the University Bookstore.) They had an astounding selection of fiction, photo books, computer science books, and for a brief glorious period, they had a great classical music selection. When I first moved to Seattle fifteen years ago, before I knew a single soul in the city, I’d pass the hours browsing through that store. Both our kids loved the bookstore, too, which had a great children’s book section complete with a train table.

Yesterday, the store closed. I took the kids over for one last stroll through the store. (Plus, I had to use up some old gift cards that had been sitting in a desk drawer.) The store was oddly empty… they’ve been removing shelves and stock for a few weeks now. A few employees seemed to have a good time; they were taking photos of one another and I saw at least one piggy-back ride. The customers had a harder time. Over and over, I heard different people mutter, “This is sad!” (I said it once myself.) And I saw one woman walking through the children’s section, crying.

Oh well. Long live the ebook era, I guess!

Reindeer and Elf, originally uploaded by B.K. Dewey.

One of our crazy holiday discoveries this year: Swanson’s Nursery, the great plant store in Northwest Seattle, hosts a reindeer festival throughout the Christmas season. (They have a camel and a donkey, too!)

Say what you will about Seattle weather… it’s been a beautiful autumn. Sunshine and good weather lingered well into November. Even when things got cold and cloudy, there’s been enough color to keep things festive and happy. This past weekend, we got the kids out to a few playgrounds. It was the first time Mr. I-only-wear-shorts complained about being cold. (That didn’t get him to wear pants. He just wore a warmer coat the next day.)

I’m now at the tail end of 48 hours of unemployment. For those who don’t keep track of my life through various other social media (e.g., we’re not Facebook friends), I’m changing jobs from Microsoft to Urbanspoon. Friday was my last day at Microsoft; tomorrow I start my new job. After 13 years of program management at the largest software company in the world, I’m going to write code at a startup. I’ve helped ship six major versions of Windows, and now my primary computer is a Mac.

I couldn’t be more excited. And a little scared. This is a big change.

Some odd trivia:

• This is the first time I’ve changed employers. Ever.
• I’ve spent 35% of my life as a Microsoft employee. That’s more than I’ve been a father (15% of my life), husband (29%), or post-elementary student (27%).

I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

We’re now entering my favorite month in Seattle. Mornings are chilly but you’ve got a good chance of a sunny day. There’s more and more color everywhere. Until November’s persistent rains arrive, it’s magical. Those of us who have lived here a long time know how special this time is, because you know that each sunny day could be the last one you see for four months. You want to grab each one with both hands and not let go.

This is the scene that awaited us upon returning from vacation.

It’s still summer!

It was wet.

And warm.

And sunny.

We’re back!

One from the archives… at the beginning of July, the whole family went to our piano teacher’s wedding. They hired a babysitter for the kids, and the babysitter brought face paints (!). Here’s Patrick Bear, tearing up the dance floor at the wedding:

And this is from today. Another sunny Wednesday, another concert at University Village. Alex waited in line for an hour, quite patiently, to get his dinosaur face mask. I think it was worth it, don’t you? (Going to bed tonight, it still looked like he was wearing eye liner.)

This summer, we had to look harder for summer, but we still found it in little pockets here and there. Saturday morning started gloomy, but we had a few hours of nice weather in the afternoon and we got the kids out to Ravenna Park. I’m happy with the pictures.

(P.S. For those out of town, you may be amused that our local paper computed that we’ve had 78 minutes of summer-like weather in Seattle so far this year.)