Merry Christmas

We are having clam chowder tonight, along with a nice assortment of cheese and crackers for our Christmas Eve supper. Later, we will have a competitive game of scrabble. Other than that, sleep perhaps perchance to dream of a "green" Christmas, like the ones we used to know. Oh, mud. Ah, rain. We miss you so....

Snow, anyone?

This just isn't going to stop, is it? It's snowing hard this morning and we got about 5" overnight...David is staying home today with me....he's been really good about shoveling a path for us to walk up and down our driveway (a guy from South Dakota has snow manners!). He's going to have to do it again today...

Monday morning update

Today's weather is something else - each day surpasses the last as weather excitement.

This morning we woke up to another 5" of snow on top of what we had last night. OHSU Ambulatory services closed the outpatient clinics last night and all of my clinics are closed except for one of my downtown clinics.

Then OHSU closed its administrative services except for essential personnel. I guess I'm essential, so I'm at work now. It wasn't easy to get here - walked 10 minutes to the MAX line in ice encrusted snow (in Roberta's pink boots! they're fantastic!) to find that the MAX line isn't running (because the switches are frozen). There is a shuttle bus and I got on that and rode to the Rose Quarter where I switched to a Red Line train to downtown where I switched to the Portland Streetcar. Rode that down to the Waterfront where OHSU has a tram. Got on the tram with 100 other people (100% full!) and off we went up in the snow clouds. There is so much ice on the tram line that as the tram moves the ice chips and cracks and explodes and is flying all over the outside of the tram cabin. Below is I-5 and Terwilliger on part of the route so can only imagine what the traffic below gets hit with. It took two hours to get here. The bad news is at some point I must reverse this journey and go home. I'm not looking forward to the tram ride down the hill.

....yet more snow

It's snowing again late this afternoon and we're expecting 2-7" of snow this evening. It's these little flakes of snow that are dense and coming hard.

But the dog hates it.....poor Fergie....I keep making her go outside to walk and do her business, and she just looks plaintively at me as if to say 'what in the heck are we doing out here?' I really am enjoying the snow...it never happens in Portland.

Where do People HAVE to be on Sunday AM?

I was out admiring the landscape this morning and suddenly heard people yelling - I look down towards Rosa Parks from my house and people in SUVs and pick-ups are crashing into each other and causing a ruckus, disrupting my previous observation about noiselessness. Sheesh.

Silver Thaw

This morning we have about 10 inches of snow with about a .5" layer of ice encrusted on the top of it. The tree limbs are bowed with ice on them; if it warms up we will have that silver thaw we used to talk about when we were kids. I don't hear that term used anymore...I wonder why???

We still have power - last night was so eerily quiet it made me think of Mom's essay on Noise - which she wrote once when her power went out during a winter storm. I'd say we're at Noise - 1. The power is still on, but the snow (and layer of ice on top of it) keeps people in their homes and muffles all other sounds of the city outside. I was up early this morning with dog, and it felt like I was the only person living on earth it was so quiet....

Roberta's Pink Boots Saved My Life!

Well, not yet, but I expect them to anytime now!

I have a fear (David says an "irrational fear") of being buried alive in this stuff....but I've been wearing Roberta's boots all week throughout this weather, and I'm here to tell you these boots are terrific.

Blizzard

This has been one heckuva week for weather on Omaha Street!

Today it is literally a blizzard....my back yard is so quaint looking!

I Little Slave

One of the greatest things about my job as Department Administrator at OHSU is that I have a fascinating faculty. They write books about their experiences and I am trying to read them all. It's a daunting reading list, but always interesting.

This week's read: "I Little Slave" a prison memoir from Communist Laos by Bounsang Khamkeo, a counselor at the Department's Intercultural Psychiatric Program.

"A haunting narrative of undaunted will"

"Raised in the hierarchical society of traditional Laos, Bounsang Khamkeo earned his doctorate in political scinece in France and returned home in 1973 to a country in political chaos in the wake of the Vietnam War. He worked for the government until 1981 before being imprisoned by the communist Pathet Lao government after running afoul of a politically ambitious boss. I Little Slave is the account of his seven year struggle in prison to stay alive and keep sane in spite of harsh physical privation and endless psychological abuse. Khamkeo's story is a moving and important one at a time when political oppression and crimes against human rights are on the rise throughout the world."