Whoa. What a Crazy Weather Weekend…

We are definitely back into the dark, deary days of fall here in the Pacific Northwest. It is 8:18 am here on Monday morning and seems a bit more dark than normal. You just know that today, you’ll be turning on all the lights inside the house to keep your depression at bay. Maybe you’ll be lucky and commute to your vacant office, where you and your spider friend, Ralph will discuss the GDP and stock market over a cup of morning coffee.

Watching the weather report this morning didn’t help either anyone’s mood. All the local news stations agree that this week is going to be rainstorm after rainstorm, following by another weather system bringing more rain. What does that mean? It means you’ll never see the sun again.

By now, you should have all of your rain gear out of summer storage. The rain boots are no doubt clean from all the rain we’ve had over the past 72 hours. The only person I know who won’t be getting out his rain gear is my jerk friend who moved to Arizona two years ago. I’m sure he will post a nice photo of gorgeous sunshine, filtering through his palm trees and bouncing off the water of his swimming pool. No one needs your desert oasis photos, ok?

Wind? Sure, we have that coming too. We even had lightning hit one of our ferries and knock it out of commission. Add that to your morning commute across Puget Sound on a miserable rainy day! Did I mention it was raining?

The good news, we have all been here before and we’ll survive it. Good luck on your Monday adventures.

It is Friday already. My, oh my….where has the week gone my dear readers? If you are like me, the week has flown by and you are at a loss of what to do for the beautiful fall weekend. Note: We have rain and more rain in our forecast.

May I suggest watching some nice cat videos on YouTube?

It has been roughly 7 months since COVID shutdown numerous corporate offices around the USA and the world. Recently, Starbucks said their corporate office employees won’t be returning to work in the headquarters until the summer of 2021 and maybe even beyond that. Perhaps you thought it was going to be a short work assignment in your spare bedroom and now it has become a prison sentence.

Now, as a self-employed photographer, I know what it is like to work from home and I’m here to give you a few tips. I have an extremely messy home office that is organized in a delightful chaos theory manner. I have a desktop computer, file cabinets, boxes, postage stamps, and empty coffee mugs in this man cave. Over the many years I have been working in my home office, I have developed a “Must Have Item” list that makes working at home a much more enjoyable experience.

Must Have List:

Cat: Your cat should sleep on your desk (preferably right on your keyboard) to keep you from using your computer at all. The cat should just lay there, draped across your desk, with its tail in your face.

Dog: Your dog can be located in your office or in the backyard. The dog must bark at EVERYTHING. A leaf that falls from the tree? The dog must bark. A squirrel running along the top of the fence? That dog better be barking at it! Your phone ringing? The bark will wait until you answer the phone and then the dog should bark repeatedly.

Printer/Scanner: This wonderful tool should fail to communicate and work with your computer at all times. Hopefully, you’ll get so upset that you purchase a second one. Once the second one actually works, then the first scanner/printer will magically start to work again. That’s until they start talking to each other and decide to strike and both won’t work at all.

Kids: You need at least two and they should fight as much as possible. Bonus points if they start arguing during a Zoom or Teams Meeting when you are the featured speaker. And why the hell aren’t you doing their school work for them since you are now the teacher as well?

Neighbors: Hopefully your neighbors like to mow their lawn every other day and your office window is right there so you can listen to it. Maybe you will be lucky like me and have your dog go crazy and bark uncontrollably at the mere sound of the lawnmower starting up. Even better if your neighbor likes to mow at odd hours….7 am and then 8 pm the next day, followed by the 12 noon mowing for no reason whatsoever.

A Bar: After everyone and everything drives you nuts, it is nice to have your fully equipped bar (or just a nice fridge stocked full of beer) handy.

Good Luck with the next 18 months….you are going to need it!

Sure, it is now fall and summer is dead and gone. Throw the last scoop of dirt on this summer; it is gone and buried. Now I know I’m a little late on complaining about summer being dead but we did have a nice September. And since I am unemployed at the moment (since March due to COVID), I keep wearing tee shirts and shorts and forgetting what day it is. Heck, I don’t even season it is or month or year it is.

Luckily, my neighbor mention Halloween and trick-or-treaters so we must be in October.

All of this won’t keep me from whining about losing summer. The deck chairs are put away, the cushions are moved to the storage shed to hang out with the spiders, and the deck will most likely be wet and miserable for the next nine months of Seattle rain. Oh joy.

We also pulled the boat out of the water and got it back on the trailer. We winterized and have it stored in the garage. We are all sad now. Even the ducks and the seagulls that like to poop on the boat are sad. Just a sad end to summer.

What would you like to whine about today?