Hunker down inside

Yeah, for anyone in Northern Europe, the blasting winds are not news. I certainly cannot remember seeing winds this bad here. A co-worker of mine was with a woman who got blown over on her way into the building and I later saw a guy skitter a good 10 feet across some grass when it started monsooning around 3:30. Also in the morning two women heading into work with bikes (not riding them anymore, but walking them) were hardly able to keep hold of their bikes and were being pulled off into some bushes by the wind around our building (which is bad even on good days). The bike shed was losing parts of its roof and a large part of what was left was heaving up and down and threatening to let loose at any moment. An email was eventually sent around saying no one was allowed in the shed until further notice "due to the severe winds we are experiencing today and the effect this is having on our bicycle shed construction." Heh, that is one way of putting it.

Many people I work with went home early and quite a few who were left when I went at 4:15 weren't quite sure how they were going to get home. I especially wonder how they did get home since all trains were cancelled at some point in the evening. O and I were fortunately given a ride home by a co-worker of his, though in the end he wasn't able to drive us all the way to our house. The overpass near us that crosses over the A10 was closed to even foot traffic, so we got out and walked the rest of the way home. Luckily it was a bit calmer at the time and the rain had stopped. It was even mostly clear. We did try at first to head up and over the A10, but a cop finally stopped us. We had walked quite far though before any of the 3-4 cops standing around noticed we had walked past them.

We have winds, the Portland area has snow. Either news I read, there's weather dominating the posts. I would get confused sometimes though, like I would read Portland's news saying that the new OHSU aerial tram was still running despite the weather and think "In this wind?! Are they mad??" and then I would remember that in Portland it's just snow and cold, and it's here that we have the wind.

So tomorrow is O's 27th birthday. Everyone go to his site and wish him a good one. He is currently in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies to take to work tomorrow. He actually had this idea months ago, mostly based on the desire to be the one lording over the cookie dough and baked cookies, since I'm normally the one baking the cookies and thus telling him how much he can have. Just makes me laugh though, he has hardly ever baked anything and now he's making American cookies with my measuring cups from the US.