Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

This is the same as an "Are you serious?" blog but I am so struck by how much Oregonians over react when it comes to snow that I had to show my true reaction by a slightly different title.

I wanted to post a news video but I couldn't find one that was good enough. So, I'll have to explain what's going on.

The Oregon weather peeps have been predicting this "Arctic Blast," they call it, for about the last week or so. It was the leading story at every hour no matter what else happened in the news. It was an even bigger story than a bombing at a bank that killed two cops and critically injured another. Are you serious?...the weather is more important than the killing of two officers of the law by a bomb? Something is seriously wrong with that. Then again, it is Oregon and people here think when it snows in the valley all hell has broken loose...and let me tell you, after it snows here, all hell really has broken loose (or frozen over, whichever one you feel fit the situation).

The storm was said to hit sometime Sunday morning. T and I were assigned to give talks in church this particular Sunday and I was tempted, when given the assignment, to ask for a rain check because I knew it was finals week starting the Monday following and I knew preparing a talk would take away from vital studying time. I decided to accept the assignment putting my faith in the good Lord above that I would be blessed by my willingness to serve...maybe blessed with a few A's on exams. So T and I prepared and we showed up to church early ready to speak. The Bishop announced the proceedings of the meeting but strangely only announced up to the first speaker, which was a young lady in the ward. She gave a very fine 5 minute talk and sat down after which the Bishop stood back up and said the snow was picking up and he was going to error on the side of caution and cancel the rest of church. Now, we've lived in Idaho for the last five years and we've had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with a considerable amount of snow. We saw a few inches in Portland while in Idaho we often measure snow fall in feet. Never in my life have I ever seen church canceled. For all our Utah and Idaho readers, can you imagine if church was canceled because of snow? You wouldn't go to church for 6 mouths out of the year or more.

Oh, and as I was walking out of the chapel a fellow stopped me and said, "I don't know how many times I've prayed to have church canceled when I had to give a talk and it happened to you."

It's Tuesday night now. School was canceled yesterday, we had class today, another storm (can I even bring myself to call it a storm), another flurry is said to blow over us early tomorrow and I just received confirmation that school is now canceled for tomorrow. This is absolutely ridiculous. A few inches of snow falls, a little ice forms and mayhem breaks out in the Portland metropolitan area. Tons of snow could have fallen and thick ice could have built on the roadways in Idaho and business as usual.

Though Idaho schools do get out for Potato Harvest...that's another one I don't understand.