It's snowing!

That's what I said Sunday night, as little flurries started gliding their way down to the Seattle streets. it was so faint that I couldn't tell if it was just light rain, and even then I had to focus my eyes so I could actually distinguish the little blips of soft grey from the backdrops.

By the time we woke up Monday morning, the little flurries had evolved: the streets and cars and boughs and parks were all white and peaceful, and the snow continued to fall in heavy chunks. It was quite the tableau.

(A sidebar about Seattle infrastructure: I have been in Seattle for four years, and before that I was in Virginia, and before that I was in Minnesota. I have seen the full gamut of what constitutes 'snow'. The first time it 'snowed' in Seattle for me, it was a literal dusting of snow -- you could not measure the amount of snow that had fallen because flakes were barely stacked upon one another. Nonetheless, the city shut down. I saw people abandon cars in the middle of the street. It was mayhem. People do not seem to know how to handle snow here.)

Monday morning was neither a dusting nor a blizzard -- it was simply a respectable amount of snow with no signs of melting or stopping, and it was absolutely wonderful.

Some make the argument that love for snow is intrinsically tied to recreation: as a kid, snow days usually mean no school; as an adult, snow days usually mean no work (or, rather working from home, which is in Seattle parlance "I will be available via Slack or email but probably not doing anything of value", which is truly one of the great unwritten social contracts of our time.)

I, however, have no school closings to monitor or commutes to avoid: my Monday was the same as ever, except that I got to glance to my right or take a chilly step out on my balcony and see winter, actual winter (not Seattle's most common manifestation of winter, which is it is dark and dreary and drizzling and altogether boring).

It made me so happy (and, for the first time in a while, slightly homesick.)

By Tuesday, the snow had stopped and mostly turned to slush, with the main streets de facto paved by cars and a couple sidewalks too treacherous to reasonably manage.

By Wednesday, another rainstorm had come, and any trace of snow had vanished.

By Friday, though, a weird thing happened. I got up from my desk at the end of the day and it was still light out. This is a big deal for a place where you sort of begrudingly accept that nighttime comes at 4.30pm in February: to be given an extra sliver of daylight, to be able to start the weekend without having to turn on the lights, is no small thing.

(It's funny, too, the first few hints of longer days, because the entire city starts shifting and shaking their limbs as if finally awoken from an unexpectedly long nap. The dogs on my walk were more numerous and vivacious; people stopping in the middle of the street to take pictures of the sunset; more chatter, fewer parkas.)

It seems that spring might be on its way.

A lot of other stuff this week:

• This week I wrote about burn out (or, rather, burn in).
• I collected some things that I really enjoyed over the past week and made a mini Twitter thread listing them.
• Here's a fun fact: 'radio buttons' are called radio buttons because the exclusive choice metaphor was borrowed from car radios back in the 80s. I have been creating radio buttons in HTML for more than half of my life and never stopped to wonder why they were called that. (I wonder what other things I don't know that I don't know.)
• Finished up two shows this week: Haibane Renmei, which I mentioned last time (it was very strange and bittersweet, like if Murakami made an anime) and Search Party on TBS (which was incredibly fun, a black comedy mashup of Twin Peaks and Girls.). Also caught the pilots of Riverdale (what if Archie was in a teen drama that was also Twin Peaks?) and Legion (one of the most bizarre and compelling pilots I've ever seen.) Good lord I watch too much TV.
• Please peruse Snack Data, the greatest site on the internet.
• One of the big iOS 10 changes that didn't really get coverage was the introduction of CallKit, which made it possible to make more phone/voicemail-centric apps -- specifically, it meant you could make call blocking apps. I ended up settling with Nomorobo, partially because it's such a great name -- having used it for two weeks now, I highly recommend it. It took me from around twenty spam calls a week to maybe one or two.

Happy Sunday. I hope you get home safe.