Dear Alaska

I'd like to thank you so much for the lovely and unexpected present you sent our way today. It is, of course, entirely my fault that I was unprepared. After all, what sensible person would assume that a sunny, eighty-degree day on Monday was any indication that there would not be a forty-degree hailstorm on Wednesday? Clearly, my bad. And really, even if I'd known, who's to say I would not have nevertheless chosen to wear a cotton sweater and birkenstocks to walk through vertical rain across a parking lot an inch deep in water to get to my car? It's not like I stockpile woollen goods for cold days or anything. I also hope that you know that you shouldn't worry at all about the mudslides. If we hadn't had those pesky little fires in the fall, the hillsides wouldn't have been denuded; it was just bad planning on our part.

Of course, I do realize that I will be rethinking any sarcasm that you might be sensing in this note come July, when we are living off the tail-ends of the snowpack that we get from storms like this. No snow-pack, no summer water, and as we enter our third year of drought, I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. But maybe next time you could call ahead? After all, while it's merely inconvenient for me not to expect an ice storm and snow at 3,000 feet after a weekend which resembled summer, it's got to be really embarrassing for those nice folks at the National Weather Service who were predicting sixty degrees and sun.

Oops.

Love,
Jocelyn

Meanwhile, two lovely packages arrived yesterday, one of them from my Loopy Swap pal! I have no photos, so I'm going to wait to extol the virtues of the lovely knitting included therein (one item of which was the only sensible thing I wore to work today, and thank goodness for that!) until I can share them with you in all their glory. But you can come out of hiding now, Jessica, and take your bows, because you outdid yourself with this package!