Today is almost sacrilegious for me. The only thing that keeps it from being entirely sacrilegious is the fact that I am not religious. Word on the street is that today is The Last Sunny Day. It is hurting to think about it this much. Supposedly tomorrow we must all welcome the rain like the faithful Seattleites we are (or supposed to be - my personal fidelity to Seattle has been terrible) and embrace the second-best of Seattle's two seasons. Despite my devoted sun-worshipping, I do not hate the rain that much. This is entirely unrelated to the fact that I grew up in Seattle; in fact, it is quite the opposite. I used to loathe the rain. Luckily life stuck me in a few spots where I had no choice but to literally soak up the situation. My fondness for these memories always makes me hope that something just as good will happen every time I hear the rain again. The following are in chronological order....

The first night of spring break my freshman year of college, a group of us went to Mexico for the night and were riding the trolley home when it began to rain. I don't remember what time it was, but it was definitely somewhere past 3 AM. Mexico will wear you out, and we were oh so tired. I had a huge crush on a boy from my philosophy class, and much to my delight he had been dancing with me all night. Once the trolley dropped us off he continued the chivalry and walked me back to my dorm room. Because it was spring break the campus was deserted, and there we were, making out in the rain. I felt spontaneity and the pounding of my heart in every vein I had. This did turn out to be the height of this romance, but, it was pretty nice while it lasted.

Last May, my dad and I went to Maui for five days to visit my aunt and uncle. We were using my companion fares with Alaska Airlines, who had just released non-stops between Seattle and Kahului (a good example of life being beautiful), so we weren't paying attention to seasonality. We also rented a Jeep Wrangler, because we planned to do the Road to Hana, and that drive absolutely deserves an open-air vehicle. First night out on the beach we walked fairly far from where we parked to see my aunt's preferred snorkeling spot. On the way back, it started to POUR. We left the jeep with the top off because  yeah, we're cool and casual island people. Except my dad has a lot of man-toys (to me 'man-toys' is synonymous with 'non-water-proof') and most of the time he puts them away carefully, but sometimes not, so when the rain came down, the blood pressure went up. We were soaked by the time we got back to the jeep, and my aunt dropped her Maui Jim's in a giant puddle, but we were all still laughing. We couldn't get the top back on the jeep there in the parking lot because there are far too many pieces for novice Jeep drivers so we drove back in the rain. Alhumdillalah that my aunt and uncle live walking distance from the beach. All of the man-toys came out safe and sound.

The entire time JS and I were in the Greek Islands, I think we saw a total of three clouds. And they must have been tiny because I don't remember a single one of the three of them. Our last day in Athens started out sunny and summery so we both rolled out our least-wrinkly sundresses and headed to the Acropolis. While we were in the museum, people kept talking about how the day was supposed to turn into thunderstorms. Oh, goody. The clouds started to roll in thick and heavy, so we darted out of the museum and attempted to climb the Acropolis. Approximately three minutes (maybe one for every cloud in the islands?) after we entered the site, it started to rain. I was skeptical about continuing, I have always had this feeling that climbing to high, isolated locations in the middle of a thunderstorm is a bad idea, but JS convinced me that we were only there once, there was no way we could get hit by lightning, and that the rain wasn't that intense. We kept climbing. Ten more minutes up, there were some scary cracks of thunder and a whole lot more rain. I had just bought my first digital SLR right before the trip and was carrying it with me. No desire whatsoever to let that thing get damaged. I was wearing my nice sunglasses and had opted not to bring the case because I didn't have extra room in my purse and the weather had been so immaculate until now. Finally, I was wearing Havaiana's flip flops. Although they are ridiculously comfortable in dry weather, they're just rubber, so they stand low and pathetic versus wet weather. This was the point where I reached my limit of having a good time and I ran down that hillside as fast as I possibly could. Given the flip flops, that really wasn't that fast. JS decided to see the top, so I went inside the museum. I went on the balcony and decided maybe I could get a photo of lightning hitting the Acropolis because several bolts had already struck. What ended up happening was that I stood in front of the museum with my camera sitting on my nose for 45 minutes and a lot of shots of the Acropolis with gray skies sans lightning bolts. Below is my 'lightning shot.' Meanwhile, I continued to wear my sunglasses because I had nowhere else to put them, and I was worried my dress would bleed its blue die onto my bra because it had done that before, so I continuously looked down my own top to check on the steadfastness of my bra. For the record, I prefer to call myself a traveler, not a tourist.

My last favorite memory in the rain involves China, white pants, another round of beggar's chicken, and convenience store brewskis.

Two weeks ago GG and I went to Whidbey Island for the day and observed that "You know you're from Seattle when you can appreciate different shades of gray," and furthermore, can say this out loud without biting your tongue.