I forgot one: Movies! Not just Netflix, but actual films in a theater. Usually, we see many more movies during the winter than the summer. Part of this is due to our quest to see every Best Picture nominee, part due to the fact we like winter movies better, and part due to the weather. (This year is an anomaly: we’ve seen hardly anything.)

I just continue with my normal life. If I have something I want to do outside, I do it in the rain (unless it is impossible). I just put on my rain gear and go to it.

That being said, I tend to slow down a bit during the winter (with the projects that is) and cook more, eat more, drink more, watch much more TV (not hard to do since I watch virtually none during the summer months).

Here’s to rain! Prost.

My son bought a place a few years ago from a Californian. He had lived up here for several years and he said he is going back to California. He said in Oregon there are only 2 seasons, “Eleven months of rain and 1 month of relatives.”

I’m a native Oregonian. I am used to the rain. However, there have been winters when the rain has really gotten to me (1996 for instance…remember the flood?!!). My remedy for endless weeks or months of rain was to take a vacation in the winter to someplace warm, like Hawaii, Thailand, Florida, Australia, etc. I found when I could break up the rain with a couple of weeks of sun, it was much easier to take.

I also agree with Jeremy. You mustn’t let the rain deter you from whatever you want/need to do. If you did, you’d never accomplish anything.

Hot tea, hot chocolate, hot cider, hot soup. Any of those and a good book go a long way to making the winter enjoyable, not just bearable. That and imagining my springtime garden!

Seiously, though, even though the heating bill is the worse for it, I love all the huge windows in our new home. Even on a rainy day there are glimpses of sun, green grass, birds and squirrels going about their business. Doesn’t seem nearly as gloomy as in our former ranch-style cavern.

I love the rain. I usually try to get out and do whatever I would normally do, not including yardwork in the muck. However, rain means time to spend on good books, movies, friends, games, etc. Rain means coffee and potato soup. Rain also usually means snow in the mountains (except for this week…arrrggh), and the skier in me likes that.

We lived in Albuquerque for 4 years after growing up in Washington. The lack of rain was startling and even a little depressing. I used to crave the summer monsoon season, just for the brief 30 minutes of afternoon rain. Living there, I think I always felt like I should be outside enjoying the sun (all 300+ days a year of it), and I usually felt guilty if I was inside at the computer, reading, or watching a movie.

We just moved back to a place that had more sun; in the end we couldn’t cope with the rain, it became too much to live with.

Maybe we could employ some of your techniques if we have to come back to the rainy northwest.

Thanks J.D!

It isn’t the rain that gets to me, it is the low ceiling of clouds. The lack of bright light leaves me feeling lethargic and grumpy. Folks in DC would give my friend Windy and I strange looks when we walked through the rain, faces turned upward, without the cover of an umbrella. She’s a left coaster too (Northern California, but we can still claim her) and nothing made us both more homesick than a drippy day . . .

I clean closets and plan my spring garden.

I dont mind the rain at all but then I live in a very bright house with a sunroom attached to the living room. My living room has two sets of glass doors in it. One can almost imagine you’re sitting outside.