Personal

Wow.

My brother and his fianceé just found out that Emily is pregnant!

hello family. here it is. we are excited. we went to the docter yesterday. em is 11 weeks along. this is a big suprise to us. sooner than the original gameplan. oh well nothing left to do but celibrate. i love you all. keep us in your prayers. kevin, em and ?

Many, many congratulations!

Here’s something both interesting and disturbing (hopefully not the first thing you’re reading this morning). A friend is conducting an impromptu, informal poll on her LiveJournal:

Mostly for the girls. But if the guys feel they can contribute, feel free.

Feel free to answer this one anonymously.

For how many of you was your first sexual experience consensual?

For how many of you was your first penetrative sexual experience consensual?

Just curious and doing my own little impromptu poll.

Me? Neither.

So far, the responses tally like so:

• Both consensual: 10
• First experience nonconsensual, first penetration consensual: 3
• First experience consensual, first penetration nonconsensual: 2
• Both nonconsensual: 12*

Where both experiences had the same answer, it’s almost — but not quite — 50/50, and the nonconsensual experiences are in the lead. If you combine all instances of nonconsensual firsts into one category, then out of the 27 responses, barely over a third had fully consensual first sexual experiences — and just under two thirds were forced or coerced in some way into their first sexual experiences.

Admittedly, it’s a small sample group to work with, so no real statistics should probably be drawn from this. But I seem to remember hearing fairly often over the years that one out of every three women (people?) would end up being sexually molested at some point in their life. By this sample group, it looks more like two out of every three. Not an encouraging thought in the least.

Just for the record, all sexual experiences I’ve had have been consensual. One of the many things in my life that I’m quite thankful for.

* One comment indicated that both were “technically” consensual, but given the details that were explained, I’ve taken the liberty of adding that tally to this category.

Things are slowly starting to return to a semblance of normality as the weather warms up and all the snow starts to melt. However, slowly is definitely they key word. The promised warm temperatures that were supposed to melt everything away overnight never quite materialized, instead bringing us freezing rain. Today we’ve got more rain, so the town is blanketed in half-melted snow, slush, huge puddles, all on top of still-icy streets.

I won’t be surprsied at all if today turns out to have more accidents, simply because since it’s not snowing, people will think that they can drive normally. Conditions like this certainly don’t make for safe driving, though, and it’s my bet that quite a few people will be figuring that out over the course of the day.

Meanwhile, as a pedestrian/bus rider, I’m stuck with slogging through slushy sidewalks, wading through ever-growing puddles (storm drains designed for Seattle’s usual rain don’t work nearly as well when clogged with snow and slush), and trying to avoid being splashed by drivers who go tearing through the puddles. I swear some of these people actually drive in the gutter on purpose when they see some poor sap slogging along on the sidewalk! Shmoes.

I was yet one of many, many people across Seattle today who, though I did have to go into work, I ended up getting there late and leaving early due to today’s weather. Heavy snow in the morning that has now turned into sleet and freezing rain essentially shut down much of the city — and while the Alaskan in me likes to joke around about how “this is nothing,” I’m also quite aware that for Seattle, this is a very big deal indeed. Besides, who am I to complain about getting to leave work early for a snow day? ;)

A gallery of pictures of the downtown Seattle area that I took during my quest for a bus to get me to work have been uploaded to the Hanscom family photo gallery. Enjoy!

Lots more Seattle snow pics can be found from various local area bloggers, including Tandoku (and again), Funk as Puck, Client and Server, The Wisdom of the Illiterati, and Beans for Breakfast (all via SeaBlogs), Whybark (via Beans for Breakfast), and Anita points to these great pictures of ice on the Pacific Science Center fountains!

More (discovered in the comments at Whybark): In a Puddle and Buffoonery.org.

Looks like I’m going to be late to work today — after waiting for my bus for about 40 minutes, I came home. From the looks of things, several of the steeper hills have been closed down, which is playing all sorts of games with getting around. While I was waiting, though, I got to watch some people shut down the hill right next to my bus stop and work on improvising sleds from cardboard boxes and play in the snow — many pictures were taken, of course.

I’ve got about half an hour before my next possible bus (on a different route), so I’m going to head back out and get some more pictures. Expect a fairly large gallery when I get home tonight!

I got up a little early this morning in order to catch the Macworld keynote webcast, looked out my window, and what do you know — the snowstorm that the meteorologists have been predicting finally hit. By my estimation, there’s between half an inch and an inch in downtown Seattle right now, and it’s coming down strong.

Should make for an interesting day!

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