I had forgotten what it was like to not be overwhelmed with disgust the moment the president came on the television.  Not that I watch that much TV.  But even better, I actually want to hear Obama’s thoughts and direction.  “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord” — a statement that in so many other moments would come across disingenuous and leave me cynical, in this instance rings true.  My faith in general humanity has not yet been restored, but tonight is one to celebrate for being a small part of one of those rare transformative events that are full of possibility.

The snow that fell on Thursday a week ago took 9 days to melt off the roads.  This morning was the first time either of us drove our vehicles since last week.  Only this morning did any snow plows even touch the side streets near us, and then only to clear the slush at the base of the hill right before the arterial.

At most we had about a foot of snow.  I saw one person cross country skiing along the side of the road and one mother and son pulling their groceries home on a sled.  Those who chose to (attempt to) drive provided amusement as they did mostly all the wrong things to get themselves unstuck.

We had our last (outdoor) homegrown tomato, picked mostly green and brought inside a few weeks ago, on Christmas.  The indoor red robins look fairly happy but have not bloomed yet.  There are a couple of small and completely green tomatoes on the poor, gangly early girls.

We made it back to Seattle a day before the storm, which left 7″ of snow at our place.  It’s stayed below freezing since Thursday morning, and more snow and wind is forecast for this weekend.

Though my bus routes were not among those suspended, my previous experience of trying to catch them when the roads were slick have kept me working from home. Of course no plowing or de-icing has been done on the side streets.  The nearest arterial is packed snow and ice, with perhaps a little bit of sand.  I’ve read several news stories complaining about the continued bad travel conditions, but what do Seattleites expect from 30-ish trucks already working around the clock in 12 hour shifts against 3,745 lane miles in a city nearly as hilly as San Francisco.  Just stay home.

Our first freeze came this week.  The plants have been slowly dying for weeks now and didn’t seem to sustain any additional damage from the frosts.  We picked all of the tomatoes that were beginning to turn last weekend.

In the lack of killing frosts, the tomatoes haven’t given up, despite the crummy conditions.

We haven’t given up either.  Here are the Red Robins:

When it started turning cold, we took the Atris pepper plant inside, realized it had bug eggs and fruit flies all over it, and put the plant in the garage instead.  The unideal but warm conditions seemed to have worked. Today we picked the remaining red peppers (9 of them, for 11 total in the season) and put the plant outside.  We plan on making very small stuffed peppers with them.

We also picked the other sugar pumpkin.  It’s as large as a jack-o-lantern, which is a bit unfortunate as we only managed to eat half of the first pumpkin which was the smaller of the two.  We also have two (normal sized) butternut squash in the fridge now, and still lots of tomatoes.

We had our first wind storm of the season last week.  We’ve learned from last year and caged and staked and tied zealously, which doesn’t prevent plants from getting battered, but at least all of the tomatoes are still standing. Today, though, has been an unusually beautiful, sunny day in the mid 50’s, with lows in the 40’s.

My bank failed. On a Thursday no less, having lost “$16.7 billion in deposits between Sept. 15 and this past Wednesday [Sept. 24].” WaMu now has the distinction of being “by far the biggest U.S. bank in history to fail.”

WaMu’s failure is my first personal exposure to the greater abstract housing turned credit crisis overflowing into everything else. It’s been a gentle introduction. WaMu branches were open on Friday, and their website works just the same. The $100K FDIC limit is a distant horizon for me, so I’ve not been fretting about my checking account.

But it’s not like my bank’s problems are isolated or unique. I see no evidence that this is the worst of what we’ll see, as we’ve done nothing to fix the underlying failures that got us to this point. I worry that we are still too ignorant and pacified as a whole to force any real change for the benefit of all instead of the bailout of the few. Indeed, we can’t even seem to agree that there is a systemic problem. Is it such a drastic step to ponder if there is actually good cause that businesses mistrust the soundness of their peers? Does anyone think that giving free money to a host of gambling addicts is the way to solve our problems? Why are we getting emergency, hastily thrown together legislation, when it’s been obvious since Bear Stearns at the very latest that we were in for some serious pain and perhaps some thoughtful relief could help us on the way down? Being a measly middle class taxpayer, it’s rather difficult to not be cynical when told that you get to bail out the wealthy who have no incentive to not do it all again. Pelosi says, “We sent a message to Wall Street: The party is over,” but from what I understand of the latest proposal, while more palatable than the first outrageous excuse for a plan, we’re still offering up plenty of fresh beer, except the likes of me still isn’t invited.