Are you sure this is Vancouver and it's November?

Well, I'm sitting in my cozy and very warm office in my cozy and warm house wondering where the heck I am.

First we get torrential rains that come close to breaking the November rain record (didn't we do that in January?). Then came the wind storms whose gusts tore shingles off of houses in West Vancouver. Said wind blew all kinds of debris and silt into our water reservoirs making our drinking water unsafe to drink for two weeks. Here at my place, we toughed it out by boiling our water and then putting it through our Brita filter. The filter (which was nearly done already) bit the bullet fairly quickly and then we resorted to buying jugs of spring water from Safeway. We were also very careful to limit the amount of water we used. It certainly was interesting having to premeditate brushing your teeth!

The weather calmed down briefly before drastically dropping in temperature and dumping a foot of snow. Just in time for our boil water advisory to be lifted on Monday. Overnight it was -11 C with a wind chill of -18. Today it was -6 with a wind chill of -19. Can someone please confirm that I'm still in Vancouver? I mean, the last time I felt weather like this, was the 2 years I lived in Ontario, and I was more than happy to leave those days behind me.

So today I compensated by making Shrimp Enchiladas Verde and pretending I was on some beautiful beach in some warm tropical place. A co-worker and her husband are flying to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic tomorrow. Can we say envy?

(sigh)

Since I can't fly off to somewhere with better weather, I think I'll compensate some more by making frozen strawberry margaritas for girl's night on Saturday. That is of course, that the friend coming over can actually make it here and be relatively sure she can get home, seeing as starting tomorrow afternoon, they're forecasting another 10-15 cm of snow.

I might have my down parka, warm gloves and winter boots at my beck and call, but alas, I am still a mild weather west coast girl at heart. Basically, I'm a wimp. :)