One of the more humorous aspects of life in Oregon is the constant expectation about coming blizzards. Oregonians look forward to blizzards the way that Floridians look forward to hurricanes, there is a lot of anticipation and frequently the hype that comes beforehand is not borne out in the way that the storm ends up happening. That was not the case today, though. I had read some comments yesterday night about reports of snow falling being reported, and I was a bit puzzled but I was also rather distracted and di not think enough about what it meant. When I woke up, though, I found that the front yard was full of white snow.

This made my morning a bit more interesting than I thought it would be. After all, I had committed myself to going in person to the court hearing today for my CASA case, and ended up doing so. When I arrived, I was only the second person who signed in all morning at 8:45, and a whole hour of hearings had gone on since then. One other person would sign in as one of the lawyers in the case for the hearing, and a few people ended up on the Zoom meeting. Given the fact that the snow was not so bad where I was, the snow was unexpected for me but not necessarily unwelcome.

One imagines that those who got delays to school or got off a day of classes because of the Spring snowstorm would feel similarly. That said, the storm was definitely unwelcome for some people. Those who live on high elevations, such as the West Hills, where roads are apparently going to be closed for days, might not find the storm as much of a nothingburger as I did. Similarly, those who were trying to drive to Portland and found themselves blocked on US-26 or any other number of roads into town by fallen trees were not likely as happy to hear about the surprise winter snowstorm. Much depends on context. What is pleasant in one’s yard is not always so pleasant on one’s drive.

What are some other situations you think of as being unexpected but not unwelcome? Running into someone randomly at the library usually counts as that for me. Finding new and unexpected pleasures in one’s recommended news or videos can count although I have to say that neither of those things happened to me. There is one other person I witnessed today that had an unexpected but not unwelcome experience, and though I cannot talk about it in detail, it was something that gave me a lot of room for thought, to ponder how it is that people can take advantage of opportunities and chances that fall their way that end up being something better than what could have been expected under the circumstances.