This is the river outside my office:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMbOdRHo5Lw

Muddy, full, and 1 foot before "action stage." The river is pretty darn well controlled, and, with the exception of a few bike paths, it would take a lot more water to make it flood. Still, it's strange to see it so fast, so high, and so muddy.

I'm pretty much done with the weather. We lost a chicken yesterday (my smaller silver laced wyandotte), and I'm pretty sure she was dumb and did something like stand out and get soaked in the rain. Chickens are not known for their smarts... even though I covered 90% of their coop and pen (she was in the back portable coop).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a whiner. I live in the Pacific NW and I know that comes with substantial rain. But generally, the rain is going to come November through April. Then, there will be a few showers here and there, but not much else.

But not this year.

This year, we had a strange spring. Very little rain through April. Then, May hit. Rain rain rain. We've received 24 inches of rain since January, most of it occurring in May and this beginning part of June. The ground is saturated. Nothing has dried out. Sloppy, slushy, gucky mud.

Everyone is in a funk. My coworkers and I were in the kitchen yesterday, just staring morosely out the window. Funk. You want to take care in the morning to look nice at work, but then there's the sad realization that you'll probably get rained on and muddy anyway, so your efforts are futile. It's hard to walk-- between the puddles and the mud slicks.

It's said that Oregonians live through the rain to celebrate their joyous summers. Summers here are pretty darn great. Now if we could just get that summery weather already....