How Rainy Weather can bring out fun creativity

Brianna G.

February 20, 2011 - 10:21 PM

Another busy week! With winter weather back in full force in addition to midterms, work, and post labs, this has been a pretty long week. Thankfully, there have been a lot of fun occasions to celebrate and escape the rainy weather.

On Thursday, we decided to head to the local bowling alley, Southtowne Lanes. It has a very convenient location just a few blocks from some friends' home, plus it provided a nice escape from the downpour that evening. While I'm not an especially talented or experienced bowler, it was still a really fun way to get out of the house especially since the bleak wintery weather was back. Plus, I wasn't the only person present who was pretty awful at bowling, so if nothing else we were all able to laugh at ourselves.

On Friday, I made a trip up to Portland for a concert. My roommate Kate was a wonderful friend and bought me a ticket to see Rocky Votolato for Christmas, so we headed up to Portland for his concert at Mississippi Studios. The show was absolutely amazing; he is one of my favorite musicians and fantastic live. Plus, we got to see the show at a Mississippi Studios, a small, 21+ venue that I had never been to before, and I really enjoyed the experience! One of the things that I was looking forward to most after I turned 21 was to be able to attend all of those types of performances that I had always had to miss out on before. Plus, it was nice getting to hang out in that area of Portland; I'm not as familiar with north Portland so it was also fun to check out an up-and-coming area of town as well.

The rest of the weekend also brought more appreciation for the winter weather when my roommate Dana, her visiting siblings and I decided to take a trip over to the Terwilliger Hot Springs near Cougar Reservoir. Eugene had been experiencing some brief (and very wet) snow flurries throughout the end of the week, but we still did not anticipate how much snow the drive over to the hot springs would have. Luckily, Dana has a small SUV and we didn't face too many problems, but there were a couple of cars on the road who weren't prepared for the snow either. Even with the long wait on the road, we managed to make it up to the springs, and were able to enjoy a gorgeous view of the hills, creeks, waterfalls, and the hot springs blanketed with snow. It was definitely worth the longer drive for the view.