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Hey there, my name is Sheen. I'm from Seattle, Washington. I keep jellyfish, bees, and I'm growing yuzu fruit trees. – at Redmond, WA
Huge flashing lightening coming from the west driving northbound i5 through Auburn. #wawx
5 months in Japan and not a single time did I get to experience an earthquake there. I don't know if that's good or bad. Just call me, "Sheen the Unshakable!"
SeattleFreeze☆Sheen retweeted
OMG TUMBLEWEED TORNADO! 🌪 Saw this approaching and pulled over along WA-240 a few minutes ago near Hanford Site. #wawx
SeattleFreeze☆Sheen retweeted
Snoqualmie Falls this evening at 6:45pm, when the flow was at 65.9 kcfs. Still can’t believe how incredible it was seeing THAT much water come over the falls. #WAwx
SeattleFreeze☆Sheen retweeted
Today, Northwest newbies are thinking a lenticular cloud over Mount Rainier is actually an eruption or venting from the volcano.
Umm, no.
Lenticular clouds are not uncommon.
Always lovely.
Sometime, there's even a double decker.
#MtRainier l #NotVenting
📷 A few years ago
What you are seeing right now IS NOT the Main Event. Right now are the winds being created by the front itself. Once it passes, it will create a tight pressure gradient behind it. Strong winds will rush in to fill that gap. Those winds won't hit us until around midnight. This is simply an appetizer if you will... #bcstorm
SeattleFreeze☆Sheen retweeted
Doing laundry at a neighborhood laundromat in Japan feels like stepping twenty years into the future.
First, you don't bring soap, and you don't sit on a plastic chair for forty minutes waiting to move wet clothes from a washer into a dryer so nobody touches your laundry.
You toss your dirty clothes into a single heavy-duty drum, tap a 4-digit PIN code onto the touchscreen to lock the glass door, and pay about $6 (900 yen).
The machine injects its own detergent, washes everything, and immediately switches into a high-powered gas dryer inside the exact same drum. You walk away for an hour to eat ramen and come back to hot, fluffy clothes locked safely behind your PIN.
Even better? Right in the corner sits a dedicated $1.30 (200 yen) sneaker washing machine with soft spiral nylon brushes inside the tub, paired with a twin-nozzle shoe dryer right above it.
It was like 50° in Parkland and I go outside and open the door and I kid you not the wind feels like it's 75° now. How it's warmer outside than in our house is confusing. @Weather_West #wawx @NWS @WaWxChasers @TacomaWeekly
SeattleFreeze☆Sheen retweeted
Who knew embroidery could be this much fun? 😸
From cheerful sunflowers to unexpected seaside adventures, these adorable cats bring a little humor, charm, and personality to every stitch!
Choose your favorite design or save with the 2-piece set.
My friend's dad asked him last week why he's still renting at 38.
He told his dad the cheapest decent house near him is about $380,000.
His dad said, "Well, you just need to start putting money away."
My friend told him 20% down is $76,000.
His dad said, "Oh, you don't need that much. Just save a little each month."
So he walked his dad through his actual month.
After rent, car insurance, groceries, his phone, and everything else that keeps going up, the most he can save is about $400.
His dad pulled out his phone and opened the calculator.
$76,000 ÷ $400 = 190 months.
Almost 16 years.
His dad didn't say anything for a while.
Then he said, "Your mother and I put $2,500 down on our first house. I think we saved it in under a year."
He set the phone down.
"I really thought it was just the coffee and the eating out."
That's when it hit my friend.
His dad wasn't trying to dismiss him.
He just had no idea how far apart the numbers had gotten.
Sometimes the person who doesn't get it isn't defending anything.
They're just working from a calculator that stopped updating in 1985.
It's spooky windy tonight with leaves flying around and trees sounding beautiful with the wind running through waving back and forth in the night.
This ma add me cry. I love good people. And manners and care exist in Japan. Maybe not in those families.
My wife has taught high school in Tokyo for twenty years.
Every year, a few of her students spend a year living with a family in America. When they come home, she asks each of them one question.
"What do you miss?"
She expects hamburgers.
She almost never gets hamburgers.
And these aren't old stories. Most of these kids came home in the last two years.
"Every time I left the house, my host mom said, 'Text me when you get there.' In Japan, nobody needs to know where I am. In Ohio, somebody always did." (Mina, 17, Ohio)
"If you walk toward a door, an American will hold it open. Even if you are very far away. So you have to run. I ran to so many doors." (Itsuki, 16, Georgia)
"My host brother screamed on the floor of a grocery store. A stranger walked by and said to my host mom, 'You're doing great, Mama.' She almost cried. I didn't know strangers were allowed to say that." (Aoi, 17, Texas)
"We went away for the weekend and left our trash can at the curb. When we got back, it was by the garage. Nobody said who. My host dad said if it had been there one more day, the neighbor would have knocked." (Haruto, 16, Minnesota)
"A car got stuck in the snow in front of our house. Four men came out of four houses. Nobody called them. They pushed, the car drove away, and they went back inside without saying their names." (Ren, 17, Michigan)
"Every American has jumper cables. Maybe half of them know which clip goes where. The other half help anyway." (Shin, 16, Montana)
"In July, my host family put a cooler on the porch. Cold water, snacks, and a sign: 'For our delivery drivers. Thank you!' I asked if they knew the drivers. They said no." (Nanami, 16, Arizona)
"Downtown, there are banners on the lampposts. Photos of soldiers from the town. Some old, some very young. My host grandpa walked me down the street and told me every name." (Yuna, 16, Iowa)
"I got a C-plus on my first test. My host dad said, 'I'm proud of you,' and put it on the fridge. In Japan, nobody is proud of a C-plus." (Takeru, 17, Pennsylvania)
Then the quietest girl in the class raised her hand.
Sora. Seventeen. Missouri.
"Nobody asks me 'home safe?' anymore," she said.
She was wrong.
In September, there was a typhoon warning for Tokyo. At 2 a.m., Sora's phone lit up.
It was her host mom. In Missouri. Watching the weather in a country she had never been to.
"Saw the storm. You home safe?"
Sora told my wife she cried for a long time. Then she typed the answer she had typed a hundred times, from football games and friends' driveways.
"Home safe."
Her host mom wrote back one line.
"Good. That's all I needed."
My wife has asked that question for twenty years. Not one kid has ever said they missed how big America is.
They miss how America says goodbye. And how it checks that you got home.
So, America. You think you've lost something.
You haven't. It's on a porch in Arizona. It's pushing a car in Michigan. It's awake at 2 a.m. in Missouri, watching our weather.
You don't remember doing any of it.
A kid in Tokyo will never forget.
Thank God! It's been days of an inversion or something.
The first round of rain is now moving onto the coast! We're on track to see rain and breezy winds spread across the interior later this afternoon. If you have any last minute chores to do outside, get them done before the sun goes down. #wawx



























