What's your definition of a beautiful day?

It's cloudy and cool in Denver this morning. I love days like this. Especially when I don't have to work.

I'll take my dog to the lake and we'll walk freely because there will be few if any people out there. If it's snowing or raining, there will be no one out there but us.

You see, native Denverites are pretty fickle about the weather. This is Day #2 of cloudy weather with no real snow or rain falling, and if it continues by tomorrow they'll be asking "Where am I, Seattle?" I have actually heard these words come out of people here. Of course being from Seattle, I laugh.

The last winter I lived in Seattle in 1998-1999, it rained for 100 days straight. Yes, the entire month of December, January and February, it did nothing but stay cloudy all day and spit from the sky. Even the natives were complaining, and they don't usually comment on the rain because it's omnipresent.

When Denverites don't see the sun for 3 days, they get a little freaked out. Spoiled to the level of people who live in Phoenix or even Hawaii, they are used to beautiful cloudless days strung together virtually endlessly. In the summer when the thunderstorms move through in the afternoon they enjoy the fact that it cools everything off, but even then they may cancel plans because it "might rain".

In Seattle, if you cancel plans everytime it might rain, you'd never leave your house. This is the city that invented the nation's first indoor mall (Northgate Mall, which is still standing). They have a retractable roof on their baseball stadium which cost more than $500 million to build. Ironically, Coors Field has no roof here in Denver -- and last year when my husband and I went to an early game in April, we got snowed out, not rained out.

To be honest though, Denverites are hardy when it comes to freak spring storms that bring a bunch of snow, whereas Seattleites are hardy about the rain. Seattle people don't carry umbrellas usually. They're more of your Gore-Tex wearing types who pride themselves on the fact that they're not afraid of getting a little wet.
I'm sure as you go from the lowlands here where Denver is into the high country towns, that hardiness goes up 10-fold.

But today's cloudiness is actually beautiful to me. After 15 years in Seattle, this gives me a feeling that I'm back there, and I half expect to smell the salt sea air and see some seagulls flying around.

The last time I looked at the sky on Day 5 of rain when I was home for the holidays, I actually heard myself say "Wow, it's still raining" and I heard my brother say "Yeah, it does that here."

It's amazing how it doesn't take long to get spoiled by the sun. Sure, I enjoy the weather today. But like a good transplant, I'll be glad when the sun comes back in a few days.