To Umbrella, or NOT to Umbrella?

I am a "NO umbrella" girl.

For some reason, I get bothered when I walk around this grey city in drizzle, and people here are buzzing around with cute shoes, perfectly coiffed hair, and huge golf umbrellas, completely not noticing as they nearly poke one another in the eye. In my head, I am thinking, "C'mon people - this is a rainy climate! Embrace it!" I want to see the sky, and be immersed in the grey-ness of it.

I know, I know - this is my own deal.

I think it has something to do with my time living in Portland. People there don't use umbrellas; they just get wet (as a side-note to this mini-rant, the 2003 movie The Hunted was filmed in Portland, and they had quite a few street scenes. Portlanders kept pointing out how inauthentic this movie was because the people on the street all carried umbrellas in the rain).

However, and here it is a little confusing, but if I still lived in New York, I would own an umbrella (although there, you never know when to use it, because the storms come out of nowhere). Strange, I know.

(This picture was taken immediately after we got engaged, after standing in the rain for over two hours drooling over Radiohead, and is not a good indication of how soaked I am on a given "normal" day of work, etc.)

The other day, I heard the clouds open, and I looked out the window to a full-out (ain't holdin' nothing back) downpour. It was the same type of rain I grew up with, that used to come at 2:30 in the afternoon, in the middle of the summer. This is the kind of rain that makes the heat and humidity of New York bearable.... It was nice. And I thought, "Okay. Umbrellas make sense here, for the moment." Twenty minutes later it was all over, and the sky "cleared" to a lovely grey again. --The "almost sun" we are used to here in Vancouver.

Do you like umbrellas? Don't worry - I won't judge you (much).