first rain of the end of the year. it's always my thought that i should write down weather patterns -- especially here, where they seem so much less pronounced. there was a momentary crash of thunder outside -- a rarity, and something I miss. we usually get one big electrical storm per year and that is it. it's very strange. so much i would love to know about weather.

but yeah, this kind of weather, makes me very happy, my english/irish rain splattered ancestory is soothed by the sound perhaps. and here where we see no rain for a good 7-8 months through the summer: i miss it.

the weather just before and after a thunderstorm is my absolute favorite, the smell of ozone and rain, a sense of anticipation, especially before the storm hits. watching the towering cumulus trundle by, imagining flying up those cliffs...

the fog here has it's fine qualities in terms of a thing to be observed, but it barely holds a candle to a thunderstorm.

this is a picture a few years old, out our front window, from one of the most amazing electrical storms i've ever seen -- lightning bridging horizons, flying horizontal as it moved across the city.

Alas it seems all the wrong people voted :-)
A disaster of an election at worst, a mixed bag at best. Several things close to my heart did the opposite of what I hoped, worst of all for my wife, Mondale lost. Tom came in third in his election, missing the run-off. The office all-in-all has been pretty subdued, depending on the relative activism of people, it's going to be an ugly couple years for the environment if nothing else -- that and the appointment of lots of conservative federal judges.

day of the dead the night was exactly what i wanted. the procession got off to a slow start. the megaphone guyg explaining the whole deal was lot in waves of drum noise. people were all bopping up and down in anticipation. the exuberance of sficans to dress up as evident as any other place, lots of people in the signature day of the dead skull colored face with black eyes and big teeth.

there was a lot of people looking for a party and the alcohol was certainly flowing ( I helped someone cut limes with my swiss army knife ). Most people seemed entranced by the drums more than anything, and I found my self wandering through the procession trying out the various cadences of drum, whistle flute and trumpet.

One particular troupe was so successful that when they stopped and wandered off stage, the whole procession in their vacinity came to a halt wondering if somehow they had come to the wrong place.

They had ducked into an alley, "Balmy" to lay in wait for the procession it's last leg. The high moment of the procession came as I stood at the other end of Balmy, watching Incan's hearing a trumpet wail along with the drummers. The sound was amazing.

I went and checked out the altars and wandered around, setting my candle down in a little labrynth made of roses. I wandered back to see the end of the procession struggling to end, the police vainly trying to get the people to get on the sidewalk and get out of the street. I don't know why, there were still several hundred people - you figure the cars could wait a bit. The streets are for people after all.

I followed another group of drummers and a trumpeter back to the park and then sat in with another drum group that was amazing, leading the crowd in chants and songs, setting the rythm, underlining the crowds exburant singing with their own yells and song, then brining in a moment of silence before they started down their last set of beats.

I wandered home happy, still wishing that my wife had been around to share it.

review rodger doger this was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. The camera work was a little unsettling at first, a weavy dodge on people's faces, but I found that I liked the extreme closeups, and that I got used to the bob. The story and character arcs were well done, the acting fantastic, especially from scott and the kid who played his nephew. Rodger is a dodgey fellow and the crap that he shells out was sometimes so offensive as to make one cringe. His nephew comes in a quest to lose his virginity, and Rodger proves a rough teacher. But it soon turns out that the teacher is also the student, and he doesn't like what he is learning. The kid is a rough teacher in his own way.