Il pleure dans mon coeur, comme il pleut sur la ville...

Ok, that's not really true, but I always loved that poem. It's just so beautiful. Ô bruit doux de la pluie / Par terre et sur les toits ! / Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie, / Ô le chant de la pluie !

Anyway, it is raining! For the first time since we've been here, it is truly and actually raining. Big, soft, gentle drops that just kind of melt into your skin as they fall on you. I know this because I took the dogs for a run in it this morning, and it was glorious. When we left, it was just barely misting out, but then it opened up a bit and we got hit with some fat, wet raindrops. I almost headed home, but it let up again, and when you're already to the point where you can't get any wetter, you might as well keep going. I suppose I should add that it's about 60 degrees out here, so it just feels like a lovely spring rain.

It sounds like it's slowing up now. I wanted to share these pictures with you; my friend Stephanie and I went up in Sather Tower (aka the Campanile) last weekend on a beautiful sunny day. The Campanile is a really big tower on campus that overlooks the whole Bay Area, and on a clear day, it's gorgeous. Unfortunately, it was a bit smoggy last Saturday, but you can still get the gist.


A bunch of UCLA students headed up to the football game, with the Campanile in the background.


The Campanile up close. It's pretty tall - you have to take an elevator to the top.


Looking down through campus from the foot of the tower. If you click on the picture, you can just make out the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. You can see it really well on a clear day, which is extremely cool.


Memorial Stadium, Cal-style. We could barely make out the scoreboard for the football game from inside the tower. Cal was winning. Oh yeah, "Cal" is insider code for UC Berkeley.

Looking down Telegraph Avenue, one of the main drags of Berkeley/Oakland, into downtown Oakland.

And just in case you forgot what I look like, here I am at the top of the tower, with San Francisco in the background.