Rain, rain, go away...

Ok, Northern California. I get it. You rain a lot. I know my impressions of you have been unjustly skewed because I arrived here during a drought year, but now that it's been raining for the past four days, I believe you. The "wet season" does exist after all. You win. Rainy winters. Ok. Can you cut it out now?

Seriously. It's been raining for a few days now, and I'm kind of ready for a break from it, but I feel bad saying that because we really, really need the rain. This is the first time it's actually rained for more than a few hours at once since we've been here! And once we hit March/April, it probably won't really rain again until November. So I should just suck it up and deal with it and stop being so selfish. But I had to take the bus to the grocery store in the rain today because we were almost completely out of food and I couldn't put it off any longer, and it was pretty nul. Plus, the department's hosting a linguistics conference this weekend (did I mention that before?), so I've been forced to be out and about and my pants and socks and shoes get all wet, and then I'm cold all day.

Waah, waah, waah, I know. Here are some good things about my life.

I got to see George yesterday! For anyone reading this who has no idea who I'm talking about or why I'm so excited he's in town, George (and Matt and Dan) are my best friends from studying abroad in France, and I miss them all terribly. George is doing a graduate program in French literature at UC Irvine right now, and he and his friend drove up here Friday night to visit San Francisco. So I met them in the city yesterday for lunch, and then we went to Ghirardelli Square and got massive ice cream sundaes drenched with chocolate that we couldn't finish. It was drizzling in the city too, but we hiked up a HUGE hill and stopped at the top and looked out across the Bay. Alcatraz was right in front of us, and I pointed out the clock tower on campus waaaay in the distance, in the Berkeley hills, and the clouds were beautiful. We don't usually get interesting clouds here; most days, the sky is either completely blue or completely flat gray. Sometimes we get white little wisps of cirro-nimbus clouds drifting across the sky, but very rarely do we have the big, marshmallowy cumulus clouds we had yesterday. And the colors were great too - grays, blues, purples, and even pinks as the sun was setting.

So we stood on the side of the hill in the rain for a few minutes, looking at the landscape, and then we walked down Lombard Street ("the Crookedest Street in the World") to their hotel, so they could give me a ride back to BART (the train back to Berkeley). We weren't on the crooked side of Lombard Street, though; we walked down the other side, which is perfectly straight, but still not boring. It's still on some kind of crazy 45 degree angle or something.

I don't know what else to say. We don't have class tomorrow, but our conference is still going on, so I have to go to that in the afternoon. I hope the rain will let up in the morning so I can run with my dogs. Then I'll take a hot shower, drink some tea, and enjoy my warm house while I get some work done before I head in to campus.

Sounds good to me.