Mainly, since I'm going there soon, I should have mentioned the 6.1 earthquake in Napa yesterday morning.
Also, a few blocks from where I'm sitting, Chicago is building a new river walk for $100 million.
Anyone else looking forward to Rick Perry's next political campaign? It should be fun.
Oh, and I went with the REI duffel.
I appreciate my friends getting 5th-row seats at AT&T park tonight. And yet, the Cubs still lost.
So, voilà:
To clarify: I was legitimately surprised that my friends got such awesome seats. I was not surprised that, having won yesterday, the Cubs lost tonight.
I enjoy a healthy dose of randomness when traveling, because it means sometimes you get a hotel room with this view:
It's hard to see, but I'm looking directly at AT&T Park, where the Cubs are playing in about two hours. Since they won last night, I fully expect they've used up their allotted runs for the rest of May, but it will still be fun to see a baseball game.
Another gratuitous ocean photo:
One of the best parts about visiting my folks:
When I go anywhere for only a couple of days, I try not to shift my body clock. It prevents jet lag, mostly.
This weekend I'm at my folks' house outside San Francisco, which has a two-hour time difference from Chicago. That is why I woke up at 5am and walked to the local Peet's Coffee, as I usually do.
This trip I may allow my clock to drift westward, though. I'm going to Tuesday night's Cubs game at AT&T Park at 7:05pm—9:05pm Central time—and would like to see the whole game. The Cubs might even win. I mean, they have a 1-in-3 shot, right?
I do like getting to the Peet's this early, though. First, the just-before-dawn walk is quiet and even a little spooky down the local bike trail, but today I got a tremendous view of the crescent Moon and Venus, which are passing just 2° from each other this morning. I'm never up this early at home unless I'm still up, which hasn't happened in years anyway.
Second, the Peet's is quiet right now. In two hours it'll be packed with families and locals (the fishermen who stay here for hours at a time most mornings are more colorful than any of the characters at the Alibi Room). Time to write for a bit, and wait for the rest of my family to wake up.
Last night the temperature here got down to 5°C, which feels more like early March than mid-May. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, yesterday got up to 33°C, which to them feels like the pit of hell. In fact, even in the hottest part of the year (early October), San Francisco rarely gets that warm. The Tribune explains:
The North American jet stream pattern, a key driver of the country’s weather, has taken on the same incredibly “wavy”—or, as meteorologists say —“meridional”—configuration which has so often dominated the winter and spring. This sort of pattern leads to temperature extremes across the content.
Pools of unseasonably warm air are in place on each coast while unseasonably cool air is sandwiched between and dominates Chicago and Midwestern weather.
It’s within this slow-moving pool of chilly, unstable (i.e. cloud and precip-generating) air that Chicago resides—a situation likely to continue into Saturday. This is to keep extensive cloudiness and the potential for sporadic showers going over that period of time.
In other words, the forecast for this weekend is continued March with a possibility of April by Monday.
Another shot from Christmas afternoon, as promised:
Check these out:
More later, including, I expect, more photos of the ocean. Why? Because ocean.
Update: Speaking of the ocean, via George Takei's Facebook feed comes this gem. Just read the product reviews.
Not when they're 13 months old. And not when the weather looks like this.
And not when someone needs a nap:
Yes, these are the privations and suffering that my 13-month-old nephew must endure:
A little earlier, he was chasing what my sister calls "California snow:"
For those who care, it's a very un-Christmaslike 21°C here. I can see the appeal.