I'm back from Northern California and I had tons of fun. I love my friends up there so much. We went bike camping in Sonole and there was tons of old oak trees and huge hills. Everything was perfect.

Yesterday on my way back to Los Angeles I just sat and stared out the window and tried to make sense out of the geography. Subdivisions a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. Brown hills increasingly denuded southward. My friend Jill told me that Wanda Coleman, an author and L.A. resident, calls Los Angeles "the pit of hell". A bit dramatic, but it seems fitting sometimes. Everything is so hopelessly disordered and the progress and public awakening I can see as feasible in other cities becomes unfathomable here. Urban design as a form of planning, something that raises the collective quality of life... is anathema to what L.A. is. It is even arguable that it is impossible for only the logistic reasons related to infrastructure, but still somehow it retains its appeal to me. It rewards my patience - a two hour commute home from a show, five months without a drop of precipitation. The arrival of the bus and the raindrop. A cloudy day, a kind open stranger, a new friend... all unexpected some due to the simple facts of location others due to the sometimes ubiquitous shallow consumer culture and the weight of 20 some million lost souls.

Upon waking up this morning I received a present in the form of a forecast from the NWS forecast:

Tues: 73 cloudy
Wed: 72 cloudy
Thurs: 67 rain?
Fri: 67 rain?
Sat: 67 rain?

This is unheard of for this time of year. Strange. The rain will probably amount to nothing. Even still the temperature is very anomalous for the season. Just minutes after reading this I heard a story on the radio about how a key indicator of a La nina year, a tongue of cool water protruding westward of the coast of Peru, was observed alongside a one degree drop throughout the eastern Pacific has signaled the likeliness of yet another drought year along with another potentially horrendous fire season. Hopefully the drought not as bad as last year, which was the worst on record. Combined with the recent court rulings that have decreased some water withdrawals from critical environmental areas, real conservation efforts may be necessary.

The unseasonably cool weather in addition to all the orientations, meetings, and workshops will probably send my head spinning as soon as I have the time to process them. I'm excited to be at a time in my life when there is so much to look forward to and there are so many clean starts to make.