I woke to the sound of raindrops…

The rain is nice when you’ve gone such a very long time without it…and it’s snowing on the mountain…that’s a good thing becuz that's where we need it most…

It’s different back in the States…rain is, well, rainier and snow is snowier, ot it seems like it anyway...I don't think I ever heard about virga until I came to California...Virga counts as rain out here even tho' it's more or less applicable to being misted...it can be pouring down virga 'n I can walk the dog around the block 'n never get a raindrop on me...kind'a like it'ud be to walk in a cloud, I'm thinking...

California likes to brag about being different, not sure what that says about us…I believe it may be an epic trancendental inferiority complex brought on by prolonged exposure to hidden chemicals in the soil…(we folk out here on the Left Coast love to talk in multi-sylabbic words)...

There was, and is, certainly something here that seems to halt or slow down the aging process…not that people here don’t get old and die, they just won’t admit it to themselves or each other…sort of an ‘It ain’t gonna happen to me’ mindset…

It’s most prevalent in southern California, of course, and  possibly is at least somewhat responsible for the rise of the movie industry, it being a make-believe, fairy tale type industry in the first place…the industry itself began, in all places, ‘way back east in New Jersey, of all places, ’n probably because NJ is adjacent to New York which everyone knows, is the beginning and ending of the entire world…the epicenter...or maybe epi-centre...

Well, according to New Yorkers (who all come from elsewhere but won’t admit it)…

In far-off fabled California, everyone comes from somewhere else, even those remnants of what we consider to be the ‘original’ visitors to these Golden Shores…the came and they stayed because, if you stop ’n think about it, you’re as far West as you can go without getting your feet really, really wet…I mean, Hawaii is out there somewhere but you can't see it so no one really cares…

Anyhow, we gather along the coast and stare at the blue Pacific Ocean…watch the waves roll in ’n watch ‘em roll out again…a mindless occupation but one that is necessary to understand if you wish to understand the California Mindset…

First, we filled up the coast, then the great central valley and then, with nowhere else to go, we began filling up the mountains, what we sun-seekers like to refer to in our smug and knowing way as The Sierra…a lot of us will say Sierras but most of us know that Sierra actually means mountain range and not mountain ranges…most of us know that, I’m not sure about television anchors who seem to be born here, fully grown and in makeup…

Anyway, we here on The Golden Coast have been enduring a drought situation for many, many years…you might not know that if you were only visiting here because Californians are very determined to keep their lawns and their golf courses green…Green is really  big in California under Governor Moonbeam but even he has faced up to the fact that we’re on the arid side, well, you never quite know with Jerry, since he faces up to everything more or less depending on whatever mood of the day thing he has going for him…

El Nino is coming to save us…or maybe finish us off…depends on which side of the petrie dish you happen to be standing, I guess…we had a record number of fires this past summer and burned up durn near all the trees ’n grasses and growing things that pretty much hold the dirt in place…if we get enuff water, y’know, Texas size rains, it’s gonna shift the topography around so that we’ll have valleys where we use’ta have mountains ’n maybe we’ll have plains where we use’ta have hills…We might even have lakes again...we use'ta have 'em 'til the sun burned 'em all away...

Course, on the bright side (’n Californians love the bright side) shifting all that dirt around just might lead us to a new Gold Rush, what with the hills ’n mountains coming down to the valley…that’ud be interesting…maybe….