11/08/2002 Entry: "Moistened Ears."

You know how beautiful a landscape looks when it first snows? Every shape is softened and gentle? That's what the rain in San Francisco is like to the sound of the city. The nightclub crowds are gone, the auto dealer behind our house doesn't move cars early in the morning, and a soft hush falls over the omnipresent traffic noise. I do such an efficient job at tuning out the noise that I'm always surprised when I don't hear it. Even the upstairs neighbors seem to stop their Sarah Winchester construction project for the evening. I too love waking up and lying silently under the blankets, enjoying the rare, slightly magical, feeling of widespread peace in the middle of a big city.

Of course, eventually dirt turns the melting snow grey, the sludge freezes into dangerous sheets of ice and it's all just an wet, ugly annoyance. The heavy rain here is kind of like that too. The quiet gets punctuated by emergency generators (at least we have power at home so far) and squealing brakes of insane drivers who've apparantly never seen rain before; the MUNI station near my house floods; and the trains and buses are full of wet, lightly steaming, whiny, irritated San Franciscans.

Not me, of course...I never whine.