hot squirrel

the squirrel outside my window is very hot from being out in the hot outdoors all the time. he's laying on this brick wall probably exactly the same way i would if i were a squirrel in his position.

where skittles come from

we saw a piece of a rainbow up in wine country!

wintertime

i live in los angeles. which means i never know what month it is unless i'm looking at a calendar. and so i often forget that it is winter in the places where most of my friends and family live.

i'm not complaining. i'm just saying. how 'bout that.

more on weather (moron weather)

so right now, back home, the temperature is zero degrees with a windchill of negative thirteen. here, the temperature is eighty degrees with a windchill of eighty degrees. it's exactly eighty degrees warmer here than home, but it FEELS ninety-three degrees warmer.

it feels NINETY-THREE DEGREES (FAHRENHEIT) warmer here. it really kind of makes me wonder why (if you don't love the city in which you live, if you have the means to move to another city, and if you don't like being miserably cold in the winter) you wouldn't move to a place with nice weather.

Seasonal Affective Disorder can make you S.A.D.

so, awhile ago, i dated this girl from puerto rico, which is a place where, allegedly, the weather's always pretty good. when we dated, we were living in boston (massachusetts) where, allegedly, the weather's pretty crummy. it was the first cold winter of her life and in october, she was already bitching about the temperature. "just wait til february," i joked. by february, it was legitimately really f-ing cold. she would get pissed off when we were walking places and she'd say things like "why do people live here? don't they know there are places where the weather is always beautiful?" and i would argue that growing up with seasons builds character and instills in people a "this too shall pass" way of thinking.

but now i live in a place where the weather is always pretty great. and the last time i went home, when the plane landed and the stewardess told us the local time and temperature, it was one degree. ONE DEGREE. just one. and that's fahrenheit. not celsius.

today, the high here was 85. my mom told me that back home today the high is 4. and i'm honestly starting to rethink my argument about living in cold places.

and apparently there's a legit condition that makes people mopey when the weather's lousy. i don't think i suffer from it. i'm able to get mopey in all types of weather. but for those of you whose mood depends upon the weather, check out these goofy lamps that can trick your brain into being happy: it's like she's eating breakfast and chatting on the phone in a tropical paradise!