I am in fact keeping track of a backlog of topics I need to write about, and I honestly intend to get to them in good order, but only when I can find sufficient inspiration to write about them in greater than the workmanlike manner which has overtaken this blog of late. Well, that sentence didn’t start things out well, did it?

I’m awake at this time because, despite my wife’s warnings, I went outside to rearrange garbage cans and other things that go bump in the night when I should have instead gone to bed. I was less awake then, and I probably could have nodded right off, while she was wide awake, and now we’re probably both awake, as she is in the girls’ room comforting them on account of things being terribly windy and noisy outside.

In Southern California, we have precious little weather to complain about: it’s sunny all but about one or two months out of the year, and we even have a name (”June Gloom”) for the dismal time of the year when, for several weeks at a time, it does not become so before 10am. Aside from this summerly phenomenon and the time in the winter when it becomes foggy at night, we have the seasonal Santa Ana¹ winds, which defy tradition and blow violently in from the East, knocking over garbage cans and sycamore trees and Nicole Ritchie.

The last week or so has been terribly cold, to the point that one is well advised to wear long pants until almost lunchtime. I’ve been working through lunch as of late, so I just wear shorts to work and try to park close to the building. Last night and tonight, the cold is giving way to the Santa Ana winds, which are generally hot and dry; even at 2am I didn’t find it particularly cold going out and looking for all the things that might be making noise. At this moment there is still a lot of bumping and thumping going on, so I suspect it’s the door on the neighbor’s shed or possibly our garbage cans, which are these monstrous bins with lids shaped like airplane wings for maximum lift. Nevertheless, we have all switched rooms about so that I’m now alone in the girls room, while they are holed up on our bedroom with Jennifer. Hopefully the girls will all find the more easily explicable noise of our rattling windows easier to cope with.

¹ I’m guessing named after Santa Ana, the patron saint of high winds.