The occasional downside

As much as I love California, there is occasionally a downside. For example, while winter isn't the 15-degree days of snow and ice we experienced in Kansas, winter in Northern California is cold. And it rains. Buckets. I think we went three or four months after our move without seeing a single drop of California rain. It was a little shocking to have continuously sunny days and no rain or variation in the weather. Well, winter more than makes up for it. I think is has rained probably about 30 of the last 35 days. It wouldn't be so bad except for a) it gets kind of depressing and b) I have a dog I have to take out and we get wet and she gets crazy c) the dog park is seriously off limits because it's a swamp and I've ruined shoes and jeans going over there in my optimism.

In other "downside" news, on Tuesday a gasoline tanker overturned on Highway 101, the major north-south highway just to our east. The highway closed in both directions, during rush hour, until after 10 o'clock that night. Because it happened within just a few miles of here, traffic trying to find alternate routes was pouring onto side streets, causing major bumper-to-bumper problems. People having to get home had to take El Camino Real (a busy thoroughfare on a normal day) or get to a highway to the west--both of which require congesting side streets. I've never seen anything like it. I left to go pick up Alan at 5:52 and didn't arrive to pick him up until 6:32. A 40-minute drive to go 2.8 miles. It then took us another 15 minutes to get to the Stanford Shopping Center, which on a normal day would take about a minute. We stopped to get some food, hoping that the mess would clear up a bit by the time we finished eating. There were tons of other diners in the same boat who had stopped for sustenance, fearing they wouldn't be able to make it home before starving to death.