Happy Memorial Day

Hey, it's raining!

what the heck is that? Here in Sunny Southern California, that simply should not be possible. 2005 has been one wet year. Some friends moved here from Atlanta and I keep telling them - no rain, every day will be sunny. So far, I'm sounding pretty delusional.
I'm guessing there are going to be many a memorial day BBQ chef concerned with this. Here in SOCAL we don't know what to do when wet round things comes from sky. It'll be a top story on the news for sure, maybe even supplanting Michael Jackson.

House update:
The Final Walk through... a couple days ago, the soon to be 'new owners', their snake, I mean - agent, and the present 'owner' (my soon to be former landlord) and his agent, went through the house to do last checks. I heard the one woman comment to the other as they entered my office - "hey, this is a cute bathroom back here. I never saw this before."
wh-wh-what??? You just spent 700k on a place and you don't even know all the rooms? If I were spending that money, I'd be on my hands and knees looking at the moldings. I, as our neighbor commented, would be crawling through windows, over the roof, etc.
I actually feel sorry for them. They look so scared. I don't know if they have any real allies - certainly not their agent. He walks around like he's on egg shells or a mine field. Maybe they'll have the last laugh, but I do feel like they're lambs being led to the slaughter.

So our landlord could barely make eye contact with us, couldn't say anything, nothing.
I guess from here we're looking at 60-90 days and "It's ovah, Johnny"

Weather update - Rain just stopped. BBQ's are on again. Things can continue in SoCAL, though now the roads are probably going to be slick and full of car accidents.

As I wrote this, the house started making this weezing sound - right above me. Very creepy. I looked around and finally spotted a neighborhood cat in the eaves, avoiding the rain, but coughing up a hairball. The sound of the cat echoed in such a way as to make it appear to be coming from the ceiling.

Immortalized the moment with a digi-pic.
.

writing update:

After a strong first two days on the screenplay, cranking 51 pages out (yikes), I lost two days. Followed by a tepid (in comparison to the first days) 10 pages yesterday, it closes the week out with a daily average of (61 divided by 5) 12.2 pages per day. Hmm.. That means that I could have a first draft ready to be dissected in aproximately 7 more days. That'd be pretty cool.

Let's see how that goes.

By the way, I'm not claiming it's a great 61 pages, just 61 pages. I'm sure every word needs to be re-written at least three more times.

SOCAL resident/weather awareness update:
Marianne just came home from somewhere. We commented on the rain, and she said, "Yeah, I kept telling myself, wow this mist is really heavy today. Even as I was turning on the wipers, I couldn't understand that it was rain".
See - happens to even the most rain aware people, us folk from Pennsylvania.


Happy Memorial Day and I hope you enjoy YOUR time off, and even though their leader (and ours) is an absolute idiot, give some thought to the troops in Iraq.