You're back! you're back! Welcome home!

So nice to see someone appreciate that area for its good things. As opposed to those of us who couldn't wait to grow up and get back out, sometimes forgetting those really good things.

There was a time, in Skokie, when the person handing you your Jewish soul food might have blue numbers tatooed on the arm reaching out to you. Funny old-style European numbers, faded with time. There probably aren't too many of those left any more.

It never failed to send chills up my spine.

That super-thick pizza, by the way, is usually STUFFED pizza, yum! Giordano's! Uno's!

Those of us who safely escaped to the drama of Florida weather, rather than the Chicago version, are happy to find this distinction in the rain down here: it's WARM. Nice friendly warm rain. Reason why you don't see Floridians in raincoats and umbrellas very often. What for? It's harmless rain, it doesn't hurt, even when it pours down so hard. It's just wet.

Then it stops. It's a nice part of the drama, that it's usually sunny all day until mid-afternoon, rains for an hour or two all sturm und drang, then stops and the sun shines again. Makes steam.

Or, often, that sun never goes away, and you can dance around in a sun shower, rain streaming down sparkling in the sunshine.

I remember some good weather drama from my Arcadia, CA childhood. Just a lot fewer and farther between. Hail. Wading thigh-deep in water, walking to school.

In New Orleans, they'd say, It's weatherish today.

Welcome home!

Ah, I was sure there was a distinction. But even the rain on a summer afternoon in Skokie didn't feel cold the way CA rain is COLD. If it decides to rain here, it's usually serious about it.

You have to admit, though: both FL and IL are marvelous places for storm-watching (um, up to a point--you know what I mean).

Ask your mother about the waitress at Jack's in Skokie--or I'll email you about it. Simply hilarious.

Oh, I've been dying to hear! She's so bouncing off the walls still, she can't remember what she told who. Walter was there the weekend before you, so he got to catch up a bit. But I'm still waiting to hear about breakfast.

I probably shouldn't say this out loud just now - but I love hurricanes. Whenever one's coming and people ask, Why don't you leave?, I have to bite my lip to stop myself saying, What?! I wouldn't miss it for the world!

So I was caught off guard at how much little Arlene rattled me. Hmmm...

Hm. Maybe I'll blog it after all; it was pretty funny.

What really caught my attention when I moved to AZ is how the clouds stand so STILL here. I was used to everything being in constant motion in the sky, as they are in the midwest.

When I returned to Minnesota for a visit a couple of years later, I noticed again how much the clouds move.

Interesting difference.

We have the LIVELIEST clouds down here! They like to go two or three different directions at once. It's the sea breezes, outflow boundaries, what have you. It can make you dizzy at first, seeing three different levels of cloud, racing around in three different directions.

I forgot how still those desert clouds can be.