Weather: springlike, beautiful susnshine and some clouds and sprinkles to go with it.

Reading: All About Passion

Knitting: the green cardigan. I finished the yoke and am continuing down, the sleeves on strings awaiting their turn.

What if it never stopped raining?

I wasn't alarmed the day it started raining all over the world. I'd heard somewhere that at any moment it's raining somewhere in the world, and I live in western Oregon where it's often raining. There is no one day of the year that it is unlikely to be raining here. Not one. But now there is no day of the year that it is not raining. No day of the year and no place on the planet. When I realized, on day two, that this was likely to be a permanent state is when things really turned around for me.

The big meteorological experts are still debating what made this happen, what made the water cycle go bonkers, evaporation take up too much and then drop it all over the place, all the time. The day after it started raining all over the world was the day most meteorologists noticed it, and some of them had already been alarmed for several hours. So it's raining in Death Valley - it does once in awhile, you know. But if it's also raining in the Gobi and the Chihuahuan and the Great Victoria at the same fricking time, somebody's bound to notice. At first it was a source of smiles on the evening news. You know, the almost-nostalgic little smiles that usually go with touching Christmas stories about dogs and little children. "Yes, and it rained in the Sahara today. What will they think of next? Ha ha ha, it's back to you, Bob."

The acceleration of evaporation is the only thing that stopped us from having massive global flooding. There were some floods, but not nearly so much as you might think what with all the rain. No, evaporation is greater, so it just all goes back up somehow, especially in the warmer parts of the world. Of course, if it wasn't for the screwball evaporation we wouldn't have all this rain and it'd all be rather moot, yes? I was puzzled by this, as puzzled as anyone else, but I know what to do with unforseen circumstances. Yes, umbrella company stocks went way up, and sprinkler company stocks went down, true, so I am not the only person who had the right idea. Omney can be made off any global catastrophe.

Before the rain, but after mad cow, my west Texas ranch was worthless. I couldn't sell it, it was a cattle ranch, for crying out loud. I still had that little nest egg I'd kept handy just in case a good opportunity came along, and when the rains came I bought all the rice I could get my hands on; rice as in rice seed. I bought all of the gro-lites in six states. Then I bought all of the above-ground swimming pool kits I could get my hands on - there were a lot of them, and they were dirt cheap because by now everyone else had noticed the rain and no one wanted to put in a pool. Buying pools was rather counter-intuitive.

When the tomatoes rotted in the fields I hired all the tomato pickers to be rice planters, gro-lite stringers and swimming pool erectors. They cut the swimming pools down to a third of their depth, and used the rest of the side material for roofing. Not efficient roofing material? Maybe not, but it's cheap. The pools themselves became my hydroponics tanks. I grow a lot of salads in those babies, and people are very happy to have salad. The rice is planted out in the fields and it's doing very well.

If it wasn't for this athlete's foot I can't seem to shake, I'd be happy as can be.