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The local news is full of alarmism about atmospheric rivers, floods and near-floods (tree limbs and other debris having to be removed from under a bridge to avert flooding an East Palo Alto neighborhood), trees falling en masse (a Highway Patrol spokesperson blithely advising people not to park near a tree, which by city code rules out parking almost anywhere on the street in San Jose, for example), fatalities and miraculous rescues ... ski centers closing because of wintry weather, although granted that's in Nevada where they are all crazy ... the Murky News was so eager to impress me with the seriousness of the situation, it locked up Firefox, please remind me to stick to the Chron.
Today I took the bus to Palo Alto to copy an interlibrary loan book (I'm not going to buy it, it's an awful book: Arnold's hatchet job on Thor); a 22 eventually came crawling along in the rain, and crawled very slowly to California Avenue, while I noted the continuing transformation of El Camino in that direction into what I guess the planners meant by a boulevard: a series of huge hotels, overly large and new stores replacing the old stores (in some cases the same chain, relocated to another spot), swankier restaurants replacing the restaurants, and of course medical offices and just plain offices, all very sophisticated and suave. And one misplaced close of townhouses, across from the Glass Slipper motel with its endearing fairytale facade, which somehow hangs on. Just west of Castro Street, among some few remaining old and decrepit business establishments, I spied an actual house, slightly set back from the sidewalk, with the front yard gaily decorated with Xmas lights. It was still there on the way back (I peered through the gloom of a very early evening worsened by the tinted windows on the express bus, which was crawling just like the 22, and made it out through the torrents of rain), but it may be a Brigadoon - El Camino is like that.
Today I took the bus to Palo Alto to copy an interlibrary loan book (I'm not going to buy it, it's an awful book: Arnold's hatchet job on Thor); a 22 eventually came crawling along in the rain, and crawled very slowly to California Avenue, while I noted the continuing transformation of El Camino in that direction into what I guess the planners meant by a boulevard: a series of huge hotels, overly large and new stores replacing the old stores (in some cases the same chain, relocated to another spot), swankier restaurants replacing the restaurants, and of course medical offices and just plain offices, all very sophisticated and suave. And one misplaced close of townhouses, across from the Glass Slipper motel with its endearing fairytale facade, which somehow hangs on. Just west of Castro Street, among some few remaining old and decrepit business establishments, I spied an actual house, slightly set back from the sidewalk, with the front yard gaily decorated with Xmas lights. It was still there on the way back (I peered through the gloom of a very early evening worsened by the tinted windows on the express bus, which was crawling just like the 22, and made it out through the torrents of rain), but it may be a Brigadoon - El Camino is like that.