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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Tuesday, December 17, 2002
11:04 - I love this place

(top) link

I just drove through what seemed like three entirely different biomes on my way to work this morning.

When I left my house, it was in bright sunlight, under the bluest sky I've seen in weeks. The East Bay Hills were lit up in clear, 19th-century-painting-of-Ireland-looking greens and browns. There were big billowy clouds all around, ringing the view, blinding white on top and dark, heavy gray underneath.

On the high overpass from 101 onto 280, I could see the downtown San Jose skyline, lit by direct sunlight, looking like a World's Fair model... but behind it, in that contrast I love so very very much, was that dark curtain of cloud that sets off so perfectly any brightly-lit foreground scenery.


There was this huge raincloud squatting right in the middle of the valley, you see. Most of San Jose is in clear blue sunlight, but the center of the lowland area is home to this giant brooding mass of water. As I passed through the downtown area and the 880/17 intersection zone, the rain suddenly rushed onto the scene, taking me from the lowest notch on my intermittent wipers to the highest-speed continuous, for the space of about twenty seconds. Then I was back out in the barest of sprinkles.


And when I came into Cupertino and passed Apple's overseer-of-all-it-surveys headquarters on the left, the clouds' ragged western edges were giving way to that bluest sky in weeks, the western Peninsula mountains illuminated, the colors stark and bold. There was a light, crisp breeze blowing back the sunlit palm fronds against the dark, brooding, retreating cloud bank. The traffic light on the off-ramp stayed red extra-long just for me, so I could enjoy it.


(Yesterday, the clouds were bursting right over Apple, and the ever-popular "God Rays" were streaming out of a break in the cloud bank right down onto the Infinite Loop campus. But the clouds were moving way too fast for me to get a picture.)


I grabbed my camera and raced out for a quick circuit of the last couple of exits, but photos taken from a moving car never do the visuals justice. Plus I ran out of battery after about the second shot, and I had to trick the camera into letting me take a few more pictures, turning it off for a few seconds, then back on, then snapping the photo before it had time to realize what was going on and bark sternly at me. I'll pay for this eventually, I know. I'm sorry, camera.

There'll be more rain all this week, though, including another big storm on Thursday. I'll be ready for those God Rays this time.


UPDATE: And now it's hailing.


Good thing we're moving out of this building with its glass roof...



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© Brian Tiemann