For my inaugural post, I might as well get this one out of the way: weather.

SD locals feel the same way about the weather as I do about your (you know who you are) ex-girlfriend — I wish she didn’t exist.

The truth is, we all know at some level that weather is the main reason why we can’t ever leave San Diego. We know that other cities have snow and sleet and intense humidity and deep down, realize that if we ever lived anywhere else we’d ask our parents for more money so we could move back. Or, for the SD natives out there, move in…

Apparently it’s spring because this hummingbird is building a nest on my back patio.

There are other reasons not to leave (beer), but the weather here sits on your back and gnaws on your neck and every day the endlessly cheerful sun bakes you into submission.

Hypo-manic with fear, we discuss rain and sun and fog in a tone that is easy to confuse with eagerness.  Oh, we’re not pleasant or easily amused; we’re terrified.

And then it rains. San Diegans go ballistic not just because they seldom see the rain, but because it is betrayal. The rain fills the tiny cracks (or gaping crevices) in our streets and our illusion of perfection. We make it exciting; on our news stations we write STORMWATCH in Impact (or the fattest helvetica you’ve ever seen) and we reassure each other that the weather is, in fact, a novelty. Everything will go back to normal soon.

“MicroClimate Weather” – What? Does anyone actually say that? (Click pic to view video from SoCal Skywatch. The juxtaposition of flawless skies and moody storm language makes me giggle.)

We purge knowledge of relatively predictable weather patterns from our carefully edited memories. San Diegans chitter and fawn over the first rain after Christmas annually when, in fact, every year it is sunny on Christmas and every year it rains on my birthday just two days later and no one wants to hang out and I watch my dreams wash down the gutter along with my youth…

I need only drop my handbag in the seasonal puddle that ebbs from the floor in my leaky convertible to know how deep in denial I am about the weather. Actually, now it’s more of a pond because recently thieves slashed my soft top.  I haven’t finished fixing it but I kinda stitched it up; I am pretty proud of myself.  Not sure how to make it waterproof just yet.  I’m thinking a patch that looks like a band-aid to really give that pathetic-yet-cute feel.

Sometimes I draw comic-y stuff.

When it mists lightly sprinkles “rains,” few San Diegans venture into the bars and their ill-equipped smoking patios. I seriously love First on Fifth for being liveable when it’s wet out.  Though I will never order a Dos Equis there again.

So, for this reason among many, I’m collecting together a nightlife guide that makes it worth it to lace on your boots and brave the broken flooded streets for the next couple of months. But it’s still totally sunny right now.  Booyah. Eat that winter.

Next week’s post won’t be so topical!