California and other musings...

-I live in California. This is not really an amazing fact, but merely a fact in and of itself. California is a place, and it's where I happen to live. Having said that, I don't think about it much. And why would I? We all have lives and other more important matters to fret about, and where we happen to geographically be located normally falls pretty low on the daily thought scale (unless you happen to live in Somalia or Fallujah, for instance. I'm sure folks who live there think about what that means quite a bit). Anyways, where I live is a decent sized city of 500,000 people. However, it is surrounded by farmland and hills/mountains, so it's a surprisingly rural place given its size. Anyways, I sometimes forget that a mere 15 minute drive from my home is geography like this:

It's easy to forget something as beautiful as this is right outside your door. Literally. I had forgotten my hometown had this kind of geography...and it is easy to do. Sometimes we need to just walk outside our door, and put life on hold...if even for only a few hours. If we don't, views like this might as well be a 1,000,000 miles away. This brings me to another point: our drought. If you look at these pictures, you can see where the normal waterline is, and where we are currently at...and it's the end of the rainy season. Not good...at all. Still, it's not like the state sits next to trillions of gallons of water or anything. I mean, how handy would it be to border an ocean, right? If only somebody would invent some sort of handy-dandy process to extract the salt from seawater, perhaps our water issues could be solved. Clearly, that is but a fantasy scenario*

(* This is, of course, hyperbole. California needs to get real and line the coast with desalination plants. If the Middle East can put water slides and ski slopes in their malls located in the middle of the Sahara...courtesy of desalination plants... I would think the world's 7th biggest economy** could do the same and spare us from having to refrain from flushing our toilets or taking a "not more than" five minute shower. Just build a solar farm next to them to supply the power, and presto...it's even green and self sustaining. Naaaah...makes too much sense, and, until a corporation figures out how to charge us for sunlight and seawater, they won't be interested...which is why California needs to make this THE public works project of the 21st century. A water independent California would be an economic juggernaut unlike the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, such ambitions requires foresight and long term thinking/planning, something westerners, and specifically Americans, are typically quite poor at....)

(** California is the world's 7th largest economy. Suck it Texas and New York...outside your own mind, you're just not that important)

Other thoughts:

-why can't I get breakfast past 11am in most restaurants?  What's the issue, man?  For whatever reason, the restaurateurs of America have decided "Thou shalt NOT eat a pancake, bacon, and scrambled eggs after 11am!....no exceptions!!!"  Why?  Is there a time lock vault that locks up the eggs and bacon after 11am?  Is there a rotation of staff that occurs at 11am ON THE DOT that, while perfectly comfortable grilling up a hamburger and fries, have no concept of how to scramble a fucking egg?  "Scramble an egg?  What am I?  Houdini???"  Or, in most restaurants, is the staff with knowledge of all things breakfast summarily executed every morning at 11...which explains the high employee turnover at most restaurants.  Seriously.  What the hell?  On a weekend when I sleep in...or while on vacation....I don't want to be in a panic to get up early to make the "breakfast hour".  I want to enjoy myself at a leisurely pace, and, what I don't want, is a shrimp cocktail or lasagna with my morning cup of coffee.  I want biscuits and gravy.  French toast.  'Ya know?  A fucking FRITTATA. Not a roast chicken.  Who's with me on this?  "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!!!"  "Attica!  Attica!" etc.  Anyways, as you can see, this really irritates me.

-why is the world generally set up on a 8am-6pm schedule?  To take advantage of sunlight?  Is that the reason?  We're no longer an agrarian society.  I don't get up at dawn to milk cows in an unlit barn.  We live in a world of electric light.  We can have light whenever we want it.  It's glorious.  There's no need to chase the sun like an 18th century farmer anymore.  Let it go.  Nobody, and I mean, NOBODY, is at their best at 8am.  It takes a gallon of coffee and the stress of a commute to wake us up.  Study after study has indicated the early morning hours are not the time for peak human efficiency.  Furthermore, these same studies have shown that this is just about the WORST time to try and educate a child...so naturally our schools are set up on this inefficient and archaic time system.  Along with extending breakfast hours, we need to push back the work day to something like 10am to 8pm...seriously.  There needs to be a grassroots movement on this.  I'd do it, but I'm too exhausted from getting up so goddamn early (ha! A joke!).

-ok.  Not my best efforts here, but I rushed through it just to put something up.  I've been meaning to do it for a few weeks, but never seemed to get around to it.  So...ta da and all that.  Now, I'd write more, but I need to shower as I just finished a run a little while ago.  No, I don't enjoy running.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it sucks.  What I enjoy even less, however, is the couple of extra pounds from the holidays that have stubbornly set up camp in my midsection.  Amazing how such a fleeting amount of pleasure can result in such a protracted amount of misery (if that's not a constant analogy for pretty much all of life's experiences, I don't know what is).