Like it was great (totally) - Garrison Keillor

[groovedaddy]

It is unbearably bleak as winter lingers in March and a cold wind blows and the people on the obituary page seem better looking than yourself and your prostate feels like a hockey puck and you walk around with your wallet and car keys looking for your wallet and car keys and you read an article about bipolar disorder and think, "Hey, that's me," and so in desperation I flew out to San Francisco for a few days, where the winter rains had stopped and the city was bathed in Mediterranean light and everyone seemed very buoyant, as if the miasma was gone and the halcyon days were back, and suddenly I felt 30 again.

I stayed in the Sunset District and rode the Judah trolley down to Van Ness and walked around by the War Memorial Opera House. The men who got rich in the Gold Rush loved opera, which seemed more relevant to their lives than, say, the music of Bach. Stories of violent drama and romance and sudden early death, sort of like their own lives. Opera singers who were embroiled in scandal wound up in San Francisco, a city that didn't care who you slept with if only you could sing Verdi. What brought down Eliot Spitzer would be only a speed bump here. That sort of tolerance is what makes the city so attractive to us Midwesterners, and also the fact that you can eat outdoors and not be bitten by bugs.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080312/OPINION04/803120983/1054/OPINION

[Demeter]

1. You Said It--I'm Contemplating a Trip To Florida--And I HATE Florida!

My snowdrops melted through the snow, and were buried again--TWICE. The wind chills are still below freezing every day. I've had higher spirits in the hospital.

[monmouth]

2. Right now at 1:32 pm it is 79 degrees (Palm Beach)..C'mon down..n/t