OK, I'm not in the Sierras, or in a house at the bottom of some wildfire ravaged canyon, but so far the recent storm system making all the news as the latest "disaster" to strike California has been pretty tame, at least in our neck of the woods.

Yes, the winds have been strong. Yes, there has been a boatload of dihydrogen monoxide falling out of the sky. But eh...it's pretty mild overall. I mean, it's WEATHER, which we usually don't have here in California. Freaks everyone out. But compared to a Noreaster, or a hurricane, or even a tropical storm...this is nothing. We haven't even had a *single* peal of thunder, OK? Julian has been asking excitedly about lightning, and I've got nothing for him. No thunder, no lightning, just rain. We looked out the window and watched the bamboo blow around in the wind on Friday morning. Big whoop.

I've heard people talk about stocking up on food, and taking cash out of the bank. Come on....these are people living in Silicon Valley, for crying out loud. Not some isolated snowbound cabin.

Hell, we need the water. Reservoirs are empty after the drought year we just had. I'm personally glad to see it rain, and the harder the better. I want to see a FAT Sierra snowpack come springtime. I hope all the recent snow up there doesn't melt too fast.

When I was about 9 years old, we lived in the Florida Keys. There was a tropical storm on the way and the wind was REALLY strong outside. Strong enough for me and my brother to play "motorcycle"...we took our bikes down to the end of the street, pushing and straining against the wind with heads down, then turned them around and got on. Once on, the wind was so strong that it pushed us down the street on our bikes as fast as if we were riding motorcycles. No pedaling necessary!

As my bike was racing down the street with the wind, me whooping, the pedals were spinning around wildly. I had on flip-flops (sensible footwear for bicycling in a tropical storm, no?) and at some point the spinning toothed pedal on the right jaggedly tore open my foot, right between my second and third toes. I didn't even notice, what with all the fun. I just noticed that my foot got kind of floppy as I was pushing my bike.

Once I noticed that my foot was torn open, that was another story. I got home FAST, my mom threw me in the tub to try to clean out my wound, and my Dad ended up sewing up my foot in two layers, with lots and lots of stitches. By candlelight.

He's a doctor, so that's not as bad as it sounds. And I even got a numbing shot of Novocain before the stitching, although that injection right in the bloody meat between my toes, in the dark, with a storm howling outside, was pretty freakin' traumatic in itself.

Compared to stuff like THAT, this weekend's storm system is ridiculously puny and uneventful. I'm just hoping that the rain holds out long enough for Julian to wear his rainboots and splash in the puddles a bit.