A few posts ago, I mentioned how San Diego rarely gets rain. Just about the only time it does rain is in the winter’about now–but usually the whole winter will result in less than 4 inches total.

Well, seems this year was one for the record books as we’ve had just tons of rain. A large reservoir north of the city, prior to the latest round of rain, was at 30% capacity. At last report, it was at 70% and rising. Christopher’s parents got over 13 inches in the last couple of weeks. Over 11 inches fell at the airport (always gets the least rain, so the locals say), and up in LA they got over 17 inches.

Flooding, sure, lots of that. And mudslides happen, of course’from the tragically huge like in La Conchita to the less threatening but still annoying ones that close routes to the Indian casinos nearby. Even on well-traveled city streets there are good-sized rocks that have washed into the roadway from the rain’like baseball-sized.

Because they don’t get much rain here, the roads, already surprisingly lousy, apparently melt when there’s a lot of water. There are potholes everywhere, and even a few sinkholes in places. And the potholes aren’t small’they’re deep and large and on both surface streets and the freeways.

Between the rocks and the potholes, driving a Miata becomes quite the adventure post-rain.

When it is actually raining, it feels cold here. It was cold, for here. Highs in the 50s are not what you’re supposed to get, even in the winter, in San Diego. The city is just not build for cold, not by a longshot. For example, our small house has one furnace grate. Actually, that’s the whole furnace, right there in the floor in the space between our livingroom and dining area. When it’s on you can’t stand on it or you’ll melt the soles of your shoes (or burn your bare feet). It effectively heats about a 10-foot radius area to a comfortable temperature with a definite increase in comfort the closer you get to the grate itself.

My office and Mac are at least 12 feet from it. I was chilly.

And the windows don’t so much keep the weather out as they do give the wind something to notice as it comes inside. I swear you can hear the wind whistle more happily as it leaps through that gap at the top of the office windows, as if to say, ‘Thanks! I was getting all bored just blowing in a straight line, but having to change direction a bit to go through that large gap was fun.’

Maybe it’s the Scot in me, but I couldn’t take having the furnace running constantly so I went around and ‘sealed’ the windows with towels, etc., the way I would have back home when temperatures below zero were forecast. This for lows in the lower 40s.

So, for about two weeks we lived like this. No sun to speak of, ‘cold’ temperatures, and pretty constant rain and wind. The cliffs at the beaches started to crumble, over 150 trees went down in Balboa Park alone, the San Diego River went over its banks, and the people began to think that the end of the world was nigh.

Christopher and I even had to drive with our tops up. It was that bad.

Now, a few days after the rain finally stopped, it seems that Spring has sprung. We drove to Christopher’s parents’ house on Saturday (top down, of course) and noticed dogwoods in bloom. Everything is green, and a lot of it is flowering too. Our neighbor’s roses are lovely, and Lynne’s rosemary bush has lots of bees at its purple flowers.

It’s January. Mid-January. This makes my brain do flip-flops. The weather-bunny this morning said today would be a great day to go to the beach, since so many people have the day off (MLK, Jr. Day) and the temperatures are so warm. It’s 78º in the shade on our back deck right now, at 1:45PM.

Did I mention that it’s January? According to weather.com, it’s 16º in Columbus right now, with a wind chill of zero. Here, everyone’s wearing shorts and flip-flops and I was hot in the Miata as I ran my errands.

Am I complaining? No. But I am confused.

So, it’s finally run, my Jeopardy! episode, that is. And now everyone (just about) knows how I did—I lost…sort of.

Yes, after a good game where my only regrets were not ringing in fast enough on the Rabelais question and not betting more on the Daily Double, I came in second. The guy in first had a good lead on me, thanks to an NFL category that he leapt on, and the returning champion in third wasn’t much of a threat at all during the game.

And then came Final Jeopardy.

The way it works on the show is that they give you special instructions before FJ sometimes’if there is something particular about the clue or requirements for a correct response. In our case they made a HUGE deal about “being exact” and “giving the exact date–day month year” etc. Really pounded that in, and we all expressed that we understood. Alex then lead into the reveal saying that folks at home could ‘figure it out.’ Because of all that, when the clue was revealed, I was perplexed. The category was Dates in American History and the clue read:
On this date Philadelphia partied with fireworks & music from a Hessian band captured 6 months earlier.

Well, my first thought was, of course, July 4th, 1777, because of the fireworks reference and the Hessian Band meant it had to be during the Revolutionary War. However, the words ‘six month earlier’ contradicted that response. Six months earlier than July 4th is January 4th, and the Hessians were captured after the crossing of the Delaware River and that event was on Christmas, 1776. Sure, that’s nit-picky, but Jeopardy! is known for that. There was no qualifier (around, about) so I had to take “six months earlier” to mean exactly that. I thought, ‘Well, maybe they were celebrating some other date, not the actual 4th of July’I have to go with what the clue says’ and I wrote my answer: What is June 25, 1777?

The correct response was July 4, 1777. I was miffed. I still am, actually.

Anal? You bet. But so is Jeopardy!. If you answered, for example, All’s Quiet on the Western Front for a clue about a novel set during WWI, you’d get it wrong since it’s All Quiet… They don’t accept ‘close enough’ or ‘I meant…’ No, they’re very literal, and I think I was thus a bit screwed. See, I would have won if I had gotten it right. I had the year right and the guy who won didn’t. And I would have won a bucket of cash (almost $30K).

So I’m appealing my game. I hope that I’ll get another shot. I may–there are already comments about the FJ question being poorly worded on the Jeopardy.com forums (yes, there are J! forums for fans).

Regardless, I did have fun and it was worth all the effort to get on and study. I recommend anyone who ever had the urge to give it a try–they have regional tryouts pretty regularly. In fact, my other brother now is trying out in February in Atlanta. That’ll make all the sibs.

We’re a family of geeks…can you tell?