We’re having “mild” Santa Ana conditions again. That means that in the late morning to afternoon, it’s quite warm but, because the air is so dry, as soon as the sun sets the temperatures drop significantly. When you wake in the morning, it’s right chilly in fact. Okay, chilly for here which means upper 40s to low 50s, depending on where you are in the city.

That dry air means that it doesn’t feel warm unless you are actually in the sun. It takes forever (it seems) for the air in my house to warm up because the air outside is so dry it just doesn’t feel as warm as it really is. Like right now at 8:38am it’s 68 degrees, and I’m freezing indoors (and I refuse to turn the heat on with temps like that).

Outside, in the sun, it does feel better, but it’s hard to see a laptop’s screen in the sun. So that’s not an option for me to work.

And then, because of the dryness, it just skips “warm” altogether–jumping straight to “hot.”

It makes for much shivering and many clothes changes unless you work in a climate controlled structure, which I do not. And it wreaks havoc with my skin. At about 1pm every day, it feels like someone has given me an acid peel.

And as I’ve said before, forget about staying hydrated. I’d need an IV with a garden hose into a vein to get enough liquid, I think.

The weather service has issued “Red Flag Warnings” which are issued when the humidity will be below 10% for more than 12 hours in any 24 hour period. It means that the fire danger is huge. Terrible name, though. “Red Flag Warning” wounds like we’re in imminent danger of being covered by swarms of red flags or something. I mean, “tornado warning” means there’s a tornado, “severe thunderstorm warning” means there’s a severe thunderstorm, and so on. Why don’t they call it a “severe fire watch” until there is a fire then call it a “fire warning.”

And all this starts to piss me off, the discomfort, dryness, crazy terminology, etc., until I turn to weather.com and see this:

Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Autumn in SoCal is very bizarre to me. This is my third autumn here and each one is stranger than the last. The first one was, of course, filled with the raging wildfires. The second was occupied by my first Jeopardy! taping and the depressing election, so it passed essentially in a blur. This one is marked by me planting flowers and watching bulb plants bloom.

Yeah, that last part makes my brain hurt. Fall = planting flowers that aren’t bulbs to bloom in the spring. Ouch.

About three weekends ago I planted pansies in one part of our yard and daisy seeds nearby. Then about a week later, other flowers started to bloom and it turns out they’re some form of amaryllis or miniature daffodil. Plants that would normally be spring bloomers in any ‘normal’ environment, but out here they’re just happy to burst forth now.

And then there’s the massive jade plant in back that is now starting to bloom. I didn’t even know jade plants could flower! Of course, I had never seen a jade plant not in a pot inside a house until I got here, for that matter.

So, last weekend I planted other flowers from seed, like poppies, sweetpeas, and the Monty Python-inspired lupins. This is when you should plant them here. I’m going native.

But it does confuse me.

Of course, the fact that it’s 85 degrees and about 12% humidity today doesn’t help (another Santa Ana day).

The coolness in the morning and after the sun goes down does help. You do need a light sweater or jacket at those times and, with the smell of wood smoke in the air (from folks’ fireplaces), you can almost convince yourself it really is autumn.

At least until you come across a neighbor’s yard full of blooms…right next to the yard with the massive holiday display including a giant, fake, inflatable snowgobe with a fan that blows the snow around inside.

At that moment your brain tell you to kiss off.

I’ve been a bad blogger. Things have been rather busy ’round here so I haven’t even been able to post about significant things, like my recent (re)appearance on Jeopardy!.

For those of you who are still holding your breaths, don’t–I came in second. Darn. And no, you don’t keep your winnings if you don’t win. Double-darn. That $20+K would have been grand to have.

I think I may have lost to the female equivalent of Ken Jennings, except I’m afraid she may be a bit weak in modern/popular culture categories. She’s a very smart woman, though, and I wish her well.

Other people have posted about Ms. Wenglinsky (actually, I think she’s Dr. Wenglinsky, Ph.D.) on the Jeopardy! forums and have said she was actually a lot of fun off-camera. I don’t recall her having any personality at all. Not nasty or mean or anything negative–just rather void. But then again, I didn’t really pay much attention to her.

As for my game, it was a tough one (according to the Jeopardy! forum members who track that sort of thing) and though I had a wonderful time, I struggled from the start to some extent. In fact, I wasn’t really ready for the show’s opening when it started so I was a bit off-kilter when they introduced me as seen here:

Probably helped me not look quite so dorky as I stared into the camera. That’s the worst part, the intros, because you have to smile into a camera across the set from you for what feels like an hour.

Anyway, game started and, promptly, I got beaten to the buzzer a good many times. All three of us were good players and pretty closely matched for a lot of the game. The first break and the ‘talk with Alex’ part was a relief which gave me a chance to get my head more in the game. You can tell I’m feeling better by the end of the interview because I’m standing on one leg again (note foot off floor here at the end of the interview):

I was actually in third after the first round and was happy to start off the Double Jeopardy round with my favorite category: Before and After. I did very well in the DJ round, including getting a Daily Double right, but the 18th Century Britain category was written for Maria (practically) and how I got at least one of the Zany for Zambia category right, I have no idea. Thus maria led somewhat going into Final Jeopardy.

The FJ clue left me blank for quite a while. I definitely didn’t know the answer and was struggling with figuring a good logical guess. It came to me late and, in a rush, I misspelled my response. Luckily, I used a homophone so it was counted as correct and, briefly, I thought I might win. Unfortunately for me, Maria got it right and bet enough to cover my total.

Second place again, but this time there was no foul. My Jeopardy! days were over.

As I’ve said before, it was a great experience and I encourage anyone who has every thought about trying out to do so. I was very lucky to have been able to play twice and would do it again in a second if they asked, but that won’t happen. So now I just watch like everyone else…

…and think about someday playing Millionaire.