First Post -- Sunburnt?

Yikes. What the heck am I doing? I may be a bit starstruck. After all, the sun is the closest star to our planet... That's a good place to start.

Why SunSpotting?

I live in Cleveland, a gray and dreary place for something like 170 days out of the year.

(I'll get the numbers to back that up in a future post.)

You don't notice the lack of sun so much as you are taken by the sudden scintillation of the bright thing in the sky that blinds you if you glance at it. All Cleveland women know the ecstasy of Danae receiving Zeus as a shower of gold in her lap, except we embrace the sun.

This mini-Chicago, this Rustbelt wildflower, opens up and glimmers with such a vibrant shimmer, it's like having 2 cities.

I remember reading an article by a journalist for the Plain Dealer (Cleveland's newspaper) in which he or she was explaining why he or she moved back to Cleveland from Southern California.

"The weather, but not just the usual ‘I like the change of the seasons’ business;" was the response, and it was given with an off-hand, guarded delivery.

Nobody really bought it. Southern California is just about heaven, or so said Conventional Wisdom.

"Yeah, but in Southern California you get perfect weather every day. I got complacent. We’d plan a picnic or a trip to the zoo, get side tracked, and say ‘aw, we’ll just do it tomorrow.’ You can’t do that in Cleveland. When you get a beautiful day, it’s a gift. You have to take advantage of it then and there, not put it off. And when it’s a beautiful day in Cleveland, you really notice it. I came back to Cleveland for the weather.”

No, those aren’t direct quotes. And I have no idea who the brilliantly insightful journalist was, but I am grateful to him or her everyday. I *do* notice the weather. I *do* appreciate the changes. I love the surprise of a sunny Cleveland day.