Some­one spilled paint all over my com­mu­nity last night. We had our choice of every­thing from heavy rain to blind­ing snow within a 50-mile radius. As you can see, it was not a fit night for man nor beast, although it was inter­est­ing to keep check­ing the weather wid­get as it passed through.

A moment of silence for our read­ers in the states that suf­fered more from this system.

I snagged this image because of that oddly per­fect oval hov­er­ing over Wind­sor. I’d like to know what caused that, if any­one knows. Years ago, I used to get almost a daily e-mail from a reader in Los Ange­les, a surfer my age named Paul. We had some nice exchanges about surf­ing, some­thing I’ve always wanted to try but will likely have to save for my next life­time. He had a way of talk­ing about it that walked a line between Spi­coli and Bodhi, and a lot of it boiled down to weather. Surf­ing was a way for a guy who lived in Los Ange­les to stay in touch with the nat­ural world, via the vast ocean on the other side of the hills. He would e-mail me weather maps of Pacific storm sys­tems, and demon­strate why a storm here meant waves in Mal­ibu, but one there was bet­ter news for Santa Bar­bara, why this place was a bet­ter win­ter beach and that place one for sum­mer, how you could antic­i­pate the waves for days, and plan your week around it. He made me under­stand it at a level I’d never con­sid­ered before, and one that, need­less to say, isn’t part of the pop­u­lar image of surf­ing, even a lit­tle bit.

Then one day he wrote and said, “Cir­cum­stances require me to give up my inter­net con­nec­tion for the forsee­able future, enjoyed read­ing your blog, take care, bye” and I never heard from him again. I won­der if he’s still out there. If he is, maybe he knows why it was snow­ing in an oval over Wind­sor last night.

I’m look­ing at weather maps to keep myself from look­ing at election-result maps, because they give me a headache. There are two things I man­aged to mostly avoid when I was a reporter: pol­i­tics and enter­tain­ment news. Of course I cov­ered elec­tions and the like — only the fash­ion reporter entirely avoids those — but I was never the one with the patience to sit down with precinct maps and exit-poll results and tap cal­cu­la­tor keys all night. Those folks pro­vide a huge ser­vice, but they make watch­ing elec­tion returns pretty rough. I gather Mitt’s washed up, but we knew that was com­ing. Huckabee’s show­ing was an inter­est­ing thread, but still can’t win him the Strange New Respect award from the media. And Hillary and Obama con­tinue to run neck-and-neck, which is exhaust­ing, for both them and the Democ­rats, but I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed.

I don’t lis­ten to talk radio, would only know Hugh Hewitt if he jogged down my street with his man-boobs a-jiggle, but did he really say McCain “can’t be con­sid­ered a fron­trun­ner by any con­ven­tional stan­dard”? What­ever. These folks are delusional.

So now that we’ve estab­lished I’m tired and goofy this morn­ing, how about some blog­gage? I don’t really have any, but Fark is always on the job, and…yes, yes, this will do just fine: What do you do when you find a rat­tlesnake in your back­yard in St. Peters­burg? Call the law, of course, and if you’re lucky and they think the snake is SEVEN FEET LONG, they’ll send three cops with shotguns.

Per­son­ally, I think those guys just like to blast away.

I think this will be an early-nap day. If I made my cof­fee any stronger, it would be pud­ding. Play nice, and I’ll be back in a bit.