California dreamin'

We've been laboring under a loooooong spell of rotten weather. Nothing like you poor souls on the East Coast have been getting, but just cruddy: gray, rainy and cold for weeks. (The sole benefit is that the public water reservoirs are now up to something like 77% full, meaning that unlike last year, we won't have a water-shortage scare if it's hot this summer.) Today, though, the sun finally made a convincing effort to shine and even (gasp!) warmed the place up a bit, perhaps to the high 40s, prompting my esteemed colleague from Southern California to observe that this type of weather was about as bad as it ever gets during their winters. Huh. Softies.

Just in case you don't watch the alert on the right, I've posted a bunch of new Ozan pics on the Picasa site, including a bunch from a recent breakfast we had with family. Meltem made pancakes from scratch, God bless her, and we even splurged on a bottle of maple syrup, only available as an expensive import. Oh, I was in heaven. Ozan and Melek had some quality playtime, as you can see in the photos. Now that the weather is turning, we hope to bring His Four-Toothed Majesty outside more often, to let him get acquainted with his realm. In the meantime he is unquestionably ruler of our little hole in the wall.