voodoo umbrella

It's raining today and it's all my fault. See, I have this umbrella, and it's small enough that it's easy to carry around in my backpack, but also small enough that it isn't much use for actually, you know, keeping off the rain. It's more a symbolic umbrella--an umbrella security blanket, if you will: it gives me the feeling that I'm Doing Something about the rain, which is comforting even if the thing I'm doing isn't keeping me dry. Anyway, the weather this week has been stunning, so finally on Thursday night I took the umbrella out of my backpack, figuring I'd free up some space for essentials like Hob-Nobs.

Well.

What else did I expect, really? But it was truly amazing: on Friday the thunder-and-hail storm lasted only about half an hour, but it coincided exactly with the only half-hour of the day when I actually had to be outside. (It was kind of fun. I very quickly realized that there was no way to avoid getting drenched--no evasive ducking-under-awnings moves I could make, no speedy sprints that would save me a wetting--and so there was no point in resisting it. I ended up feeling like a kid splashing in mud puddles.) And then this morning it started chucking down again right when I started walking to the bus stop (again sans umbrella) .

I must e-mail my friend who wanted to have a barbecue this afternoon and give him my sincere apologies.