HOWDY: I've gone quiet of late because I've been traveling -- Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, and Miami in the last ten days or so -- and because I've felt I have nothing to say.

Today was dull, but then tonight got better.

The rain stopped as I pulled up in front of my house and the sun extemporaneously warmed the soggy green canopy that is my street. The air rippled with humidity and lurid photosynthesizing, and the smell of damp chlorophyll rose from thousands of sated plant forms...

Etcetera. It was nice.

Now my ten-year-old Airedale Terrier, Vladi, is spread-eagled on the bathroom tile, flatulent and twitchy. I've just drank two cans of Schlitz while watching a Shane MacGowan documentary, and I set my cab pickup for 6:10AM -- or "six-tan-yam" as the Southern dispatcher pronounced it. It's time for bed, but I felt I needed to break my silence here. More from San Diego tomorrow. I'm there the next couple days.