Glad I'm not Tired of Winter; It Starts Today!

Today, December 21st, is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. It's the shortest day, the longest night, and the start of winter by modern convention.

Winter means rain in California. Our climate pattern is such that we have beautiful, long, sunny summers. In turn, we get virtually all our rainfall for the year in winter. Of course, that definition of winter is not limited to astronomical dates like December 21. Typically our rainy season starts sometime in November and runs through March.

The way winter weather starts before the official start of winter means that, some years, I'm tired of winter by the time it starts. 😰 That was the case last year; fortunately it's not the case this year. I'm okay with winter right now. It hasn't dragged me down too much already. I think I'll be okay— as in not dispirited— by a couple months of drear. If nothing else, at least now that it's the winter solstice the days will start getting longer again. Soon it won't be dark at 5pm any more!

Panama: Good Thing I'm Not Sick of Rain Yet

It's amusing. After I blogged this morning about how I'm not sick of Northern California's rainy season yet I checked my weather app again for Panama— we leave tonight— and saw this:



Rain. Every day. Or at least a likelihood of rain every day.

At least it will be warm.

But since it'll never be that cool, either, wet stuff will probably never quite dry out. Ugh.

Off to Panama!

Panama Travelog #1
SJC Airport - Sat, 21 Dec 2024. 10pm.

We're leaving for Panama this evening. In a sense we've left already. We've left home. Though we're only ~10 miles away from home so far, at the airport in San Jose.

We arrived early at the airport this evening, just before 8pm for a flight that doesn't leave until 10:55. We allowed extra time to deal with passport checks (required before getting a boarding pass to Panama) and we wanted to make sure SJC didn't close up the TSA PreCheck line at 8pm or somesuch.

Well, they had kinda closed the PreCheck line by 8pm. We were shunted into one line with all passengers. We got pass cards that allowed us to walk through magnetometers with our shoes on instead of removing shoes and raising our arms in a surrender sign in the millimeter wave scanner. But bag scanner line was slow because of all the non-PreCheck customers having to strip things off and empty their pockets. If nothing else it was an interesting reminder of why PreCheck is worth it. I just wish it wasn't an aggravatingly slow reminder.

Once we got into the concourse I was happy we'd chosen to eat dinner at home. Most of the eateries in SJC Terminal A are walled off and undergoing reservation.

We've been sitting in the gate area, mostly bored, now for almost two hours. Hooray for laptops, handheld devices, and ubiquitous wifi/cell service otherwise this wait would be intolerable. By 2024 standards it'd be intolerable. Well, at least our aircraft is here already and it looks like we'll be able to board & leave on time.