Yet another in a long line of Pacific storms swept in late yesterday afternoon, while my own personal dark clouds retreated. It's a majestic scene to watch from the comfort of my sofa; the winking light of Alcatraz barely penetrating through the gloom, the steel grey waters of the Bay buffeting the Oakland ferry, and the heavy black clouds descending over Angel Island. The one thing that is missing is the actual sound of the rain, which you can never hear from my apartment.

Last night was the latest failure in a rather farcical effort to arrange a surprise dinner for Jed, to celebrate the professorship he'll start up in the Summer. His friend Kelly was the prime mover. I've never even met the girl, yet she'd gotten my number and called me a couple of weeks ago. The idea was that she'd get everybody together for a dinner at some restaurant, and I'd arrange to take Jed there, ostensibly for a private dinner, just the two of us.

Things began to get complicated the following Wednesday, when Jed's best friend, John, suddenly decided that he'd like to meet me for the first time, and wanted to go out for dinner the same night as Jed's celebration dinner! Somehow, Kelly was able to integrate the two dinners, without Jed getting particularly suspicious. The only problem is that both Jed and John are gourmands, and Kelly had inauspiciously chosen The Sausage Factory as the site for the celebration. That's a place that John would never chose in a million years. So late in the week, Jed called me, scratching his head as to why John would want to go out for dinner at The Sausage Factory.

Then Jed got sick. He came down with a heavy cold, and the whole thing had to be cancelled at the last minute! This was last Saturday. I called Kelly to deliver the news, so that she could tell all the other surprise guests, and she mumbled something about maybe trying it again the following Saturday. But since I never heard from her the whole week, I assumed she hadn't gotten her act together. By Friday, both Jed and I had made separate plans, so it was certainly a big surprise to me when Kelly called to tell me that the reservation was for 7.30 at The Sausage Factory (again!), last night.

So now I had to call Jed, and, in a very unusual tone of voice, say something about wanting to go for a dinner, just the two of us, at, errr, ...The Sausage Factory. I got his voice mail, and left my hard-to-believe message. But he wrote back later by email saying that he couldn't change his plans .,.. sorry. In the end, I had to tell him all about the surprise dinner. But even then, he couldn't change his plans, so all of us surprisees were left with a big hole in our Saturday evenings. We all blame Kelly, of course. So I just rented a couple of movies, and settled down, with the storm howling outside.

I've been engaged recently in the art of "home improvement". You see, I never really finished moving into this apartment, since by the time I was half settled in, it was time to head off on my big, two-month Summer trip to Europe. And after I came back, it just seemed that other things got in the way. So pictures were left unhung, and boxes of books in the bottom of the closet. My first project, then, was to buy some shelves for the empty nook between my bedroom and the bathroom. This meant a trip to the Bed, Bath and Beyond, where I found some elegant wood and metal self-assembly shelves named "Manhattan". This somehow seemed a step up from the alternative of driving over the bridge to Ikea, in Emeryville, where I would have found shelves with strange sounding Scandinavian names such as "Sten" or "Ethelbert".

Once they were assembled, in place and loaded with sweaters and t-shirts, I finally found a use for the English flag I bought during my summer trip. It was the perfect size and shape to hang on the top shelf in order to conceal the rest. While lying in bed late last night, I found myself transfixed by the Cross of St George in the half-light. I half expected it to be fluttering in the breeze. That flag has seen so many centuries of history, much of it bloody. In the middle of the night, when my imagination often runs with fantasy, there was something a little disconcerting about seeing it towering over me like that.

My final acts of home-improvement were to frame some pictures, and buy some bookshelves (which have yet to be delivered). I was just a little bit sheepish about one of the pictures, since it was an original movie poster of the first Star Trek movie, from the late seventies. It had been a gift from Brett many years ago, and he'd always been on at me for not having it framed. I suppose I hadn't framed it because I didn't particularly want to seem like a complete nerd. I mean, what would be next - Star Wars action figures next to my computer? But I finally did it, and it looks very handsome ... in an almost invisible spot next to the kitchen :)