I took some pictures yesterday in the Common yesterday and have put them into a nice little slide show for all of you lovely people out there. Not many trees have changed but the few that have looked great. It is so ironic how the leaves down here are better than the leaves up in Maine when I drove all the way up there last weekend. Hey if you can’t go to the foliage just wait until the foliage comes to you.

It is raining again, but it isn’t putting a damper on my spirits at all. The strange thing about the rain is how it can be so frustrating when you look out in the morning and know the commute will be just a little more difficult and wet. I usually dread standing at the train station waiting in the pouring rain while my pants get soaked because of the run off from my waterproof jacket. Next there is the dreaded activity of sitting in between two similarly wet people on the train for a nice musty smelling half hour trip into Boston. Finally you walk out of North Station and see the rain just pouring down on to the North End and realize being the constant goal seeker you are that you will forgo the relatively dry and painless subway trip and instead march down the flooded streets of the Hub. Only once I started walking down Canal Street with some music playing in my ears did I realize how much I enjoy walking in the rain. Yes you read correctly I actually enjoy the rain, but only if I am on foot.

Today I was reminded of a warm rainy night a few years ago when I was still in college. It was a typical late spring evening in Orono, I had been to class and went for dinner at the Union before I put on my rain jacket and made my way out into the showers which had been falling all day long. The walk from the Union to Somerset Hall takes about ten minutes and involves several winding paths which lead to my dorm atop the highest hill on campus. I zipped up my coat turned on my CD player and began my journey into the wet wonderland. I remember I was listening to an acoustic Dave Matthews disc, because it is all I listened to while walking around campus that year. The music combined with the rain put a huge smile on my face, it was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life, but I couldn’t exactly tell you why. Perhaps it the feeling you get once you are completely soaked and know you are going to be wet for a while and just don’t care anymore. Whatever it was, the strange combination of my mood, the weather, the music and the lighting created some sort of wave of happiness which overtook me and I couldn’t help but smile. It is certainly a brief moment in time I will remember for the rest of my life and somehow oddly ranks up there in my long list of happy times.

So while you are out there in the rain today or any day for that matter, just remember while the rain can sometimes be annoying and a nuisance, it can also bring out some very odd feelings of joy, just accept your new saturated state and enjoy the little packages of joy from above.