Skies moved from gray to a bit grayer to dark. Winds picked up gradually, then whipped heavily. Rain fell in brief, heavy spurts, like water inside a car wash.

Rick Hurd and Austin Turner of the Bay Area News Group

Not a bad image.

Rain blowing like the inside of a car wash!

Who said old style news writing is dead?

Thursday 1 February 11.10 a.m.

Storm blew itself past my boat overnight.

I stayed dry.

Now I’m hanging at the office.

The old dude to the left there is not me. He’s just an Old Fart with a goatee. Just a slight resemblance to me. Or not. I’m imagining a resemblance. You got a lot of Old Farts with Goatees. It’s almost like cockroaches. I don’t mean to disparage cockroaches. As you know from reading my blog, I have a goatee only to hide the grotesque scars I earned from falling off my boat. If I had a choice I’d have my old face back instead of being stuck with a stupid goatee…

She slept right there under that umbrella last night. Hard to believe. Rain blowing like the inside of a car wash and she’s under that umbrella all night long. Okay. This is her life. I’m not responsible for her life. She lives right there, across from the back end of my Starbucks Safeway. The local homeless woman. She’s the only homeless person to speak of here at Strawberry Village. I’m probably wrong. This woman just happens to be obvious. She lives right there on the grass in plain sight. Her umbrella has grown considerably. I can see she’s weathered the storm just as I did aboard Scruffy.

Okay, okay…I had it way better than she did. Okay?

If I was rich as Elon Musk I’d give her a million bucks. Just like that old time T.V. show, THE MILLIONAIRE. You’re a full fledged Boomer you remember that show. I’d go around handing out million dollar deals to all the homeless people.

I’d call myself THE GLOOMY BOOMER BIG BUCK DUDE…or something like that.

I wonder what it feels like to be an almost trillionaire like Elon Musk and he sees a homeless person? What’s he think when he sees one of the outcasts appearing everywhere these days? What’s he think, I wonder. He sees a homeless person like our lady on the curb there, he must think to himself…

Shit, I don’t know what he thinks.

The minds of super fucking big shots are an enigma to me.

Last night was the big blow

Was it like being trapped in a car wash? Not quite. Nice image a car wash but not quite. It did blow like hell and I gotta say, I spent the night on old Scruffy bone dry ….thanks to all that work I did last summer– painting the decks, applying tarps, for and aft, applying them with scientific accuracy, or better, applying them with rote Inca wall building accuracy, and I must say, after years of practice, I finally get it right–my bedroom does not drip. Scruffy rocked like hell, wind blew like a car wash, ran came down in torrents. All-night-long. But I stayed dry…

My life sucks but sometimes you gotta round the bases like you hit a homerun…

I get up this morning, bone dry, step up to my main solon, and encounter the usual crowd, awaiting breakfast. It doesn’t matter than it’s still raining like hell outside. Weather don’t matter to these birds. They’re part of the weather. They want to be fed.

Fuck’n Peeper’s hanging outside my starboard door, Peeping.

See him in the left corner of my window?

Another bird’s flanking him.

Big Dude Bird’s perched on my prow, doing his Maltese Falcon imitation.

Now he’s doing The American Eagle.

They move around to my port door, awaiting a handout.

Raining like hell.

They don’t give a shit.

They’re part of the rain!

They could be homeless. I’m thinking of that poor woman on the grass beside the curb.

Well, I’m no Gloomy Boomer Big Buck Dude.

Except maybe to these Seagulls…