As I write, it's raining! I can't remember the last time it rained here, so I'm kinda excited.

Some American readers might be wondering why this is a big deal to me. Here's the thing; I grew up in Britain. It rains A HELL OF A LOT in Britain, because it's an island, with an oceanic weather system. So, as much as I love all the sun and dry weather in Colorado, when it rains for the first time in ages, it's a nice change.

Before I moved to the US, I used to get annoyed with my American friends and acquaintances who used to go on about how it was always raining in Britain. I'd say, "but we get sunny days too!".

Since moving to Colorado, I've come to realise just what good weather is. We get an average of 320 days a year of sun. Yes, it snows a lot in the winter, but as soon as that stops, the sun comes out and melts a lot of it for us.

So, I'm sat out on my porch, at half-past midnight, listening to the rain and the occasional thunder, and waiting for the next flash of lightning. That's one thing about Colorado rain. When it does eventually happen, it's usually accompanied by an impressive thunderstorm. Just as I thought it was all over, it's gone a bit torrential on us.

I've just let the dogs out onto the porch, and so they're both sat out here with me, watching the world go by, and the rain come down. They're delighted at the chance to hang out with 'Dad', outside the house. Being Golden Retrievers, they tend to need to go outside during the evening, to cool off. Normally, they're out on their own, so this makes a nice change.

I'm sat out here, typing away, and chatting with a friend via ICQ - the Instant Messaging software of choice for geeks - all thanks to 802.11b wireless networking. Whoever invented that needs to be canonised*. It's just the best bit of technology! If only for moments like this.

*I've used the British spelling of this, but the hyperlink to dictionary.com points to a page with the American spelling. It's that old 's' vs 'z' thing again. God bless the differences! It's what makes this world so interesting. The definition is the same, however.