Another Friday Five for you. Brought to you by sleepless nights spent avoiding writing a paper and thinking of the hour I will see Dom again.

1. What is your favorite time of year? Spring, right about now.

2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? Well, it�s the most pleasant time in Southern California. I get cold too easily, so winter is not that great, and summers in LA can be terrible with the heat and the smog. Plus, the major holiday of the spring, Easter, is not as overly commercialized as Christmas. Yeah, spring is nice, especially when you start to realize that the days are getting longer after the winter.

3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why? El invierno. The cold just gets to me and I can�t handle it, even though there isn�t too big of a difference in the seasons in Southern California. I also don�t like the fact that the days are shorter. I think there�s a saying that there are only two seasons in LA. Either way, the winter in California can be cold and I�m a person of the sun so I prefer the long days of summer.

4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? Nope. Pato�s birthday is on the winter solstice and Oscarito�s is on the summer solstice, so when I celebrate their birthdays I guess I kind of do celebrate the changing of the seasons.

5. What's your favorite thing to do outside? Go camping. I don�t think I�ve gone since I was in junior high. My family used to go every Labor Day to the Kern River along with a few other relatives and friends. The kids would spend the whole day in the river either swimming or rafting. By the time it got dark we were tired but still up for telling ghost stories around the campfire and admiring the heavens littered with more stars than we even knew existed. As kids who grew up in the city or in the suburbs we only knew that there were so many stars in the sky because of fieldtrips to the LA Obersvatory. The adults sang songs in Spanish that we probably didn�t appreciate too much back then. We scared the wits out of eachother with stories about La Llorona y el Cucuy. The stories were always true, and they happened to a cousin�s friend of a friend who lived in a pueblo en M�xico. If anyone had to go pee, two others joined �cause you didn�t know who or what was in those bushes. When we finally got sleepy we�d crawl into our respective tents and try not to get dirt in. Once in my sleeping bag I listened to the sounds of the river a few feet away and my dad singing and strumming his guitar while my T�a Luisa joined in to �Cuando Calienta el Sol,� a bolero sung by el Trio Los Panchos. Those were the best lullabies, the river and the music. And while I drifted off to sleep I felt myself being tugged by the current down the river to another dream.

Me siento:
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M�s reciente:
Searches - 09.16.05
the big move - 07.29.05
mother and daughter: a comparative analysis - 07.28.05
jardineros y dom�sticas - 07.27.05
tough question - 07.25.05

antes // despu�s