This morning I awoke early and got to work entering all my receipts into a spreadsheet. I'm sorting out my finances and I just spent a lot of money during my travels, but I think I had enough budgeted to cover. This budgeting project is major considering that when I was making money I never came close to spending all my money, so I just put the extra into investments. My investments are back up to break even after the crash, thank goodness. Merck and Omnivision saved my portfolio. Whole foods is still in the doghouse. Now that I'm not making money, it's all different.
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It was lovely. It hasn't rained here much for a while, and people get kind of cranky when there's no rain. It's exactly the opposite of Arizona. While I was out walking, I came across a woman who was on her knees in the grass, pulling out dandelions one by one. She wasn't wearing a hat, and her hair was plastered on her forehead with drops rolling off. She smiled at me, and told me that she loves the rain, and that pulling dandelions was a good excuse to be out in it, alone, while her children were at school.

Then under the pedestrian railroad underpasses on each side of Powell, the homeless were setting up camp. When the rains start, it doesn't take long for the people to start showing up. One one side a man was cutting up a T-shirt to put on his large tan American pit bull, and another man was doing some kind of repair to his bike. On the other side two young men had just showed up and were gleefully stripping off their wet shells. Shelter of any kind from the rain can be glorious to those who have no other escape.

In LA so many people have lost their homes that they are setting up tent cities and living in mobile homes. They have nowhere to go. This is just the beginning. Imagine the large populations of America's cities without food, jobs, homes or hope, but with diseases and guns. Here it comes. And as my classmate Conan pointed out, it's the BBC reporting on it: you won't find mention of this in the US media. They're trying to keep it mum.