At a meeting the other day, some of the other people in the room were complaining about the weather here. “It’s so hot,” said one (it has been in the mid-80s, but windy and dry so it’s very comfortable). “Miserable weather,” said another.

At some point, one of them looked at me, and suddenly realized that I have just moved to the Bay Area from a place that is currently beastly hot, in the 90s and humid, a place which just had destructive rainstorms and flooding — that I have just moved here from a place that has blizzards and ice storms and hail and hurricanes and thunderstorms. “Well,” she said, “the weather here is not so bad compared to New England, is it.”

“No, the weather here is pretty good,” I said.

“The weather here is actually perfect for human beings,” someone said.

“But human beings just like to complain about the weather,” said someone else.