a ramble which may or may not be related to today's joyful occasion

So... it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Everyone is getting ready for the party. The grills are all set up, laughing children running around, music blaring from open windows. The weather is gorgeous: warm & sunny, but not hot, with a cool, refreshing breeze and the sky so deeply blue it almost reminds me of the Mediterranean. I took a delightful 90-minute walk in the early afternoon, along the little back streets full of greenery and tiny, worn-out-but-charming houses nestled in the shade of their private gardens. It's a low-profile, shabby neighborhood, and most of the families chilling out on their front steps & porches are either Hispanic or Asian, with a small handful of Orthodox Jews thrown in for good measure. Traditional clothing of disparate geographical origins is well in evidence. You can pass by a mosque, a few different Christian churches and a synagogue, all within an hour's leisurely stroll. You can hear at least five different languages in the same time-frame as well. Just your average urban/suburban global village.:) ( And it feels somehow weirdly appropriate for me to be planted here: a stranger among strangers. )