The other day, driving through Burbank on another fruitless mission for still life props, I looked up and saw a sun dog.

I was dumbstruck when I realized that this is the first cloud I've really seen in six months. I don't mean the wispy cirrus clouds you always see in those fabulous LA sunsets, or the tops of the billowing thunderheads just visible from this side of the San Gabriel mountains in August, or the dark clouds of smoke or torrential rains that have consumed the sky for days. It was a little, tiny, fluffy cloud in the middle of a blue sky - a luminous, multicolored cloud, even.

I paused to wonder at this freak of nature for the few seconds it took for the light to change and the driver behind me to honk at me and flip me off, whizzing around me on the right with the reckless urgency I've come to expect from high-end BMW drivers.

Anyway.

I love LA in winter. Everything seems to regain a sort of clarity with the cooler temperature and shorter days. The mountains reappear from behind a curtain of smog, the sky turns blue, and the color comes back into my front yard, which has all summer been colored in varying shades of dirt. I regain my ability to think in sentences longer than "where is air conditioning" or "give me cold drink now". Everybody is nesting. People occasionally smile at me on the street, as the Christmas season has not yet turned into competitive shopping season.

Most people come to California in the summer. I always looked forward to my trips south for the holidays, weeks invariably spent lounging in 70 degree weather at the beach in January, a brief respite from the cold and the rain and the dark of northern cities. Christmas in Southern California is golden and breezy and warm.

You can have Los Angeles in June, July or August. I'll take the winters.