Here's the bumper window sticker from that little woody I posted the other day. I'm generally a sucker for anything with the old-school usage of "the Malibu".

So I shot into the sun which, of course, washed everything out, but I so love the way this path runs right at the horizon, melts into the sea, that I said, as I seem to more and more these days, the hell with it, and went ahead.

Check out the adorable woody parked over the weekend at the local arts festival. Sigh.

Yesterday, we distilled the gray grays and the ever-grayer grayishness of all this gray weather (OK, the word gray has now lost all meaning) into a monotone hum.

Today, with sun and blue and light and sparkle, it's a symphony out there.

Read this sentence in a monotone to get the full impact of all the gray here today.

A bunch of bunnies gather on the bluff each morning to nibble the grass and, no doubt, complain about the stock market.

We were at the movies last week, in line for the inception of "Inception" when a friend pointed out the lovely bird on the lampost:

A black-crowned night heron, I thought, only because my go-to internet bird expert, Bill Schmoker, had ID'd a younger version of the same bird for me a few years ago.

Here's that photo from 2007, which means the same little family of black-crowned night herons have been quietly laying eggs and raising their young in the midst of a crowded shopping center for years. And then you wonder, how long have they been doing this (Decades? Centuries?) and how did Malibu look?

Love the font of these chrome letters on a vintage boat up at the barn. So, well, correct.

Patsy's new favorite spot is these steamer chairs out on the deck. Though she's 15 now, she's still intent on perfecting the cat nap.

If only it was this easy.

After all the crazy heat (and crazier traffic) of the past week, this slow, cool start to the day feels just fine.

I was going to stop and get a proper shot of the view from Boyle Heights but that red thing in the distance? A fire truck, sirens blaring. So with little time to think and no place to park, I got a quick shot through the windshield, downtown shimmering (simmering?) like Oz in the distance.

Am headed into town today and here's the plan for lunch -- tacos at the Grand Central Market.

It's an annual event, the antiques sale at the house on Bonsall. People line up for the 9:30 a.m. start and shop for fabulous finds. There's furniture:

And tchotchkes:I'm a fan of old-time gardening tools:And it's possible something from the kitchen section found its way home to the Cove.

Continuing in the retro vein, another old-school sign. Love the wild bikini.

The news calls for a chance of rain today and, from the horizon this morning, it seems possible. Wouldn't be any crazier than the last 24 hours.

It started with a drive yesterday afternoon to Santa Clarita, where I thought it was pretty freaking hot at 108 degrees. That was until I headed home and in Woodland Hills, the temp hit 113. Degrees.

Took the Kanan exit to the Cove and at the bottom of the hill, firetrucks. Someone had lost control of their car and decapitated a fire hydrant, knocked it clear off the water main. Maybe it was the wide and wild geyser that shot a few hundred feet in the air, but the temp was 78 degrees.

Early this morning, an awful head-on high-speed crash close by on PCH, with two dead and another taken by helicopter to the hospital. This morning, at the crack of dawn, every news helicopter in Los Angeles, hovering over the Cove to film the remains of the smashed-up cars.

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 lightning strikes in the California desert, and an earthquake in D.C.

And those reports of rain on the way? On Catalina Island, which lies just behind that curtain of rain, you can see they already know all about it.

After weeks of fog and mist and mist and fog, the sunrise.

And one of the perks of being up so early? A beach without footprints.

In case you forgot, or maybe never knew (and really, amid all the sprinkler-fed lawns and water-gorged gardens, how could you know?) this is an arid land.

Which is what's so wonderful about Point Dume, the headlands, to be precise, where dunes drift and lizards live beneath the shade and spikes of prickly pear, and there's not a shadow of a doubt as to the true nature of things.

For the first time in weeks, maybe even months, we woke to a sunny day. The temperature's above 70 and, though the winds keep kicking up, it finally feels like summer.

It was sunny here yesterday, yes, sunny, with the sun in the sky and sunlight falling on us and there was this thing called 'warmth' and even (omg) color. The Pacific? Turns out it's not gunmetal gray -- it's BLUE. And the sky? You guessed it -- blue! And it goes on forever.

And apparently when the sun shines you can TAKE OFF YOUR JACKET and the dogs pant as they walk and when you sit in the middle of the road, as I do if only because there are rarely any cars and so I can, the surface is toasty.

It stayed like that for AT LEAST 30 minutes, maybe even a whole hour, and as proof, I shot a million more than a few pix exactly like this.

I still miss Evinrude.

Not to belabor a point, but clearly the guy who painted this vintage sign has never been to Malibu in May June July.

But I'm hearing there's a clearing trend, that inland, the marine layer actually burns off, that blue skies and sunny days are on their way here. To which I can only say, please pass the sunscreen. And a margarita.

It's cold again and gray again and even though some people here are wearing shorts and tank tops, it's 64 degrees. So please forgive me for shouting a bit in the headline, and for posting some pix from the weekend, when the actual sun actually appeared.

Here's the (sunny) beach and the (sunny) south swell that had every (sunny) surfer riding the (sunny) waves.

We usually get a few dozen boats moored in the Cove on the 4th of July. This year, it was just a few. Seems the recession has reached the sea.

The standout was this lovely two-masted sailboat, which stayed a few days. And yes, I know the horizon's a bit tilted. I'll blame the rare appearance of that bright yellow orb in the sky -- what's it called? The sun? Made me tipsy.

This is perhaps the only resident of Paradise Cove who wasn't behind the wheel of a speeding golf cart on the 4th of July.

Ever wonder what's in Jonathan Gold's microwave?

Oh. Well, sure.

We're at Bluffs Park, the dogs and I, early enough to be the first and only humans there on a holiday Monday. It's beautiful, hushed and foggy, with a tiny, briny breeze. We're walking deep in the brush when suddenly, there's a coyote.

And then Maisie's racing and Jake is jogging and instead of vanishing, as coyotes do when they want to run away, this one's romping. He's frolicking. He's cavorting. And it makes Maisie a little nuts and she runs faster and the three of them, Jake and Maisie and the coyote, they vanish.

I'm calling the dogs back, of course, and maybe something about the coyote's goofiness seems off to the dogs because shockingly, they come back. I leash them and we keep walking, walking to the edge where the bluff drops down and there's the sea and you can see all the way to infinity.

Perfect. A perfect way to start the day and we turn off on a little path, headed for the long way back to the car and there he is, the coyote, cutting us off. So we head the other way and there's a coyote, cutting us off.

We head back the way we came and the coyote tracks us, trots just a hair faster then we do, and he's tall and long and lean and his ears prick forward and he's gaining on us. So I do that thing where you raise your arms to look big and I speak in a deep (well, for me) voice and say bad words and order him away and he's all, "Dude, you're not serious?"

I've read about coyotes who playfully lure little dogs to their dens and their deaths and, urban legend or not, Maisie is a tender little morsel, so we all keep trotting. Eventually we're alone again there in the brush, all in one piece, with just a tree filled with jostling crows as witnesses.

And while it was exciting and alarming and way more stimulating than a triple-shot latte, I couldn't help notice that the whole time, I kept wishing I'd brought the good camera with the really long lens.

The holiday's in full swing here in the Cove, people decorating golf carts for the parade tonight, surfers on the bluff, surfers in the water as a south swell builds and breaks. So from our little spot at the edge of the earth, a few images on this July 4th.

The flag waves in front of my favorite mobile home, the last remaining all-original trailer left in the park. It should be on the National Registry. Of something.

One of my neighbors is ready for tonight's parade:

So is another:

And for some of us, the real news is that swell swell, starting as we speak.

Madison's a music town and from the popularity of this poster, which was plastered everywhere we went, it's home to more than a few landlocked surfers, longing for a wild ride.

Here, in a single shot, all the hallmarks of this holiday weekend.

Because I got this shot as fast as possible so as not to scare the butterfly, it wasn't until I downloaded it just now that all the colors and patterns became apparent.

And though this guy's a bit the worse for wear, the nicks and notches add character, hint at stories and adventures and a life well-lived.