First came that 3 a.m. jolt, short and sharp, an earthquake somewhere off the Malibu coast. The trailer shook, the china rattled, but the household slept on. This morning, fog, rolling in off the Pacific in thick, wet sheets. Longing for sun, we drove up the canyon and caught an hour or so of warmth and golden light.

Oh, and remember my post last week about the vanishing sands of Broad Beach? The Times has a story today that says it's all a result of global warming. I still think the bulldozers destroyed the structure of the beach when, several years back, homeowners built an enormous -- and illegal -- berm to keep the public at bay. The county made them remove the berm and the sand went back but the angle was wrong, the pitch was off, the natural order of things forever altered. But that's just what I think.

Happy New Year's Eve to all of you. Am hoping to shoot the first sunrise of 2009 tomorrow, if it's not (and I'm not) too foggy.