I have a few recurring photo subjects these days. The Bay Bridge is one, of course, elusive as ever but a pleasure to keep trying to capture. Another is Lake Merritt. At night, it’s like a live impressionist masterpiece. During the day, it’s… well, it’s what I told people about when they got nervous on my behalf when I’d tell them I was planning on continuing to live in Oakland.

“Let me tell you about the lake,” I’d say. “It’s surrounded by joggers. And yuppies. And families that just arrived or have probably been here for a decade or two. It’s absolutely terrifying. You’re right to stay away.”

Today, the sun was shining, and the sky was perfect and blue with punctuating fluffy clouds. The lake was in an un-stinky mood, covered with dozens of people sculling and canoeing and otherwise acting in ways that seem very un-January to me. I shed my light scarf shortly after I left the house. By the time I hit Lake Merritt’s northwest edge, I was a bit too warm and squinting because I’ve misplaced my sunglasses and have yet to replace them.

This is not a new discomfort. I’ve lived in a place other people found enviable, all white sand and endless sun and such. Unchallenging conditions, I scoffed. What, don’t you like seasons? Is it super hard to put on a coat a few months a year? Your life must be hard.

And then it made sense for me to move here. The Bay Area doesn’t lack weather, but Oakland gets less of it than San Francisco, and I hear that even San Francisco isn’t San Francisco anymore in that respect. El Niño helped me ease in a bit – cold mixed with unrelenting rain still feels like home today.

And then there are days like today.

Endless and perfect at precisely the time we should all be feeling mildly oppressed by the weather.

I get asked a bit less these days about how I’m settling in, how the switch in locations after my long relationship with Seattle is going.

I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I know the question most people are asking. So I give the shorter answer: “Overall, pretty good, but the weather might be something that doesn’t work for me, in the end. We’ll see.”

“Oh,” the person says, if they’re far away. “Yeah, I heard San Francisco weather could be pretty cold and gloomy.”

“No,” I return. “It’s… nice. Sunny, all the time. I miss my sweaters. I miss hunching against wet gusts of wind, and grey days for weeks at a time. I liked that. I might have been the only one.”

This seems to be hard for a lot of people to understand. I assure them that I’m not joking, but I don’t think they believe me.

I wonder: will I convert to this way of being, where weather is so gentle that cars and tombstones survive uneroded for decades on end? Will I relax into such gentle living?

And will a week and a half in Scandinavia at one of the hardest points of winter settle things for me just a little?

We shall see.