There are times I love rainy days.

Like today.

I love the good weather and all, I love being outside and enjoying living 15 minutes from the beach along the Jersey Shore. I love driving around at dusk with the windows open and good music played really loud so I can sing along and look silly. I love running around my former high school campus, shuffling through the ankle-high grass around all the playing fields.

But after so many warm, sunny days � and the hot and humid ones we've had the last three � I'm ready for something like today, where I wake up to cloudy skies and the sign of inevitable rain and know that I'm not wasting a summer day by holing up inside the house. And today's a perfect rainy day, for it's supposed to be sunny and 80 again tomorrow. It poured earlier, a sheet of water falling outside my window. I just want to sit inside all afternoon until work, watching Two For The Road and e-mailing.

I haven't been in touch with a lot of people in a while. I'm overdue for one of my now-legendary long, detailed e-mail updates � a newsletter, I suppose � that I send to my friends periodically just to let them know how I'm doing. Some people begin such correspondence apologizing for mass e-mails, but I don't, because we're all busy 20-somethings, and if that's the only way to stay in touch after a few weeks or months, then I'm happy with that. I've built so many good, lasting friendships, I don't want to see them fade away. I understand that time and distance will alter them, put some off to the side at times, but (so far) we've always managed to fire up the good times again when possible. That's one of the things you deal with going to a national university � your friends scatter after graduation, taking jobs in far-flung cities or heading back home to work. Boston, Phoenix, Chicago, L.A., San Antonio, D.C. ... and even the high school friends I've stayed close with (and I feel like that's an abnormality) are off in Seattle, New Orleans, New York and Florida.

So I think I'll go e-mail everyone. After all, I've got lots to tell them.

It's a large world, but thank Al Gore for the internet.