ITCHY NOSES: With pollen levels rising, Monday’s...

ITCHY NOSES: With pollen levels rising, Monday’s showers were just the thing for Ventura County allergy sufferers (B1). . . . Rainfall “tends to literally wash it right out of the air,” says Michael Most of the National Weather Service. The relief will likely be short-lived, because the forecast calls for dry weather the rest of the week.

GIMME SHELTER: Inclement weather, however, was just another hardship for those in Thousand Oaks who were displaced when the area’s homeless shelters closed for the warmer months (B1). . . . Few residents want to face the problem, maintains Karen Ingram, director of the Conejo Valley shelter network. “It’s an affluent community and they don’t want to acknowledge” homelessness, she says.

LIGHT SHOW: Neville Hanchett, whose Thousand Oaks company makes laser light show equipment, says he became fascinated with optic entertainment as a teenager (D9D). . . . Using a $189 laser his parents gave him as a high school graduation present, Hanchett pointed it at a small mirror taped to a woofer on the family stereo speaker. “That was my first light show,” says the 34-year-old entrepreneur. His Mobolazer Inc. has sold systems to nightclubs in California, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota. . . . The least expensive system retails for $17,500.

SING ALONG: Los Robles Master Chorale will give local warblers a chance to pick up music tips from two-time Grammy-winning conductor Vance George, director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. He will lead the 100-member group in an upcoming performance of Brahms’ German Requiem at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. . . . “You can be assured that some good singing will be going on,” says James Stemen, the chorale’s artistic director. Three choral workshops are scheduled April 18-20. For information: 581-9936.