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| Three Significant Meteorilogical Events |
My husband’s niece and her soon to be husband stopped by our
house in Las Vegas a few years ago after they had completed the epic Muir trail
along the Sierras….2 weeks of being unsupported in the high country amongst the
bears, trees, and thunderstorms, and as we were all bobbing around in our
swimming pool, I glanced up and noticed what lovely clouds had formed
above! Well, they both just
laughed at me with their Anchorage laughs (that ha-ha, you weird “outsiders”,
haven’t you ever seen clouds before? laugh), and have done so every time we
comment about clouds.
Well.
La-dee-dah. I’ll have you
know that our own weatherman on Channel 8 the other day actually SAID, and I
had to do a double take (yay, DVR!), and yes he actually said, “Today, you may
have noticed a significant meteorological event” at which I perked up my ears,
ever interested in these kinds of things.
“If you’ll notice off to the east, yes, right there folks, is a cloud!” Vindication for all my days of
marveling at clouds! From that day
forth, we have been heading into days with a bit more humidity (aka: more
significant meteorological events) and hopefully into a solid "monsoon" season. We haven’t had a good "monsoon" season in
a few years, and we are sorely in need of some rain. This cloud-sighting was the first in about 65 days, so we
remain hopeful that indeed, they have not become extinct.
The first day of rain in approximately 70 days? Well, that would be the 4th
of July! Manna from heaven….or God
peeing on Sin City….whatever.
We’ll take what we can get and all I can say is that we know we are
desert rats when we set up our dinner table outside so we can ENJOY the rain!
It has dawned on me that both places I have been in the past
year, here at home and in my dream home of Bergen, Norway, are places of
extreme weather, at opposite ends of the spectrum. And this calls for a special kind of people to inhabit such
places. My family came to the Las
Vegas Valley lo-ho-ho-ho-long before air-conditioning, and my dear friend
Bjørn’s family, well, his middle name is Bull, because he is a descendent of Ole Bull, the
famous Bergen violinist mentor to that other famous Bergenser, Edvard Greig, so, Bjørn comes equipped with that
Bergenser whateveritisthatmakesthemtoleratetherainsowell-itness. I’m not sure if it is Hurculean
tolerance, defiance, stupidity, or captivity, but we do it, with pride. We brag about our ability to live in
such inhospitable conditions and, like heroine addicts, we always say we do it
because of that ONE WEEK of the year that is just mind-blowingly awesome. Yeah.
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| Solar Oven with something yummy inside (Le Creuset is SO EMBARRASSED!) |
What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Well, gotta go. I’m off to cook something in my solar
oven while doing finger pull-ups on my door jambs.
Glad you are still here. I thought maybe your world had dried up and you with it. Where do you get water out there? Cut holes in cactus and drain them? I am, however, impressed by your ability to endure extremely different environments.
ReplyDeleteYay, Jon! I visited your blog the other day just so I could get a glimpse of what green and trees looked like...ahhh...and of course, to read your wit and wisdom. We are on a community well with 7 other folks out here in the outskirts, and so far, we have not had to drill deeper. The state keeps threatening to bring municipal water (blech!) down our street, at which time they supposedly can force us to cap the well and pay a huge assessment for that privilege of letting them stick their straw in our aquafer and then dilute the water with crap and sell it back to us....sign me up! As for the cacti? Well, I think that's what the chipmunks and rabbits are doing at the present time, as there are many chew marks on them...even though we provide them with water bowls and a fountain (not on purpose). My ability to endure the heat is MUCH less than to endure the cold...at least you can always put on more clothes! Anywhere else, USA, is looking really good right now...I just looked and it's 108 in the shade on my patio. It's a blow-torch kind of heat though. I wouldn't trade it for your humidity, EVER.
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