Wet Desert

No, not when someone leaves his or her cake out in the rain. I mean what three or four days of rain means in the southwest. It turns something that looks normally like this:

Into something that looks like this:

To provide even more perspective, the bottom photo was taken after the water level had dropped about four feet, perhaps more. One of the photos Deb took shows a woman standing at the opposite bank. You can see the striations of the water level behind her, the highest being over her head. I'm assuming she's at least five feet tall, so there's your observational science in a nutshell. The news had photos of people kayaking and rafting in this gigantic mudpuddle with rapids. Why people in the desert even have water craft is beyond me.

More rain expected over the next two days at least. We've already had double last year's rainfall amount in the past week. Roads are closed, some roads are gone. For those who may remember our trip up Mt. Lemmon, the entire road is closed from top to bottom. I can say with certainty that I'm glad we weren't on Mt. Lemmon when the road started to flood. It's exhilirating when it's dry, but I'd rather not be stranded up there. I definitely would not be going "whee!" as several feet of water sent me hurtling 9,000 feet down. No matter how nice the view may be on the way.

Don't Call Me Luka

Our apartment is on the second floor. This is significant, because we're in day two of flash flood warnings. Yes, I said flood warnings. In the desert. Happens every summer, and it's amazing to see. Riverbeds that are bone dry for 355 days a year are suddenly home to huge, flowing, and overflowing raging rivers. When water goes to the lowest point, and does so in a hurry, there's very little that can stop it. Really, really cool. Once in a while we hear news reports of someone who had the bright idea to park their RV down in the riverbed. Why they do this is beyond me. Perhaps they like to go RV surfing when the rains come, because that's what happens. Doesn't matter that an RV doesn't necessarily float. The water will still move it. Well, move it and tear it to bits. It rained for several hours last night and into the morning, and the weather today was gorgeous. We had the windows open, nice cool breeze, mid-70s. In fact, Tucson was the second-coolest city in the US! Not bad for a place that was 115 last week. More of that coolness on tap for the next few days. Rain at night, cool all day. Of course, the downstairs neighbors will need gills and I'm going to have to put pontoons on the car and tie it to a tree, but it's an exchange I'm willing to make for temperatures under 110 as we head into August.

P.O.ed at the P.O.

My site got a visit from the U.S. Post Office today. Someone there was surfing websites, and hit mine. Granted, it was only for ten seconds, but it's the principle of the thing. Doesn't anybody work at work anymore? Ever?? I read news boards, and people are reading and posting to them while at work. Hits on my website come from within grade schools, businesses, and of course governmental agencies. Why in the hell aren't any of them working? I guess I really was wrong in my work outlook. I worked at work. I worked through breaks. I worked through lunches. I worked at home. I should've kicked back and surfed websites with one hand on the mouse and the other shoved firmly up my ass. I'd have been Employee of the Epoch.

Meet The New Neighbor

Our new apartment has patio access off of the second bedroom (or "office", as we like to call it) as well as the living room. Since today was about 40 degrees colder than last week at a bone-chilling 74, we got to open the windows and doors and let some of that mythical "fresh air" stuff in. This picture is of one of the feathered denizens of the trees outside our patio. The other two are yellow finches of some sort, I believe. All I know is that they've got bird food out there, and water, so they've got it easy. Freeloaders.

Whatever You Do, Stay Inside

No, it's not the mantra for my life. We learned some interesting things while watching one of our local weathermen. We learned that he has access to words that no other weather-wizard does, such as "monsoonal" and "stormyness". These things were "forecasted" for us, too, so you can imagine my growing concern. We also learned of a rather alarming weather phenomena which I sincerely hope is exceedingly rare. We were more than a little alarmed that this type of storm was "forecasted" for our area. We hoped that he had merely made a mistake in his prognostication, but there it was. Looming on the darkening horizon of our weather future were "Scat. storms"! Scat storms?!? Unless Cab Calloway came back from the dead, that can only mean there's a whole new meaning to the following weather-related exchange:
"How's the weather outside?"
"Shitty."

No singing in the rain, either. Just full-out sprinting for cover. It's not easy to sprint while holding one's breath, either. Small children will not be jumping in puddles or trying to catch anything on their tongues. Windshield wipers would be woefully ineffective, so traffic would come to a halt. April showers would still bring May flowers, and they'd be more healthy and vibrant. But very few would look outside their windows in a moody and introspective manner as the streaks form on the glass and puddles mirror the sky. Instead they'd sit in a darkened corner and cry softly, rocking back and forth in an attempt to shut their senses to the nightmare from above.

3.0.1

We went out to lunch for our anniversary, and afterwards saw The DaVinci Code. (Yes, we're two of the most exciting people you'll ever meet.) In between those events, we saw something interesting on the road. Specifically, we saw a guy get hit by a car. It happened about three cars in front of us, and two lanes over. The group of traffic (is it a group? a pod? gaggle?) was only going about 40 or so, and in typical Tucson fashion the far left lane was going slower than the rest. That's probably why the guy was still moving when we passed. (Yes, I was in the rightmost lane.) We heard the screech of brakes, cars swerved, the left and center lanes stopped. Our lane? Right on moving, albeit at a slower pace. I saw the guy, lying on his back in the middle of the road. He was holding his head and trying to sit up. The driver who hit him had just gotten out of the car. There wasn't any blood, or any bones at any odd angles, so he didn't look too bad off. However, it did make me wonder. I mean... there were three lanes of traffic going in one direction, and three going in the other. It was 2 PM, bright and sunny (and friggin' hot). The pedestrian crossed three lanes of traffic, stopped on the wide median with ample view of the oncoming traffic, and stepped off into the path of a moving car. He could have walked the 200 feet or so to the intersection and actually crossed in a crosswalk when the light was in his favor, but I guess that lacks the adrenaline rush of a mad dash across six lanes of speeding cars. He was lying on his back in the road, head towards the median. So he didn't have heat stroke and fall over forward. He was crossing and in the process of backpedaling for his life when he got hit. Try as I might, I haven't been able to find anything in the local news about it, so I guess he's OK. And I have to add that the ambulance came in record time, so kudos to the Tucson EMTs! If I ever get hit while lane-hopping, I know that they'll be on the scene all quick-like!

Oh yeah... the movie was pretty good. It's a good story, though I can't see what all the fuss is about. I read the book, I've seen the movie. The story is fiction. The Bible is fiction. If I'm going to base my life on fiction, it's going to be something by H.P. Lovecraft. More fun that way, and it'll have a better ending.

Three

Today marks the day of something special. The day Deb and I got married. Three years and a few thousand miles of distance travelled later, and I could not be any happier. I thank her for every second, and I eagerly look forward to several more decades with her.

I don't know what the traditional gift is for three years of marriage. Probably balsa wood or something. For us, it'll be a day like the others: we'll spend it together doing things we enjoy. No better gift than that, I tell ya!

I Hate Boxes

The move is over. The unpacking has begun. The cable guy actually came on time, and was incredibly helpful and efficient. Hence the connectivity. I think I drank about two liters of water a day for the last five days. Interestingly, it just seemed to seep right out of the bottle and out my shirt. I'm very, very glad it was only in the mid to upper 90s during the move. That may sound insane, but it could have easily been 110+ for the entire week.

The new apartment complex folk have been very accommodating. No pun intended. They installed a ceiling fan in our office (which for normal people would be the second bedroom) for free, they've removed (and will be removing) doors for which we have no use, and were even an integral part of the efficiency of our cable installation today. He needed authorization to drill through a wall, and had it in under five minutes. Awesome.

So... we're here, we're finding places for everything, and the clock is counting down for the next move. (No, I'm not kidding.) I think we should just get an RV, so all our crap could move with us all the time, even when we go get groceries and stuff.

Alanis Would Call It Ironic

Day one of our long-awaited move has come. We rented a U-Haul truck, which got upgraded to the 14' model. (Yes, brother and dad, I was driving a 14' diesel automatic. Oh, the jackrabbit acceleration!) There were a couple things bad about the truck itself. The lack of acceleration was fine, since I really didn't want all of our stuff pinned against the rear door of the truck. The part about having to push the brake pedal all the way to the floor in order to slow down and eventually stop? Yeah, that's a little bad. Oh, and the air conditioner wasn't working. In Tucson. In the summer. That wasn't as bad as it could have been, since it only got up to about 98 today. I say "only" because that's about ten degrees cooler than yesterday. I'll take it.

As for the "Alanis" thing... it has not rained for any significant amount of time here since August. In that time frame there have been three or four intermittent showers lasting anywhere from 5-10 minutes, but it barely made the ground damp. That being said, would you care to guess what happened today? Today, the day we're moving our belongings from one place to another by carrying them outside? Yep. Rained. For about an hour. It was during the rain that I learned something else about the rental truck: the wipers sucked. All they did was smudge. (Yes, brother and dad, I was driving a 14' diesel automatic with limited visibility, no A/C, and lousy brakes! Woohoo!)

We moved a large quantity of things. We're quite tired, and will be very sore tomorrow. But that's part of the fun of moving!

Discovery

Not the channel.

And Another Thing

There were only a few places along the canyon that had railings. I hesitate to call them "safety railings" because a twenty foot walk in either direction negates whatever "safety" it may have had. As an undertall person, I have visions of death whenever I get on a stepladder. However, I can stand precariously close to the edge of a breathtaking canyon without giving it a second thought. I guess it's far easier for me to picture falling off of a ladder than falling a few hundred feet or more. I suppose if I thought about it, I'd just stand at the edge of the canyon and cry like a little girl. Luckily, years of government work have provided me with a high degree of cognitive dissonance.

For The Curious

Yeah, they're still looking. I guess they wanted to see our vacation pictures.

OH, and for my governmental fans, please read this news story, and then by all means continue to tell me that it's OK for government employees to surf websites while at work. Please.

A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty...

"Hi-Yo Tungsten!"
Or not. What the hell do I know about horses? Apart from a ride on Sunshine the pony back when I was... four? (Help me out, parents!)... My experience with horses have pretty much been summed up as: "What's that smell?" Yet as a part of our trip to Bryce we chose to go on a horse ride through Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest. Not just any old horse ride, but a four hour trip in 95-ish degree weather in the afternoon. Sunblock? Yep. With a trowel. But I still got a bit of a burn, and a nifty pale watch-shaped patch on my wrist. The scenery, however, was out of this world. By that I mean that it really did feel as if we were on another planet. I learned that the horse knew exactly what she was doing and where to go, so that enabled me to hold the reins with one hand and take pictures with the other. Yes, I was taking pictures from the back of a moving horse. Through more luck than skill, they came out clearly. (You better believe I was surprised!)

The guy on the horse is not me, obviously. That was one of our trail guides. I call him "Tex" for two reasons. First and foremost is that I have no idea what his actual name is, and second calling him "Utie" is just too weird. I just liked the shot, because it showed him in action and showed off how good my saddle-based camera work is. I'd consider it as a career, except my ass would never forgive me. And I ain't talking donkeys.

Volcano, Wukoki, 118 degrees

Those are three things we experienced today. The first was the Sunset Crater Volcano. I never thought I'd see a volcano, but then again I never thought I'd live in Arizona. The wupatki wukoki was a few miles away from the volcano, and it was inside the wukoki I took this nifty shot:

Since Sam (or someone) will ask, I've already sized it for desktop goodness.

As for the 118 degrees... that was noted in Flagstaff when we stopped for gas. Luckily, it was not quite so unseasonably warm here when we returned.

In any event, we're home. We're tired. There will be a few pics posted, but I've got to go through a few hundred and find the really, really good ones. (Not an easy job.) (You know you went on a good vacation when you can say that you took 100 pictures each day and can honestly say you didn't get it all. Or even come close.) Deb will go through her shots as well, so prepare yourself for full-color rocky goodness.

Inside Joke

This one's for the family. For the rest of you, pictures will follow as soon as we're home.

We went horseback riding on the 2nd. A four hour ride at the bottom of Red Canyon in the afternoon. (Yes, it was hot.) My horse's name was "Patricia." All she wanted to do was eat and not walk around. Luckily, the reins worked so she did what I wanted. Though she did keep glaring at me. Funny!

OK, on the road again. More pics later!

Sedona

Many more photos, and many more to come. Arizona is cool, even though it's supposed to hit 106 tomorrow. (Yikes!)

Verbal Sequence - Not A Real Thought

Ever read the fine print on a commercial? I don't mean the paragraph of crap at the end of a car commercial, I mean the disclaimer-type stuff that's there when the commercial starts. For example, I saw a car commercial yesterday. (For the shoeboxy Scion, I believe.) It showed the wee bitty car, then the car getting hit by lightning and changing colors, followed by another bolt that turned into a robot. Something like that, anyway. In another, the teeny car is ingested by a large, red, very sketchy bulldog. At the bottom of the screen were the words: "Animation sequence - not a real car." Really? You mean my car won't turn funky colors (other than "scorched black") if it gets hit by lightning, and I don't have to live in terror of gigantic animated canines eating me and my car? Phew! That was close!

Are people really that stupid now? Do they expect to go outside and see lightning-born robots coming up out of the ground, and giant poorly-animated creatures running around just because they saw it on television? Will people really sue the car company if lightning doesn't turn their car a funky blue, or fails to attract Clifford? Is that why reality TV is so popular? People don't have to tear asunder that veil that separates fantasy from reality. It's all "real"! I guess the next step will be a similar disclaimer stamped on every frame of every movie. "Ewok sequence - not a real downfall of any Empire", "Underwater sequence - not a real Black Lagoon", "Actors in costume - not a real planet of apes"... so many possibilities, so little sense.

Grey Void Fill

I found a grey hair today. "But Wontar," you say, "you're bald! Your head is all stubbly-shaven, and you look like a roll-on." That is correct, but my chin is not bald. So, not only did I get to go prematurely bald, I get to go prematurely grey. This can mean only one thing: when my beard goes fully grey, I get to grow it all long and scraggly like a wizard. Then I can finally walk around with my big pointy hat, slam my walking stick on the ground, and tell people they cannot pass! I may have to run out and get some hair dye just to speed up the process.

In unrelated news, we've been availing ourselves of the exceptionally cool freecycle.org. Today, we got about ten cubic feet of styrofoam packing peanuts. In metric terms, that equates to a big-ass box full. When you consider that seven cubic feet goes for about $40, that's a pretty cool thing to get for free. Very handy for the eBay stuff, and handy for packing for our impending move. I think we'll soon be down to whatever we can strap on our backs and/or lash to the car. We're getting pretty damned efficient with this whole moving thing.

Like It's Not Hot Enough?

I was looking out our sliding glass kitchen door today at about 10 A.M., and saw what looked like a large dust storm in the mountains. We have a dust storm warning in effect, and we've had some really spectacularly large storms here, so it was logical at the time. I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture:

However, as I watched the storm the slow-to-acclimatize brain cells in my head said: "That doesn't look like a dust storm." So I continued to look, and the brain continued to churn. I came to the painfully slow realization that I was staring at not a dust storm, but a forest fire. Or "mountain fire", to be technically accurate. Deb agreed with me, so I marked the day on the calendar for future reference, then we leapt into action!

I got on the phone. Yes, you read that correctly. I actually picked up the phone and initiated a call to a non-family member. That's two marks on the ol' calendar.

The number we found for the first fire department offered a busy signal. I don't know about you, but there's no fire department anywhere that should ever, ever, ever have a busy signal. Ever. Glad that I was not currently on fire, I called another fire department. I was transferred once, and it seems that I was the first to report the fire. So I've earned my Smokey the Bear badge or whatever. The fire which now looked something like this:

I was told they'd send someone right out. In my mind, that meant helicopters and all sorts of sirens and stuff. As of now, two hours later, we've neither seen nor heard a thing in the form of fire-prevention-type stuff. Yes, wildfires are natural, and even necessary at times. But when it hasn't rained since August, "wildfire" is a pretty scary concept to me and shouldn't be left unattended.

Now, I'm off to watch the news. If anything changes, I'll update the post.

-Update- Well, we're still here. Never saw a single helicopter or fire-related vehicle or person, but it's out. If I were to guess, I'd say that the strong winds actually blew the fire back on itself until it had nothing left to consume. Either that, or there were firefighters up there that I just couldn't see. In any event, no more smoke, no more fire.

Wingspan