Days of Rain

In the twenty years that I have been visiting the grand state of Arizona I have never seen it rain like it is today! I have often laughed at their “rivers” which are really little more than dry gullies or washes; their ditches through the center of streets which I have never seen with water in them...except for today! It has poured down rain all day long. At noon they had a half inch and the ditches were filled with running water. Puddles in the major streets, real water in the ‘Auga Fria’ and people walking around with umbrellas. An amazing sight. Apparently it hasn’t rained here since about October so I am witnessing a nature rarity! I would rather enjoy a balmy day like we had yesterday-blue sky and 70 degrees, but this is still better than snow! And in the spring, when I am long gone and back to toiling away, all the natives will enjoy a spectacular show of desert blooms. We hiked up the waterfall trail to, of all things, the waterfall, in the White Tank Mountains early in the week and there was precious little water running up there. So I imagine this is like the cup running over up there now. I have a picture in my mind of the dry ocotillo cactus starting to suck up some life giving water for the blooms it will produce come March or April. I only wish I was going to get to see them.
Well, soon enough it’s back to the snow. So I will enjoy even this day of rain.

Sunny Arizona

Weather, I have discovered, is all relative. Cold here would be considered balmy by Iowa
standards. The 70 degrees we enjoyed today was a nice winter day here. Spring time at
home! Flagstaff temps were in the 20's and snow still was on the ground.
Up there they are all excited about skiing season. I'm just looking for more
sunshine and warm. The Grand Canyon was wonderful. Not too many people.
No lines to wait in for anything. Could drive everywhere we wanted along
the rim. I took tons of pictures. (Can't share any of my own because I don't
have any way to upload any of them yet. Just wait!) Now, if I can just figure
out how to enjoy 70 degree days Arizona experiences, while I'm wintering in
Iowa! See you all soon.

Warmer Climes

Tomorrow morning we're off to Arizona-Where the sun always shines (hopefully) and winters are much warmer than here. (really hopefully) We're visiting my mother. She's always been able to email but she tells me now that her computer doesn't work at all. She can't get onto the internet and she is stymied. It is possible I'll have blogging withdrawal because I won't be able to log onto any computer at all. I won't even have access to email. Horrors! And I was planning on uploading some great pictures of the Grand Canyon, or the smog in Phoenix. Be prepared: It's possible my blog will not change a bit until I get back. It doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about y'all. (and feeling relieved because you have cold weather and we don't). Just means, now you know what's going on here. See you in a week!

Chocolate!

Our neighbor supplied Ron with some Chocolate chip cookies the other day. She was returning a favor. Why couldn't she have been like the neighbor who gave us a jar of pickled herring? I hate pickled herring. But who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies after all? That was a disaster for me! I love chocolate chip cookies. And I'm supposed to lose 10 lbs. Yikes! I ate 3 after work. Just like that and they were gone. So I went to the wellness center to exercise them away. And you know what? I only burned 85 calories. (that was a 30 minute workout on the elipitical machine going 3 miles!) I don't think that equals 3 chocolate chip cookies. This is harder than I thought.

The color purple

You are a purple person if:

Your mornings are purple and squishy around the edges. (in other words you're up before the sun)

Your king has clothed YOU in purple!

Winter makes all your extremities that odd shade of purple. (because you don't mind being out in the cold)

You could live with a purple bedroom or purple carpet or someone else who dearly loves purple.

You're an optomist.

You're a dreamer.

You're adventerous.

You're romantic.

You're Sensitive.

check out these purple ideas: http://lavenderearth.com/contents.html http://www.underdown.org/

And of course don't forget to read:

Lily and the Purple plastic purse

Harold and the Purple crayon.

So add some color to your winter days. Be purple!

The Color Red

I always wanted a fire engine red vehicle. The closest I ever came was my maroon stick shift sporty beretta back in my commuting days. I finally decided that color is the least important thing about a vehicle. Be content with...grey. or tan. So I was. Really. But can you believe that after 11 vehicles (including 3 pickups) we've finally got a red one! Hot Dog! Among all the cool things this came with is the "new car smell". An expensive perfume. Nice. So you'll see me in my red truck, tooling down the highway fiddling with satellite radio or onstar or the 6way CD player with playlists and wish for the good old days when you worried about people talking on cellphones! Gotta go... Need to break in that red truck!

A little coloring helps the workload along

I was doing a pretty tedious job at work today (you really don't want to know, but it involved adding tag lines to MARC records one by one). I had quite a bit to do actually and part of it involved using a yellow highlighter to mark off paper records as I finished them on the computer. One of my co-worker's little girl happened to be there and as soon as she caught sight of the yellow marker she stopped her skipping. She was immediately intrigued. Yellow, it seems, is among her "favorite" colors as is using a marker! She was jealous that I was getting to use the yellow marker! Her enthusiasm and excitement over my yellow marker made me re-examine my monotonous job. It had more excitement than I thought after all! We all need a little bit of "yellow marker" in our lives. Keep looking at things in light of the "color" that's there that we don't see anymore. Marvel at it!