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prev home archive next Momentary Thought I don't think it's a coincidence that as soon as I walk in the door at AcronymCo, four days out of five, I pick up a screaming headache. High/Low High: Michael called last night!!! Low: We haven't won the lottery yet. Current Obsession Getting through the next month with the finances relatively intact. Grin Source See "High", above. And Update Box, below. Singing I (uh!) Know you (uh!) So well (uh!) I can tell by the sound of your voice that you're really in love with me. And you are. Yes you are. Harry Connick Jr. - "We Are In Love" Storyteller Bio Dramatis Personnae Who I Read Recipes |
The most remarkable thing anyone can comment on regarding Arizona weather is the heat. And that's usually coming from the folks who don't live here. I mean, as much as I have been known to complain about it, I don't really think about it too much. It's just a way of life. Really, the human body can adapt in amazing ways. One of those ways is to totally block out the unpleasantness of 110 degree heat. Sure, it's *there*, but it's not acknowledged as we scurry from our air conditioned home to our air conditioned vehicle to our air conditioned places of work to our air conditioned malls/theaters/stores/whathaveyou. You live in Arizona, you are just aware that from mid-June to mid-September, there's something about the weather that you know exists but don't want to consciously think about. And you dwell, and you survive, and you carry a gallon of water with you just to check the mail. It's the weather folks here in Arizona that I can't stand. They know it's hell, and yet it's great! It's beautiful! There's no place on earth better than Arizona in August! Woo! I think it must be that they don't have enough to do, and so try to occupy their time in the most annoying, and enthusiastic ways. I mean, they look at the radar. They see clear skies for the next umpteen-bazillion days. They know that the temperature is going to be a-hundred-and-mumble for the next eight hundred years. So they have to make shit up. The morning weather guy for "our" news station is a total freak. He dances. He sings. He makes fun of people and behaves in such an embarrassing fashion that most people he forces into the shot with him look miserable. He dresses strangely. He adopts "personas" and acts in characters. He's a total nutbag. For twenty seconds he posts the highs/lows, and does the annoyingly monotonous "it'll be hot and sunny" spiel, and then is off doing some other annoying deed. On Monday he's at Starbuck's. On Tuesday he's at Castles -n- Coasters. On Wednesday he's at Firebird Speedway. On Thursday he doesn't have anything to do, so he hangs around the studio and bothers the anchors. On Fridays, "we dance!", and he does this weird herky-jerk funky booty bounce to disco music. And makes whoever's around him dance around, too. To music they can't hear, because *he's* the only one with the earpiece, and only *he* can hear the music that the studio's producer is providing. In my opinion, there really is no purpose behind having a weather person on our local news. Let alone *that* bozo. (Editor's note: For anyone from Arizona reading this, you know who I'm talking about. If you love him, you're welcome to. Don't send me hate mail.) Case in point. Yesterday we had some high winds. It's monsoon season, after all. Possibly the most interesting season, weather-wise, in Arizona. In July and August the humidity rises (relatively speaking - 40% is considered high), wind and dust storms blow up, the sky tends to turn this weird orange color, and thunderstorms come out of nowhere. Flash flood warnings are issued for the outlying areas. See, the ground is hard-packed round these here parts, and water doesn't sink into the ground. Washes exist in the desert areas to handle the water flow. Drainage systems in town are only designed for a minimal amount of water, so if we get a concentrated micro-burst in a populated area, the water flows out along the streets. People drive through deepening water, stall out their cars, and need to be towed/removed/rescued/lectured/made fun of. This is especially true if a wash crosses a road. There seems to be a high concentration of people who believe that their Volkswagen Rabbit can just jaunt right through four feet of running water. But anyway. I digress. Yesterday, all we got was wind, and some dust. No rain, no lightning. Wind. That's it. But somehow this wind, it became the top newsworthy item of the evening. The Cream Of Humanity was interviewed - you know the kind. The ragged sweatpant wearing, sweaty, disheveled, toothless, lisping bedragglement of society's outcasts enlisted to comment that "it sher wuz turrible blowy" in their particular trailer park. A convenience store clerk enthused about how their banner sign, promoting $.99 liters of Coke, four feet long and held up by, *gasp*, metal hooks and kite string (!) was actually blown off the side of their building! And a tree! Whose trunk was four inches in diameter! Well, it was blown clear over! Across a busy intersection of BFE and Main! And quick, Frank, get that dramatic shot of the dust blowing in the background, and the stop sign there in the middle of the intersection vibrating back and forth slightly as the wind (!) catches it! For Pete's sweet suffering sake. I don't mean to get off on a rant, here (nod to Dennis Miller), but when I was a kid growing up in Maine, we had light summer storms that dumped inches of rain in a matter of moments. And those storms? We welcomed them! We donned our bathing suits and ran around in the front yard, doing our funky "Thank God because it's July and hotter than hell and this? This is 100% humidity, folks! You won't cool off but you'll be wet so we can pretend!" dance. And in the winter? *Feet* of snow. In which I traversed my long and lonely way, uphill, both ways, to school and back. Barefooted. Every day. Even Sunday. And frolicked in it. And LIKED it. And the ice on the road? Pah! If I slid off into a snowbank, I just forward/reverse/forward/reverse/forward/reversed my way out of it. One handed! All the while singing to Simon and Garfunkel on the radio! At the top of my lungs! And I LIKED it! But that's just Maine, where the weather, while a presence in life, is rarely destructive or life threatening. What about folks who live in in "Tornado Alley"! Or the Gulf areas who, on a yearly basis, get the crap beat out of them by a series of hurricanes! Earthquakes in California! Tsunamis wherever people who get tsunamis live! Flooding along the Mississippi! Mass destruction all over the place! Now *those* weather people, they have a job to do. They earn their keep. They save lives. They are necessary and beloved by their local audience. What's Arizona got?? Wind. Oh yeah, and the heat. The advertisement for which, apparently, we require a weird ass weather guy. Lord help me. |
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Michael's Update Box
Last night we were getting ready to take Marie and her friend to the movies. The phone rang just as we were about to step out of the door. "Hi, Laura!" said a voice which I didn't recognize at first. "Um, hi!" I said. "You don't recognize my voice?" the voice chuckled. "Oh! Hi, baby! EVERYBODY PICK UP THE PHONE!!! IT'S MICHAEL!!!" His voice sounded deeper, somehow, and gravelly. Marie, Calvin and I were each on an extension, and talking all over each other in our enthusiasm. He sounds great, and is getting very high marks in all the tests he's put to. His marksmanship gained him the praise of his DI, and his platoon was first in some evaluation or another. I don't pretend to understand it all, but he's doing really, really well. He said himself that we're going to be amazed at the changes in him, but we already knew that. And he said he thought we'd be proud of him, but it's too late, we already are. He said he's making a list of all the places he wants to eat at, and all the movies he wants to see. He also said (dammit) that his cash and stamps got stolen from where the valuables are kept, somehow, so we're sending him more. There's also the potential that after his next phase of training, which is only about three weeks long, he'll be able to spend up to a month at home before he has to go off to his permanent assignment. We're crossing our fingers on that one. Marie was pretty quiet while Calvin and I gabbed away, and come to find out after we all hung up, it was because she had been crying. She was so relieved to have not missed Michael's call - and it was a close thing. But a miss is as good as a mile, and we had a nice long (comparatively speaking) conversation. Less than a month to go before we see him! |