August Showers

The Monsoon rolled in on Saturday, dumping a lot of rain fast.  It rained hard for about 5 minutes, then sprinkled for maybe 10 minutes, then completely stopped. 

After the rain stopped, the skies cleared to the west, and as the sun began to set, the light cast a rosey glow on the clouds to the east. 

The white cloud in the foreground looked so dramatic against the darker clouds.

Spectacular

One last view of the white cloud before the skies became too dark.

This year, Arizona's Monsoon season did not disappoint. We had significant rainfall in our area of the valley and thankfully no damage.

Cat Fetish???

I had to post this picture of Coz sleeping on Conn's flip flops this morning. Amazingly, he'd been laying there sleeping peacefully while I was putting away last night's dinner dishes.  He was clearly sacked out and so I became inspired to grab the camera and take a picture.

Coz raised his head and looked at me for a few seconds right before I snapped the picture, but thankfully layed back down and went back to sleep.  Such an obliging kitty.  I guess I could say he took one for the cause.  Haha.

There is a bit of a story with our cats Abby and Coz and their need to sleep or roll around on our shoes.  The other night Conn and I watched Abby and Coz in an odd battle of wills.  Abby had been on Conn's flip flops and Coz wanted her spot.  It wasn't really a fight with them rolling and bitting each other, but rather that they were conveying their displeasure with airplane ears and snappy tail movements. 

Finally, in a very stubborn manner, Abby moved off of Conn's flip flops and over to mine.  A few minutes later, she huffed away and Coz took up residence on Conn's flip flops. 

I'm not sure what this says about our foot odor, but it appears to be a comforting place for our cats.

Awesome Sunrise

These pictures were taken around 6 a.m., Thursday morning.  The sky was so dramatic that I had to get some pictures.

The sky was gorgeous with the sunrise on these clouds that were in the southwest part of the valley.

What a beautiful way to begin a day.

A Beautiful Mess

This past week it seemed that all I wanted to do was play in my room.  I cut short my normal time spent in front of the TV during dinner just to get more time in my room.  The object of my attention is as usual, my art journal.

I used iridescent watercolors to wash the pages. The page on the left was done in gold and the page on the right was done in a silvery light blue. The interesting part is that after I stamped and used dye based inks over the top, the shimmery iridescence still came through.

White noise

I really had to laugh the other day. We were enjoying dryer, cooler than normal weather for August, and consequently I went around the house and turned off most of the fans. This reduced the white noise in the house significantly as this time of year, every fan we own is set on high and we have at least 2 fans in every room and one fan in the hallway.

So why do we have so many fans running? Since we run a swamp cooler through the Monsoon months, the fans are vital to keeping us cool while they dry off the sweat rolling down our backs. Oh my gosh, the other day I was leaning on my knees and started sliding, that's how humid it was in my house. Yuck!

Ah, but I digress.

Anyway, getting back to the laugh... With the fans shut off, I realized that the volume on the TV, radio and even our talking all needed to come down a bit to compensate for the "quieter" environment; which got me wondering whether people walking down the street or our neighbors can hear how loud we are during this time of year and if they think we are deaf.

I used to think it was odd that some people talk more loudly than others while in places where there is no noise to talk over. I'm sure you can relate and know a few people that talk too loud. Anyway, I just figured that they are partially deaf. On the flip side of that (and what I found to be funny/ironic), my co-workers sometimes struggle with me and tell me I'm talking too low. Anyway, it got me thinking, are they deaf or am I a low talker? I don't notice them talking too loud, but I never considered myself to be a low talker either. Maybe my rationale for loud talkers is all wrong... Could it be a sign of intelligence? As in loud talkers are less intelligent than low talkers, or vice versa? And those who neither talk loud nor low are of average intelligence?

Hmm, sometimes I wonder about the things I ponder.

What do you ever wonder and ponder about?

What happened on this day in history?

I don't normally think along the lines of "what happened on this day in history", but like most people, when you here about stuff, I always listen.  For some reason, I thought about it today, did a Google search and found an interesting website.  I picked out a few things that happened on August 1st that meant something to me.

August 1, 1960: Aretha Franklin records four demos in New York City, which lead to a contract with Columbia Records.

Some of my favorite tunes by Aretha Franklin are:
Think
Respect
Freeway of Love
I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)
Chain of Fools

August 1, 1982: Rock in a Hard Place is the seventh studio album by American hard rock band Aerosmith and was released in 1982. This is the only Aerosmith album to not feature Joe Perry. Perry had left in 1979 while Whitford left in 1981, during the recording of this album. Whitford is billed as an "additional musician" as he can be heard playing rhythm guitar on "Lightning Strikes." This was also Aerosmith's last studio album released on Columbia Records until 1997.

Some of my favorite Aerosmith tunes are:
Never Loved a Girl (same tune as above, slightly altered)
You Gotta Move
Toys in the Attic
Sweet Emotion
Walk this Way
Dream On

One last thing, that is too funny to pass up.  On August 1, 2001: South Park Episode 507 - "Proper Condom Use".  Thanks to Stan's "handy" work, the children of South Park must endure sex education from the unlikely duo of Mr. Mackey and Ms. Choksondik. While the two adults take their lessons to heart, the children are left frightened, mis-informed, and armed for battle against the opposite sex. Much hilarity ensues.