Coffee heat rising

Life in the Desert

The Yellow Skies of Arizona

by

So this afternoon Tina and I are about to leave our favorite Tempe restaurant, after having loafed and grazed for a couple hours. It was chilly when we arrived — hence our taking up an indoor table instead of our usual patio throne. Peering through a window, she says, “It looks like it’s getting colder out there.”

And yes, it surely does seem to have grown darker. “Some cloud cover must be coming in,” say I.

But no.

What made the sky darker was smog.

The worst smog I’ve seen in Arizona since before my son was born.

Since he’s some 40 years old now, the filth in the air is thicker than it’s been in over 40 years! Literally, the sky has a yellow cast. The touristy little hills at Papago Park, just east of the freeway — within (reasonably healthy) walking distance thereof — looked hazy gray through the dirty air.

Cripes. No wonder my head is stuffed up to the point where my teeth hurt! This is the reason we left Southern California!

If I had a camper, I’d throw the dogs, a jacket, and a couple clean shirts into it and head for northern Arizona. Right now. And if I still had the ranch? Well, I’d prob’ly be living there these days.

Makes Prescott look better & better.

Dust Abatement Update

Yes. So…dust abatement in Phoenix: The Cox guy did show up yesterday afternoon. He did dig a trench across the alley and he did reconnect the cable line and while he was at it he saw the previous service dude had made a mess of the inside of the cable stanchion thing in the alley and so he attempted to fix that.

The phone is working again and my computer is more or less online.

So, yeah: dust abatement is apparently what we need.

Yarnell looks better and better.

Image:
Papago Buttes. Joe Flood from Washington, USA – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=745342

Eclipse: Low-Impact Version

by

Mercifully, Arizona was not in the path of the total eclipse. (It’s not like we don’t have enough tourists.) (And besides, what would the poor critters do with 100-degree-plus heat?) But we did get a nice partial eclipse.

A partial eclipse has its own Kewl. Why?

Well…y’know those DIY cereal-box projectors you see plugged on the Internet? Trees with lots of leaves will do something very similar. So, for that matter, will a swimming pool. So that means that during a partial eclipse, the shadows cast by a tree graced by a halo of small leaves, such as an olive tree, will display 87 gerjillion iterations of the crescent sun evinced during said eclipse.

The effect is weirdly wonderful:

Strange, strange… Does a dog notice, even?

and..

Be thou our vision
O Lord that thou art…

Banner Image of the Day: DepositPhotos

Solar eclipse

EEEK!

by

Batten down the hatches!

Sez the US Weather Service:

* From 1 PM MST this afternoon through late tonight
* near-record levels of moisture will result in heavy rainfall
  with any thunderstorms that develop this afternoon and evening.
  Localized accumulations over one inch in a very short amount of
  time may lead to flash flooding.

You should see the black mass to the east. Something bloody scary this way comes. The sky is grumbling and mumbling angrily, and it’s wayyyy too early for those shenanigans: only 5:00 p.m.

Locally, only Faux News is covering the storm, amazingly enough. But maybe not: local news coverage is basically dead. The National Weather Service is reporting it, but in a technical way that most of the troglogdytes couldn’t begin to figure out. This is why we need strong local news media.

Oh well. We do have dogs. The dogs are visibly scared. Managed to get them fed and wrung out. Now they’re hiding in the house.

Welp, I’d better go disconnect the computers from their power sources and check that the lanterns have batteries.

Enjoy, those of you who live in more temperate climes! 😀

Image: DepositPhotos, © outsiderzone

Monsoon redux…

by

So if we didn’t get hit very hard by the monsoon the night before last, well…. Last night it noticed us. One of those move-away-from-the-windows gales blew through…HO-leee sh!t. The lightning show was spectacular and staccato: flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash It went on for I don’t know how long, but eventually the wind delivered hail and then one helluva rainstorm.

The power went out twice for a total of about three hours. As usual, the Internet is still up and down — for reasons impossible to comprehend, Cox’s service invariably crashes when it rains. :-/ They must string their cable on telephone poles.

So most of the debris is now shoveled out of the pool, except for the layer of dust. As soon as the skimmer finishes capturing the last of the palm BBs and piling up the last of the leaves in a corner, it’ll be time for Harvey to go in and vacuum up the dirt.

This will clog the filter, which will mean I may have to backwash today.

Conveniently and inconveniently, today is shock-treatment day, so tomorrow is backwash day anyhow.

§

[an Anna’s hummingbird just flew up and almost landed on the Macbook’s monitor! 😀 I’m wearing a pink shirt, so he probably thinks I’m the biggest flower he’s ever seen!]

§

Where were we? Yes: backwash. Normally one has to backwash after shock-treating, which is a bit of an inconvenience because one has to perform a contraband maneuver that will result in a $2000 fine if one is caught at it. So, one must be…ahem…discreet about it.

Having to backwash before tonight’s dose of hyperchlorination and then probably having to sneak out and do it again tomorrow is going to be a PITA.

Sometimes the pool doesn’t require backwashing after a shock treatment — over the past month or so I’ve only had to jump through that hoop a couple of times. But it’s still overcast and wet as a sauna this morning, which means we’ll likely get another of those storms tonight. So one way or another — chlorine zap or no — I’ll probably have to do it again tomorrow, anyway.

I’m supposed to take some friends to breakfast tomorrow, and that will complicate matters. One would like to get these chores out of the way before the sun comes up. But that ain’t gonna happen tomorrow morning.

Got through half the mark-up for the new index yesterday and hope to finish that chore today — though it’ll consume most of the waking hours.

And so, away…

Banner image of the day: Deposit photos, © arhip4