Twenty-Five Years

Let me introduce you to The Long-Suffering Wife, Ronnie:

She’s now been suffering with me as her husband for twenty-five years, one of those big, milestone anniversaries.

Wow! I had hair, and it was still black!

In the past I’ve rarely mentioned her by name to protect her privacy, but she has agreed that twenty-five years is enough of a reason to break a few “rules.”

We’ve had a lot of adventures in a quarter century.

 

We’ve traveled across the US and Canada, and cruised down to Mexico.

It’s been a slice. And now, on to the next twenty-five years.

Paul & Ronnie. We’re a cute couple. A couple of WHAT remains an open question.

 

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Rainbow At Sunset

As usual, sunset-ish, filling the bird feeders, when WOWSERS!!

The picture doesn’t do it justice, it was bright! And it lasted for at least 15-20 minutes, much longer than normal.

This is where it’s coming from – the Sun in the clear as it set, with some scattered clouds dropping virga for the final rays of sunshine to shine through.

As I was working, and looking at that rainbow over the wall, the hummers were active, buzzing me as I stood near their feeder.

Finally the Sun broke through and started illuminating the nearby water tanks and power lines, while still leaving the rainbow and some drifting sheets of rain.

The rainbow was small when viewed as part of the big picture, but the whole thing with the bright blue sky and bright white clouds with the band of color streaking across it all. With hummingbirds.

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Looking East At Sunset

I’ve shared plenty of photos of the western sky at sunset, either because it was aflame and spectacular and awesome, or because it had planets and the Moon in it, or both. But the view to the east during those same moments is also gorgeous, if somewhat more sublime.

Directly behind us to the east are row upon row of empty, graded lots for parts of our subdivision that were never finished. That’s a whole long and interesting story to begin with, no doubt to be discussed another day as it seems some developer has bought the empty land and plans of building there in 2027. We’ll see. Beyond that are these three huge water tanks that turn the most subtle shades of pink and orange at sunset. And the power lines coming up from the Mesa and the Cajon Pass. Beyond them, the mountains, dominated by the triple-peaked Pinnacles and the mountains heading up into the Mojave Desert. All purple-ish at this time of the dusk.

More to the northeast tonight there were layers of clouds heading up toward Barstow, the higher ones still almost still white but getting the lightest tinge of pink, with the lower, closer clouds already entering into night’s shadow, with every shade and level of illumination in between. And more power lines and water tanks and vacant lots. Welcome to the southwest corner of Hesperia!

It does make a most lovely, pastel backdrop for refilling the bird seed feeders!

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Proof Of Life – July 18th

It was a very long day.

I may have overdone it. I’m stupid that way sometimes. Like, on days that end in “Y.”

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Cloud Lighting

That’s “lighting,” not “lightning.” There was some of that way further out, but nothing here. It really drove home the point of just how stinking GINORMOUS San Bernardino County is, 20,104 square miles. For comparison, that’s bigger than ten US states, including Vermont and New Hampshire combined. So when we get a flash flood warning and notified about closures on the interstates, that’s out in Needles on the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away. No sweat here. Just puffy white clouds for me to take pictures of.

Backlit clouds are dramatic!

Sunset clouds are beautiful all the time, except when they graduate to stunning.

 

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Heat Plus Moisture

A bit of monsoonal moisture and temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s here and well over 100°F out over the desert give you … convection!

Due east of us is Johnson Valley and the vast, hot, barren stretches of the Mojave Desert.

Swinging around to the southeast, on the other side of those mountains you’re looking at Palm Springs, Yucca Valley, and the Coachella Valley.

Here, it was hot, but mostly clear overhead. Over the desert, thunderstorms building.

We say we live in “the high desert,” but compared to the Mojave, we’re just “desert adjacent.”

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Focus

Hither & yon, left & right, back & forth

Depth of field is critical, which is why movies & TV shows are often filmed under incrdibly BRIGHT lights. Gives you a much better depth of field.

Goofing around at extremely close range, that’s not always an option.

Go left or right?

I think you’ll always find me on the far left. IYKYK.

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Proof Of Life – July 14th

Ridden hard…

…and put away wet!

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Grey vs PPPH

You can’t argue with time or Mother Nature. Well, you can, but you’re never going to win!

You might recall that, for my birthday in March, turning one of those milestone ages, I went nuts with my hair before we went off to Spring Training in Arizona.

At this game, a little girl, maybe 4 or 5, pointed at me and said, “Daddy! That man has pretty, pretty princess hair!” (PPPH!) I was delighted, that was exactly the vibe I was going for!

The color lasted for eight or so weeks and then started to fade. Once it got pretty dull, I went and had it re-dyed. The second time it only lasted five or six weeks, then faded. I got it re-dyed a second time. This time it only seemed to look good for about three weeks, and I’ve really noticed it being not just faded, but CONSUMED by my (now) naturally grey hair.

The blue side still has a bit of tint to it, but not much.

The purple side? There might be 1% or 2% of the color left, but the other 98%+ is grey.

It’s been a TON O’ FUN, and I’ve truly enjoyed it, but it was time to face the inevitable. The other side effect has been consistently been having my hair longer than I’ve had it in forty years, and there’s a reason that I always keep it short, shorter, or shaved. I find even a little bit longer hair to be an annoyance. Fun’s over! I want my old, short, grey, easy to care for hair back.

Done! A quick trip to the local Great Clips and it’s the old me.

Time to start plotting what color, style, or other batshit crazy shenannigans I’ll try to pull off in ten years!

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Hot & Humid Incoming!

After recent, massive “heat dome” events in Europe, Africa, the US East Coast and Midwest (and probably dozens of other places), it’s apparently now going to be the turn of the US Southwest. As in, “us.”

Upper 90’s and triple digits (35º to 40º C) for the next week, and it’s probably not going to be that “dry heat” that we’re always bragging about. More like that “Florida swamp-ass” heat.

We dodged any rain today, but radar was showing a huge line of rain from the San Diego suburbs, up over Palm Springs, all the way to Lake Havasu in Arizona.

All we got was some beautiful, high, textured, lumpy clouds, with a few spots of virga (rain that you can see falling, but it evaporates before it hits the ground).

Tomorrow our odds of rain are up to about 25%, but I still don’t think we’ll be lucky enough to actually get any. We shall see!

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