another random photo post-

just a couple more random photos, also from the last couple weeks:

I was stuck behind a semi (road construction had it down to one lane) on my way to the library one day at lunch, and thought it was sort of cool that I could see myself in the back of the truck!

another shot of the recent dust storm... you canNOT see out into the distance at all; the fact that you can't see what's out there sort of reminds me of a setting from a Stephen King horror story, or something.  (thankfully, no scary creatures came at us out of the dust!)


We had a nice and relaxing 4th of July; we spent most of the morning out on the patio, watching the rain; it rained off and on all morning long; it was gray, and drizzly, and it was wonderful. (YAY for rain!!) I definitely have a different attitude about rain now that we live in Arizona; rain is no longer an inconvenience; it's an event to be celebrated. Even if it occasionally causes us to have a detour because the road through our neighborhood is flooded out (like it is today). 4+ inches of rain will do that, I guess... lol! (But still, yay, rain!) After it stopped raining, we grilled out, then watched the fireworks from Washington DC on television... the worst part was knowing we'd have to get up this morning and go back to work!

random photo catchup--

just some photos to catch up on the last couple weeks of my surgery recovery, and  some additional ones taken since I started back to work:

 this is a beautiful 'get-well' flower arrangement sent from the folks at Tom's office: an assortment of flowers in gorgeous pinks and purples, displayed in a pink and white teacup and saucer. The photo above was taken when a ray of sunshine came through the window just right and spotlit it-- gorgeous!

 the photo above is the same flowers, edited with a 1960s-ish type of color filter, just as an experiment. (I think I like the naturally-lit photo better, actually.)

 While I was recovering from the second surgery, I didn't feel up to any 'really serious' art-making sessions, but I did eventually feel good enough to have a lot of fun with one of my most recent coloring obsessions- a $4 (gotta love those 50% off coupons!) student-grade pan watercolor set from Michael's. It was a really good choice, actually: enough colors that I don't have to mix my own, and simple enough that I could easily create some colored art-journal page backgrounds without needing too much in the way of supplies- just paper, water, brushes, and paper towels.

another great recent purchase was this 5x7 inch notebook (only $5!!) that I picked up at a local art store... I wanted something to mess around in with my new watercolor paints, and this is a smaller size than the two previous journals I had worked in, which looked interesting to me. 

So, just to recap: $4 watercolor paints + $5 spiral-bound notebook + $2.50 for a set of 3 brushes = countless hours of creative fun: priceless! (In the next couple posts, I'll show you some of the pages from this new journal, along with more pages from one of my earlier journals.)

 Random photo of Ariel: she likes to snuggle right up to the window-- so she can prop herself up, upside-down, I guess? But, apparently, the light was too bright for her, here?!? she's a crazy kitty!! 

Just a shot of a random outdoor temperature from a couple weeks ago- summer is finally here! 

and since summer temps are here, so are the dust storms. I got to drive home through this one (last Wednesday, my first day back to work). It's really sort of eerie to see them approaching like this... it was also sort of weird to see the local television channel helicopter hovering out in front of it, shooting footage for the nightly news!

Driving through one of these storms is sort of like driving through a snowstorm; visibility is greatly reduced. (And, unfortunately, there were just enough raindrops to wreak havoc on my freshly-washed car: insert frowny face here.)

Yesterday afternoon, I hauled my spray inks, stencils, paints, etc. out onto the patio... 100+ F temps makes for really quick paint-drying times! 

and lastly, a photo from Tuesday afternoon, when we had rainclouds and rainbows (but sadly, no rain). The rainbow was huge, and we could see the whole arc in our backyard; if you look closely, you can even see a second rainbow (which we could see better in real life).

7/18/11: haboob, the sequel... (also known as haboob lite)

So, we had another dust-storm blow through on Monday, and I thought I'd share a bit of it with you. This is what I saw on Monday when I was driving home from work: yup, another dust storm. Not as impressive looking as the first one was, but kinda cool, nonetheless. I say "haboob lite" because the wind gusts were only reported as high as 50 mph, not the as-high-as 70 mph gusts the last one contained. Thank goodness, too, because I had to drive home in it, this time!

The wind really wasn't too, too bad, really- we had to slow down a little, but you could still see okay to drive. The dust is just so fine, with not much vegetation to hold it down, so a lot of it gets tossed really high up into the air in one of these storms. (Which does make me wonder: where does it all end up, anyway??) It reminded me of driving through snow or fog, both of which I'm used to, so it didn't phase me. And thank goodness for automatic window controls, right?! (I had my A/C on anyway, so mine were shut, but can you imagine driving into this with an open window? No, thank you! I would definitely be pulling over to take care of them, for sure.)

For comparison's sake, this is what it looked like on Tuesday when I drove home. Quite a difference, huh?? (there was still some residual dust in the air, but this pic is pretty clear overall.)

This is looking off the the west along the same stretch of highway. It looks like there's just nothing out there past that mountain, doesn't it?? This is actually kinda creepy to me, knowing how far (miles and miles) you can usually see out here in the desert.

Here's the view looking west on Tuesday (not the same mountain, I don't think, but you get the idea). This photo isn't much to look at scenery-wise, but it gives you a good idea of the wide-open expanses out here in the desert. You can see mountain ranges upon mountain ranges behind each other out there in the distance- I don't know how far away you can actually see, to tell the truth, but probably at least 40 or 50 miles?? This wide-open expansiveness is definitely one of the things I love most about Arizona; I'm so used to it now that going back to the Midwest feels a bit "closed-in" and claustrophobic to me now! (and I won't even talk about the Midwestern humidity; ick!! although the whole "dry-heat" thing really does make a difference, I swear!! LOL!!)

haboob, or holy crap!

the monsoon season is finally in full swing here in AZ! That's good, for the rain factor, and good, if you like extreme weather, but bad if you have to be in the middle of it. This evening, shortly after dinner, Tom said, "hey, come out here and look at this!" So, I did: "This" was a massive dust storm that we could see coming from miles away-- it was pretty impressive to watch, so we did watch it, for maybe, 10-15 minutes or so... it's kinda strange, to see something like this coming, and not know when exactly it will hit.

fyi, the photo above was edited in Picasa a bit to play up the shadows, so you can see the waves of dust coming through the storm front. A dust storm like this is called a "haboob" which is an Arabic word that is a type of intense duststorm. Find out more about them in the Phoenix area here: ADOT information page. (once you're on that page, click on the Gallery link for some pretty stunning aerial photographs.)

a few minutes after this, it was pretty much time to go inside-- right after this, the wind hit with a vengeance, and we had to duck for cover! The weather channel had an alert, saying the storm was moving 20-40 miles per hour, with gusts over 65 miles per hour-- crazy!

the screen above was during the Weather Channel's weather alert: what I thought was funny is the "visibility 0.1 mile, ceiling 0 feet" note there. Yup, I agree!! Pretty scary, for the half-hour or so that it took to blow through!! Tom said this is the worst one he remembers since he lived in Tucson when he was little... while it was memorable, I'm definitely not looking forward to being in the middle of another one of these anytime soon!