To Rain or Not To Rain...

I can never tell when it's going to rain here. Back on the East Coast, I could. It's really pretty standard. It gets cloudy, a little windy, a little (or a lot) cooler and it rains. There's a clear relationship between the previous weather and the weather in a few hours. Now, sometimes we'll have the whole raining-while-sunny thing or some heat lightening that can throw people off, but once you realize see it a few times, you can find that pattern too.

Here, not so much.

It rained this weekend for about an hour. This is after two days of cloudy, windy weather. After an hour of lightening and thunder. Crazy lightening too. And really long, loud thunder. It sounded like we were being bombed. I, however, still went to see Something Borrowed and it was totally worth it. I'm glad it's been a while since I read the book because I hear it's pretty different. But I digress. It rained while we were in the theater. It was still lightening and thundering (is that a word? Whatevs. I'm going with it.) when we got out, but just barely misting. It continued to be alternately very bright, like aliens were taking pictures of us, and very loud, like people were firing cannons (and this is not an unfamiliar sound for me, surprisingly enough). It made sleeping difficult, particularly since there was no sound of rain on the roof to dampen the thunderous noises. It was weird.

Despite the small amount of rain, it's still pretty humid, around 60% humidity. It may get worse as the summer progresses but the humidity of the other places I've lived (Charleston, SC anyone? Parts of it are below sea level. It gets really humid there. And then it smells like low tide. Ew.), tops it. The heat though, is different. When I was in Athens, GA for my sister's second graduation (Sarah, M. P. A.), when the sun went down, I felt downright chilly. Fortunately, I'm rarely without a cardigan and then all was right with the world. My mom was not so lucky and had to cover up with a Justice League snuggie.

Or maybe she was way more lucky. It's up to interpretation, I suppose.

This Weather is Gross

I woke up about 4:30 a.m. today. This is not a pleasant time for me to wake up. I had the weird moment of something's-not-quite-right-but-I-don't-know-what-it-is. Did my alarm go off? No. Was there an intruder? No. Did the dog step on me? No. Wait, why's it so dark? Oh right. The power's off. At first, I was excited because a) I love candles and b) You can't do morning P90X with no power. But then I couldn't fall back asleep. I had another hour and a half of quality sleep time I couldn't take advantage of. It was a sad day. So, I started creating my back up plan for getting ready. Flashlights and candles in the bathroom for a dark shower. Makeup by candlelight. Breakfast from Starbucks. Drying my hair at work. Then I remembered I was an adult and I should probably call the utility company and report my outage so I could get power back at some point. Despite my epic level of preparation for things that will probably never happen, I did not have the number of my utility company or working internet on my laptop or phone. Adult move, thwarted. So, I did what any resourceful daughter does: I called home. I'm sure my mom was a little concerned about getting a phone call from me at 6:11 a.m. EST but she found the number for me (which I wrote down in the dark). I called it in a lo and behold, I had power back in a little less than an hour.

Of course, that meant I didn't really have an excuse to go by Starbucks so that stunk.

Now, it's windy. What started as a rainy, 60 degree morning has morphed into a miserable, cloudy, 38 degree day with 25-30 mph winds and a wind chill of 26. It's only supposed to get worse, too. At about 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, right when I'm supposed to be walking my dog, it'll be about 20 degrees, 20-25 mph winds and a wind chill of 4 degrees. Four! I have more fingers on one hand than that! When I'm walking across campus for our Division meeting, it will have warmed up to about 7 degrees. This is NOT the Texas weather I expected. I want my 110 degrees and sunny back. Or, failing that, I want a snow or ice day. Not just miserable wind with no reason not to go to work expect for the fact that my sweatpants are awesome. I want something tangible to go with my cold weather.