Weather fixation

Yup.  I'm totally fixated on the weather these days.  It's not as hot as it had been, although we did break a record by having 70 days of 100 degrees or more this year . . . so far.  I'm not totally convinced that the weather is through with its super-heat yet, but the last few days have been nice, comfortable mid-80s to mid-90s.  Which tells you how hot it's been . . . that I think mid-90s is comfortable.  I mowed my back yard and didn't even break a sweat hardly.

Thought I'd throw in a picture of my twin peach trees.  You'd never know they were once the same size. 

So the temperature has been 'decent', but we're still severely dry.  It actually rained Friday evening.  I was standing in my doorway, literally trying to will it to rain before it started.  Me, the sun-lover, trying to will rain.  It's just not normal.  It did rain though.  It was only a few hours of a pretty soft rain at my place, but I was just so happy to see moisture.  Of course, I'm still watering today since Sunday is one of my watering days.  It'll take more than that little bit of moisture to counter the effects of our long drought.

So see?  Fixated on the weather.

I survived my first work week back from vacation.  It wasn't too bad since I had cleaned out all those emails.  I'm actually mostly caught up, which is kind of amazing.  Of course, I partly owe that to the fact that the new instruments didn't get installed while people argued over who pays to run the water and power for them.  So they're still sitting waiting on installation, and I have only a few validation studies waiting for me to reveiw and sign.  Those came from the new tabletop instrument that didn't require any rerouting of systems.  Other things seem to be moving along nicely.

I interviewed medical school applicants yesterday.  This is about the fourth year I've volunteered to interview the applicants.  I enjoy it, but I only volunteered for four weekends this year since I'm fairly busy with other stuff.  I have another meeting in Washington DC at the end of the month . . . coming up fast come to think of it.  I just had a meeting in DC just over a week ago, so DC twice this month.  Keeps me out of trouble I guess.

I've been sorting through vacation trips and pictures and trying to figure out what I did what years.  I know the first long vacation trip I took was in 1993, and that was a 17 day, 7100 mile jaunt around the western US by myself with my camping gear in my car.  Then I went back to the Utah parks  (Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef, Arches) for the next five years (1994 through 1998), although I didn't do all four parks every year.  In 1999, my sister Monica and I went and we went to all four parks.  In 2000 and 2001 I didn't take the long vacation, as far as I can remeber.  In 2002 I went by myself.  In 2003 and 2004 Yasmeen started going with me.  2005 was by myself.  2006 was with Yasmeen.  2007 was Monica, Yasmeen and I and that was a fun trip!  They were all pretty fun, but that one especially was.  Yasmeen went with me in 2008, and Monica has gone now in 2009, 2010 and 2011.  So although I used to go alone all the time, after Monica went with me in 1999, I've only gone alone twice.   They've all been pretty great trips, each memorable for different things.  One of these days I'll have to transcribe all my hand-written journals from those various trips into the computer, and maybe intersperse them with the pictures from the trips.  Someday when I'm bored for something to do.

Anyway I guess that's about it for now.