May 9, 2024

Break.

I’m sitting at the table in (on?) our gazebo enjoying the desert breezes typical at this time of year in the afternoon. It’s actually more than a breeze, it’s windy, and I love the sound of the wind passing through our landscaping. Blissful.

It’s nice to be able to sit out here after a mentally exhausting day at work. Mental exhaustion does not mean it was a bad day; quite the contrary, I got a lot done at work today. I just had to think a lot and I am tired from too much thinking. I usually start feeling this way at this point in the work week.

I’m using my Linux laptop for this little endeavor, as I want to make sure it’s running well. I’m probably going to bring it along on the storm chasing trip at the end of next week. It has a good sized hard drive and at the very minimum, I’ll have another place to store video files if I run out of room on my primary hard drives. Hopefully there will be a good number of storms to grab on video and enjoy in general.

I’ve received several compliments on my last hiking video; most folks like the new format and the production in general. It’s the direction I want to go with my videos. I’m considering this past hiking video as “episode 1” of a second season of my shenanigans. I’m planning on hiking on Saturday, albeit rather early in the morning. This will probably be my last hike in Arizona for a few months as the summer heat settles into the Sonoran Desert. I haven’t picked a trail yet but I’m leaning toward the more familiar trails in the area, just going higher up the terrain than I have in the past.

As mentioned, I leave on my storm chasing/hiking trip next Friday after work. I’m really looking forward to that adventure and have been counting down the days for a long while. The weather looks mostly promising, so that’s good. At the very least it looks much more promising than what I encountered last year when a high pressure dome settled over the area and I encountered just a few severe weather events. I won’t know the direction of travel until next Wednesday when the Storm Prediction Center starts shading the appropriate areas of the country in varying hues of green.