A Typo, A Storm, and Le Tour - My Personal Merry-Go-Round

Hmmm - not really sure about that crazy typo in yesterday's post, but no - no 17 marriages for me. I've only been married once, to my one and only DH, and we will be celebrating 40 years this fall. We're in it for the long haul. Glad I could offer a smile to all of my friends who commented on my marriage-go-round - LOL. 

Although many of you will think of a carousel when the words
merry-go-round are spoken, I remember hours upon hours
playing on merry-go-rounds similar to this in my local
playgrounds and parks. I loved making it go as fast as possible. 

Today is my "day off", which of course I don't get since Chickie is in Montana. She's missed some rather torrential rainstorms, so I hope her house is in one piece when she gets back in a week. Since I have no time off this week, laundry is being pushed into odd days and times. It's not quite 4:00 am and I have a load in the dryer and dinner in the crock pot. No gym today because my PT wanted me to take an extra day (besides my normal Sunday) off. I decided Wednesday would be a good choice, so I'm grumbling while missing my daily exercise. I see my PT again next week and will see if I can just change my type of exercise so that I don't have to miss my day completely. 

Today's stage is pretty flat, one of the last good chances for Peter
Sagan to get points for the Green Jersey. The ride is from
Albi to Toulouse and 167 km long. No real challenges
here. although it will be interesting to see if we have yet
another new stage winner at the end. So far it's been ten
days with ten different stage winners. Quite unusual. 

On Le Tour today, it's flat, flat, flat (relatively), but those mountains are looming ever closer and begin tomorrow. Four days in the Pyrenees (including the individual time trial on Friday), and then, a rest day on Monday before the riders begin their move towards the grand climax of the Alps. Whoot! Mountains! 

After the storm had passed, we went to the patio for a
while. Without power, we had no fans, and the house
was extremely hot and stuffy. The sun spotlighted
the tall tree at the southeastern corner of my property.
It was absolutely stunning! 

Every other tree around it was dark and in shadow, but this
single tree was bathed in sunlight and after-glow. The sky
was promising a rainbow - it was just that quality of light - 
but we couldn't see one yet. 

I decided to pepper this post with photos from the storm we had yesterday - the one that knocked our power out both at home and at the shop. The sky was amazing, once the rain had passed. My camera (phone camera, so not the best in the world) just couldn't capture the amazing robin's egg blue against the orange skies in the final picture, but that sky had us (and others) stopped in our tracks, amazed at the beauty. 

Our creek, the eastern border of our lot, usually trickles at the
bottom of a steep draw. It was running extremely high after the
rain, though. Across the creek you can see trees that are normally
on the bank, now playing 'mangrove tree' with their roots and
lower trunks completely in the swift-flowing water. 

Around 8:30 pm we gave up on power and decided to head to
McDonald's for a late meal. There was my rainbow, finally,
against the eastern sky as we exited the car. If you look
carefully, you can see the hint of a second rainbow to the
left of that first tree. 

I took photo after photo of the western sky but the
colors just overwhelmed the abilities of my
camera. The sky was an intense orange/peach/gold
and the unclouded sky was a true Robin's egg blue.
If I had painted that no-one would have believed
it to be a true color combination. My camera
certainly had its issues. But I tried. 

So there you go, our crazy storm on Monday night. One more thing - our alarm company finally notified me that we had no electric power to the system during my workday on Tuesday. Apparently they had been moving our account (along with lots of others) to some new equipment and software, causing a time delay for minor items. The company assured me that we would have been contacted immediately if it had been something of more consequence. I guess I'll have to trust them on that, but I wasn't super happy. It was more than twelve hours after the power was lost that I got the phone call. 

So, have a great day. I'm off to check on my dinner which is cooking upstairs, and to do some other things since I'm actually right on time today, but no gym to go to right now. This 'day off from the gym' thing is going to drive me crazy! I'll be back tomorrow with a Le Tour de France update and a look ahead at MOUNTAINS! YIPPEE!