There is a thunderstorm walking up the valley towards us, a wall of rain obscuring everything, getting ever closer to our building. People are doing prairie dog imitations to watch the weather.

Lightning strikes are impressive with an unobscured view.

Aww, yay nice bookstore lady.

Yeah, it's a bizarre thing, isn't it, Connie? It's not like you don't know it's coming, anyway!

The building's driveway is now a small stream. A lot of water coming down in a short time--summer storm in the desert.

I was surprised when I realized that late summer was monsoon season.

edit: and I quite enjoy tracking the storm on the weather radar while watching it out the window. The NSA facility is being rained on harder.

Sounds cool to watch, Connie. I wish we could have some weather (I know I could get kicked out of San Diego for those treasonous thoughts, but I really do.)

I love monsoon. I'm so sorry to be missing it this year.

And now the clouds slowly roll away.

Quick, run outside and smell it!

My dad just texted me that my mom's surgery finished, and the doctor said everything went OK.

That is good news, Hil.

Wow. Two of my friends have two-year-old daughters, and they were at a playground today that has a splashpad (basically, a fancy version of running through sprinklers.) Their kids played in the splashpad for a while, and then the mothers changed them out of their bathing suits. A counselor from a day camp that was also there told them that they weren't allowed to change their kids in public. My friends told her that they weren't violating any rules, and no one was being harmed by the possibility of seeing two-year-old butts for the three seconds they were naked while being changed. The camp counselor called the police. (The police, luckily, just suggested they changed the kids in the car, and when the mothers said that would be way more difficult, the cops just shrugged and left. Though, first, the cops said that they couldn't change the kids in public, because there might be pedophiles.)