I see some strange things when I'm walking in the park. Today I saw a guy riding a bicycle with his arm in a cast. You might not need both hands to steer, but don't you need both hands to operate the brakes? Hmm. I wonder how he broke that arm? The guy was riding like he was competing in the Tour de France too. It made no sense to me. The animals make no more sense than the humans. At this time of year birds like to congregate on electric wires. Sometimes you'll see hundreds of birds on a wire. At one of these locations I always see a big pile of dead birds directly under the wire. The birds are getting electrocuted. Don't they know what is happening? You'd think that at least one of these birds would be saying "Has anyone seen Bob lately," he was here just a minute ago." Getting zapped doesn't seem to deter the birds though. They come back to the same wire every day.
We had our first triple digit day of the Summer. It was well over a hundred degrees this afternoon. Coincidently, this was the day I paid the electric bill. The electric bills in July and August are always horrendous. It doesn't really matter where you set the thermostat, the air conditioner is always running. There's no point in wishing for cooler weather now. It's going to be pretty warm from now through the end of September.
I'm still trying to figure out the weather in West, Texas. I had a day all picked out to go to McDonald Observatory and just before I was going to make my reservation I checked the long range weather again. The day I wanted was clear yesterday and today there was a 40% chance of thunderstorms. The alternate day I was looking at had an even higher chance of thunderstorms. I looked at Yelp reviews of people who had visited the observatory and almost half of them said they had experienced cloudy skies. Almost all of them said it was much colder than they expected. I did a little research and discovered that July and August are considered the "monsoon" season in West Texas. Evidently during this time of year a stationary low pressure system typically sets up over Arizona and New Mexico drawing moisture into the area. It may not rain every day, but it is not the best time for astronomy. Despite all this, I think the area around the observatory is supposed to have clear skies for 2/3 of the year. People say there are better chances of clear skies in the Spring, but it can also get very cold in the mountains. Snow and ice are common. I wish the place wasn't so remote. It's a very long drive if you are just going to wind up with cloudy skies. On a clear night there is no place better for dark skies in the country though. Do I take a gamble or not?
These hot summer days are long and uneventful. No wonder Janet likes to travel. I'm not much of a traveler myself but almost everything I'm interested in doing seems to be outside of Dallas. That must mean something. If I was more of a free spirit, I'd probably be on the road right now. Since I'm not a free spirit at all, I'll be thinking about what to have for dinner tomorrow while I take my morning walk.
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