Went to sleep last night to the sound of rain
on the roof but I don’t think it amounted to much. Woke to the kind of wind that necessitates
keeping the windows closed so there’s not a fine layer of dust over everything. While gritty dust is a fact of life out here
there’s no sense in encouraging it to come inside.
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A
breeze helps a lot to cut the intensity of the sun when out for a walk; today’s
wind was a little more than a breeze. As
I was sitting in the camper this morning feeling it gently rock with the wind,
it brought to mind the scene in Winnie-the-Pooh and The Blustery Day when Owl
said, “My good fellow, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a
Winds-day, just a gentle spring zephyr”, which is just the sort of thought to make me go chasing words online. And of course, this
search had to do with wind. Zephyr is
defined as a breeze that
is westerly or gentle, or both. This was neither
westerly nor gentle so perhaps I needed a different word. Headwind, defined as an air movement that is
blowing toward something (such as a ship or an airplane) as it moves forward, seemed a better description until I stepped
outside. At that point, it was apparent that headwind wasn’t an apt description
either. This was a swirly, more than a
gust, less than a sustained type of wind.
This was the kind of wind that dust devils thrive in.
And I also learned that the fundamental
difference between sustained wind and a wind gust is duration. A sustained
wind is defined as the average wind speed over two minutes. A sudden burst in
wind speed is called the wind gusts and typically lasts under 20 seconds. So the bushes I see through the kitchen window are probably thrashing
around due to sustained wind and the occasional rocking of the camper is due to
a wind gust. Don’t really know if that’s
comforting or not.
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It
was not a day to be outside because of the wind and since I wasn’t enthused
about spending the day cooped up in the camper we did errands. The truck was our refuge from the wind and
the confines of the camper for a couple of hours. When we got back we opened all the shades to
let sunshine in and got comfortable waiting for the wind to die down. To amuse myself I painted some rocks, did the
laundry, talked to other campers and packaged up piggy cookies to send to all
the WonderKids…well, all of them except Juniper. The
day didn’t go to waste just because the wind was feeling so spirited.
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Today’s
40 Days of Lent challenge was to fast for one meal and use that time to pray
which seemed easy on the face of it but overall proved to be harder than I
thought. The challenge wasn’t to delay a
meal but to fast from that meal which to me meant no eating until the next meal
time. Not an easy task when the mandarin
oranges, popcorn and piggy cookies are kept in the open on a shelf.
Yesterday’s
challenge was to give personal compliments to 3 people. I didn’t complete that one because I didn’t
interact with people in any situation long enough to give a sincere compliment
for something…and giving an insincere compliment just to fulfill the challenge
was wrong in my view. But I was able to
practice politeness, kindness and good cheer. 😎
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Went
out to Hawk Nest Road (Toltec Rd) to check on the hawk nest on top of the
electrical pole. Nest looked abandoned but
the monkey mask was still there along with more recent trash…it was the kind of
trash that said, “We just broke up and I’m getting rid of her shit.” As we were standing there wondering why
people do this, Kim made an observation:
people want to be careful about including their mail when they dump shit
because someone just might find out who’s responsible. Because along with kids toys, women’s clothing,
videotapes, a cassette tape and other random stuff, there were several pieces
of mail, one with a man’s name and a couple with a woman’s name. But from what we’ve seen they don’t have to
worry about being held responsible because random dumping seems to be an accepted practice around here.
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In the Eloy area, diesel fuel ranges from $3.92 to $4.85. It pays to have the Gas Buddy app on your phone, that’s for sure.
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