Pouring Rain

Last night I was very tired. I had walked over three miles that day, with my noon and evening walks combined. I came to the computer in The Dungeon yesterday evening, intending to write a blog post here, but couldn't get my mind to focus so ended up reading blogs and playing mindless computer games.

Back upstairs I couldn't concentrate any better. About 11:15 p.m. I called it quits. As I did so, however, I heard thunder. Checking radar I found a small thunderstorm just developing around us. Some storms were further west and north, but not close enough to be concerned about. I believe I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

In the night I woke up, and saw that the light was on next to Lynda's side of the bed, though she was asleep. This light is connected to one of those devices that allows you to tap the light to turn it on and off. I could hear thunder over the noise of the box fan we had going, and heard rain on the skylight in the bathroom. I turned the light off and immediately went back to sleep.

At 5 a.m. that repeated. And at 6 a.m. the alarm woke me. This is the third day in a row that I haven't woken before the alarm went off. I suppose that's an indication of tiredness.

The drive to work included many slow downs for water on the road. It was too dark and too dangerous to be looking at most of the creeks off to the sides. By the time I reached Bentonville streets it was lighter. The rain was heavier, but I could see the various drainage ditches and man-made features, and could see how the water was. When I passed over Tributary 2 to Little Osage Creek, the creek was out of its banks downstream, but not even close to being over the road. This is a creek I have done much study on for its flooding. It was behaving exactly as my models predicted.

The storms are slowly moving out. It looks like we will be over with the rain by 9:00 a.m. and have sunshine by 10. The day's activities beckon me. Somehow I have to concentrate on a paper I'm supposed to deliver in Nashville February 2014, and finish writing it. I've been working on it off and on for over a week, with only minimal progress. I have most of the elements in the paper, but can't seem to pull them together to make my case on how erosion control fines should be assessed. I can finish it today if I can just get some concentration.

We have actually been in a fairly rainy period, unusual for our summers. Or maybe that's just because we've had several consecutive dry summers, so this seems unusual. For about the last week, every morning we have had rain. Not a lot of rain on any given day. The sky will be cloudy; at some point some rain falls, enough to make everything wet and to make people pull out umbrellas; then the clouds depart in the early afternoon and we have 85-95 degrees and humidity the rest of the day. As I say, this is unusual.

Somehow I have to get to a point in my life where all the activities I must do come as the rain has this summer, not as the overnight storm. A little time spent here, a little time spent there, lots of balance, nothing falling behind, nothing reaching the point of being critical. Let's see if I can begin that today.