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Had a doosie of a storm overnight, I haven’t heard thunder so deafening and room shaking in a long time. Lots of lightening, too. Very cool. Made me think of my mother who hates thunder, she would always try to hide behind a pillow on the sofa so as not to hear the claps. The storm must have lasted a couple of hours, kept me awake (well, that and some other things). dbmini has some neat pictures of the stormy skies up his way.

PS. In case you haven’t guessed I did not win the $250M lottery jackpot.

Right now I’m missing out on an earthquake swarm out in the Imperial Valley. It started yesterday afternoon with a few quakes in the 3.0 – 4.6 range and there have been constant small tremors every 10-15 minutes since then. According to the recent earthquakes page they just had another 3.0 which according to Teri lasted quite a long time. I was in the Valley a couple of years ago for my first swarm and I can’t say I enjoyed it much – small shakes every 10 minutes combined with a few larger tremors over several hours was something new. Hopefully it is not the beginning of the Big One.

I am really starting to hate the theme I picked for this site, look for a change just as soon as I can find one I like. If you don’t read the MINI blog, you should as the theme there is really kind of cool, in a fruity way.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised, in the result of the San Diego Mayoral election. The results bothers me in that I really think Donna Frye has zero clue about anything to do with running a city, but what bothers me more is that she looks like a warning poster for staying out in the sun too long: wear sun block kids, or else look like this….

I’m off to England Friday evening for a week, visit my mother in her convalescent hospital, so there will be no updates for a while.

Last Year’s Hash House Harriers Red Dress Run; this year’s is on Saturday. I think I look ok in red….

I forgot one of the biggest news items last week – the El Pollo Loco is now open in El Centro!!! I’m kinda miffed because they no longer have chips and salsa as a side dish but, as one esteemed reader put it earlier, crazy chicken is in the desert!

So, as you may have seen from the news, there was a big earthquake in northern CA last night that triggered an automatic tsunami warning. Props to NBC news for issuing a special news bulletin telling us that the chances of a big wave hitting San Diego were close to nil and to not worry about it, but a boo hiss to CBS news which was treating the warning like a disaster creeping up on us. If all you had listened to was them you would have been packing up your bags and heading to the hills. Irresponsible and sensationalist broadcasting at his best.

Coming back from the store last night, the turn into my street was blocked by a Brawley PD car facing towards me chatting to a guy in an SUV facing same way as me. Behind the SUV was another car and then me. Waited awhile for them to have their chat but it was several minutes before they cleared the road. As the PD car went by I raised my hands in an ‘at last’ type gesture, turned at the intersection and saw the cop car do a u-turn.

Got to my driveway, he pulls up and asks what my ‘smart-ass gesture’ was about. I pointed out that having a conversation and blocking the street was not a good thing and he said that the other driver was making a complaint. Right, people regularly smile and laugh when they are making complaints, and if true, why not pull over to one side and take the details or, here’s an idea, go to the police station and make it.

Anyway, he told me I had other options than just sit there (illegally reverse down the street, or mount the curb to get by) and left. I wanted to point out that not only did he stop traffic in the street to chat, he parked on the wrong side of the street to chew me out, and his cop car had no plates on it. But of course the laws only apply to the citizens of Brawley town, not law enforcement, so I backed down and away he went. I’m sure he was disappointed my Jeep was totally legal-looking.

I’m going to write a complaint, I’ll probably be harrassed for the next year 🙂

This weekend saw my first 100+ day in the Valley, I guess the summer is here already. My garden thermometer registered 111 at one point but I think it is not to be trusted. It is definitely heating up out there.

In other news, my home football team has to bid farewell to the Premiership Division after 25+ years. I was at the Dell when they were promoted is one of the few memories I have of anything more than a week ago. Hopefully they will get promoted again soon.

It seems that the idea just won’t go away, some states want to introduce a tax on the miles you drive. It seems that by encouraging people to drive more efficient vehicles, the state is losing revenue and needs ways to make that up. So… here’s a tax on how many miles of road you use. The article talks also about the price per mile being different depending on time of day, location etc. I think its a dumb idea, why not just increase the tax on gas which will keep revenues up and continue to discourage buying gas guzzling cars. And if we really have to have a per-mile tax, why not just have the odometer read on a regualr basis? Putting a GPS in each car is just a recipie for abuse.

We’ve had so much rain in the last couple of months that the desert floor is a sea of green right now, I’ve never seen it look anything but barren (excepting the ocotillos and cacti). This has also meant the desert wildflowers are blooming like never before. This weekend, Teri and I went out to the Anza Borrego State Park to have a look see and we were amazed at the colour and volume of the flowers that are out. Snapped a few pictures that you can see at my photo website but here’s a pretty dune evening primrose to tempt ya to go see for yourself.

Make sure you head for Coyote Canyon and Henderson Canyon for the best sightings. And be sure to stop at the park headquarters for a wildflower identification map that can be had for the princely sum of just one United States dollar.