It seems like it's been raining for weeks now. Every day, rain rain and more rain. (Good thing I like rain.)

But this morning the sun was shining bright, it wasn't exceptionally humid, and there was this clean smell in the air that I'm not used to. In fact, the whole scene just surprised me; I actually stopped and acknowledged the beauty of the day, the clean air, the green trees, the birds, the whole lot. It's all so very good!

Rob was in town this past weekend; very strange (very cool!) to have him on "my turf," especially since I just saw him last week in AZ. His friend Paul was supposed to be traveling with him to spend a week hitting a bunch of minor league (and a few major league) baseball stadiums around the eastern part of the country here. Unfortunately, Paul's dad needed some emergency medical care so Paul was unable to come out at the last minute, so Rob's doing the trip solo. The first game of their tour was to be the Blue Rocks (la la la!), and two of Rob's D.C. friends (John and Ag) were coincidentally gonna be near Wilmington that night, so they arranged to have a small family reunion of sorts at the stadium. And I had invited Jeremy and Stacey to come along, too. Alas, the game was rained out, so we enjoyed a fun, high-decibel evening at Joe's Crab Shack on the Riverfront in Wilmington. A very interesting and fun gang, all together! Afterwards, we headed back to Jerm's to play Streetcar. I really dig that game. I lost. :-)

Today was a great day at work. I worked until after 10:00pm last night and got so much done, so today I had a little more breathing room. I opened the blinds behind my desk and the warmth of the sunlight warmed my fingers as I typed on my laptop-- it was neat. I worked about 10 hours today and cranked out lots more stuff. It feels so good to actually make a dent in my to-do list from hell.

I picked up a bunch of pictures I had dropped off last week and I looked through them at lunchtime. Two rolls are from this trip to Arizona, and one is just totally random stuff. The random roll is awesome-- it's mostly shots from the snowstorm we had earlier this year, and shots of me and Chris (OK, just Chris then) digging out the Mighty Lumina, ultimately being aided by some guy with a backhoe. There's a picture of me standing in a snowbank up to my thighs, even though it was actually much deeper. There's another shot of me standing on the top of the snow which is up to my car's trunk! Then there's springtime pictures of my favorite happy blooming trees outside my apartment, and Chris sitting in one of them after he climbed it.

The Arizona pictures came out OK... those throwaway cameras leave a bit to be desired. The shots are either way underexposed (which makes no sense considering it had 800-speed film and a flash, to boot...), or grainy and unclear. Oh well; that's what I get for forgetting my point and shoot.

Stefan took a bunch of photos at the recording session, so I'm hoping I can get me some copies and post 'em up.

Tonight is laundry night; I've been putting it off all week, and tonight is finally my night.

Pretty crazy about the power outage across the northeast, huh? Delaware and Philly and points south weren't affected (whew!) and my folks in north Jersey were OK too.

I wonder, if in 9 months from now, there's gonna be a spike in the birth rate?

I was looking all over the Internet tonight for live satellite pictures of light pollution-- I figure this is the only time in my lifetime that I'd see the northeast actually dark. From the digging I did, things looked pretty fargin' bright though, so I must be looking in the wrong spot. This page prompts you for the UTC date/time for the image and region you want to see, so that would lead me to believe there's a chance it's a semi-live feed. But how can it look so bright?

This guy I used to work with, Tim Roelike, was an astronomy buff and we'd yap about good places to go sky watching, neat astronomy applications and the like. He used to have this really great (yet depressing) map on his office wall which showed the light pollution across the world. The map was really beautiful to look at, but also very disturbing. South America, the Sahara and Mongolia were the only spots on land, it seemed, where you could get a decent view of the night sky. Someday I'll get there...

In other news, Chris and I have Blue Rocks tickets for Friday night and we're sitting with the Celery Squad! Gaaaah! I'm bringing my Hulk hands, and maybe I'll even be able to smuggle in some Cel Ray to share with the squad. My God, I just love this team. I remember before I even moved out to Arizona I was a Blue Rocks fan, having gone to a few games with Jeremy and Quaf. Celery! Celery!

And hey, how's this for a weird coinkydink: Naaman's Little League (north Wilmington, baby) and the Chandler Nationals (Chandler, AZ) are facing off in the Little League World Series. How cool is that? Shyte, I don't know who to root for!

OK. Gotta go do the stupid things I gotta do. (Touch the Puppet Head.)

(You know, having just typed that, it dawned on me that Jeremy and other TMBG-heads will catch the obvious reference. But everyone else will probably think I'm looking to go whack off. Hmmm.)