Life---Going On

This week and a half has sped by so fast, that I was startled that it had been so long since I wrote a post. Lots of things have occurred, most of them mundane and ordinary. Some were rather stimulating. Let me just post a few paragraphs that, if I were a faithful Facebooker, I'd have posted as a status.

**On Tuesday it started raining about 1:30 in the afternoon, and it lasted for nearly an hour. It was one of those gully washers that the desert is famous for, when the heavens open and it just dumps water down. It almost doesn't even qualify as "rain" so much as a deluge. We went outside when school ended (grateful that the sky was clearing) and out on the street we could see that our crosswalk was one of the few spots that wasn't submerged. There was an enormous brown flood from wall to wall just south of our school's entrance. Really---wall to wall---from one side of the street to the other side. Our principal went out there to help our students find a way around it, and to keep a little order. As we helped children and their parents to leave the school safely, we saw a helicopter hoving nearby. It was notable because it wasn't the usual sight-seeing helicopters on their way back from the Grand Canyon, nor something from the air force base. It wasn't a news copter, nor the police. It turned out to be a rescue helicopter that was about a mile from our school, scooping a few people from their flooded cars along a street that had been completely inundated by the overflowing flood control channel into which vast amounts of water was still cascading from the storm drains. It was crazy! I got back into the office, and there were 12 children waiting there whose parents couldn't get to the school because of the flooding near their homes. Even today, three days later, there are swathes of gravel and dried mud all along the streets on this east side of Las Vegas from that flash flood-inducing rainstorm from Tuesday.

** I was so tired last night, that I simply went to bed at 9:30 and fell so fast asleep that when I awoke at 12:30 for bathroom visit, I felt that I'd slept for ten hours! It's true: the hours you sleep before midnight are more restful than those after midnight. I went back to bed and got six more hours. I had a GREAT day today, after all that sleep. I should try for that every night, huh? (oops...11:00 P.M. already.)

**For some reason this week, we got into a conversation at school in one class that ended with me noting that Mr. CoolGuy has a pair of cowboy boots for church, another pair for every day, a pair of sandals and a pair of hiking boots. (I forgot about his Uggs...) Anyway, there was a boy who was astounded--maybe scandalized--that CoolGuy has cowboy boots for church. He just couldn't believe it. I pointed out that we are from Wyoming, and in Wyoming lots of men wear cowboy boots to church. In fact, there are probably lots of men in Nevada who wear cowboy boots to church. When you grow up on a horse in the "Cowboy State," what else would you wear to church? The things that fascinate fourth graders...

**Is it November 6th yet? Nevada is a "swing state" so we are awash with political ads and candidate visits. It's astonishing. Luckily, I have TiVo, so I can fast forward through the commercials. And there is an amazing selection of them. So, we'll be really glad to have this election finished. For other reasons, too, as well.

**Did  you know that cats exist just to use up all the excess bandwidth of the internet?