And The Storm Rolled In...

Phoenix was hit by a massive dust storm last night.  My side of the Valley didn't get hit as bad as other parts, but I still had some cleanup to do this morning for the pool.  I don't think the sides are supposed to be brown lol.  The solar blanket was also covered in dirt so that needed to be hosed off too.  The good news is that the temperatures dropped quite a bit due to the storm so that is a welcome relief, although it is a humid out - 73% humidity according to accuweather.com.  That's pretty high for us.  Hope we get some of that rain they are predicting for later in the day.  We sure could use it.

Exciting day yesterday

I was sitting at my computer mid afternoon yesterday when suddenly the chair felt like it was rocking towards my desk and the monitors seemed to be moving.  My first thought was oh crap, I've pushed myself too hard with work and now I'm having some sort of serious health problem.  I yelled to DH in the other room and told him what was going on.  Thankfully he said that he had just had the same feeling sitting on the couch so either we were having simultanous strokes or something else was going on.

We started looking around and DH went to the back door and yelled at me to come look at the pool.  We had whitecaps in the pool and the water was sloshing out the shallow end.  I looked at him and said "earthquake".

I called Dawn who lives a few miles from us and she confirmed that the same thing had happened to them.  While I was on the phone with Dawn I was googling and found that a magnitude 6.9 quake (subsequently upgraded to 7.2) had hit Baja California, Mexico two minutes before we felt it here.  DH had looked at the clock when we were watching the pool, so we knew exactly when we had felt it here.

Phoenix is so big though that a friend that lives about 15 miles further east than us didn't feel a thing, nor did a colleague who was up in the north central valley at the time.

Here's a picture of the water mark from the water sloshing out on to the cool decking.  You can see that it went several feet out.

Oh, and for those of you that have read this far, make a note that I have been gathering some things for a post tax season giveaway.  I plan to do a post announcing it, but thought I'd throw it in here too for those of you that read to the end of the post :-).

Work, Olympics, Binding & Shopping

That pretty much sums up the last week.  We are Olympic junkies in this house, particularly the Winter Olympics, which unfortunately take place during tax season.  So, the deal I made with myself was that I had to start work no later than 8 a.m. each day and then work until 7 p.m., and then I was free to watch the Olympics all evening as the primetime coverage starts here at 7 p.m.  To accomplish this I had to give up my treadmill workouts for the next two weeks as I just don't have time to squeeze those in on top of work and still be done by 7 p.m.  The irony that I'm blowing off my own exercise program in order to watch world class athletes do their thing is not lost on me, but that's the way it's got to be right now.  Priorities you know.

While I've been watching the evening festivities, I have been binding the quilts that I quilted in December.  I finished two so far this week and have another in process.  Here's the second 4 Block Christmas Quilt.  You can read about the background of the two quilts here. 

And here's the Fish quilt.  The history of the fish quilt is here.

I've also been cutting some scrap strips of fabric and I purchased some Sandy Gervais Moda pre-cuts last Sunday which arrived on Thursday.  I got one layer cake of Gobble Gobble as well as a dessert roll from that line, and two layer cakes of Frolic.  I've already got a pattern figured out for the Frolic fabric, but the Gobble Gobble was bought just to add to my autumn collection, much of which already consists of Sandy Gervais autumn fabrics.

And finally, I have to ask, does this look comfortable to you?  Echo went to sleep on top of Koda's pen.  All of the magazines, etc. on top are for reading on the treadmill, which is right next to the pen.  It's quite handy as it's just the right height, but does get a bit messy looking, especially after Echo's been through the piles.

Oh, and I had to go back and edit this to show this gorgeous rainbow that showed up outside my window as I was working this evening about 30 minutes before the sun went down.

Crazy day yesterday

After I wrote my post the other day, I tried to stay up to watch my Wednesday night TV, but finally gave up and went to bed at 7:30.  Yes, 7:30.  I slept until 4:30 the next morning, but still spent all day yesterday fighting cold/flu like symptoms.  I even had to lay down and take a nap at one point.  After much research over the last few months and keeping tracking of my headaches and these cold/flu like bouts that seem to come every month, I have concluded that these episodes are hormone related, so the next step is to see what I can do about it.  I can't feel like I have a cold/flu for a week every month, and lose valuable hobby time in addition to work time, especially this time of year when I already have a bunch of tax returns in for prep.

While I was sleeping part of the afternoon away, we were experiencing one of the worst storms in Arizona history.  Once the sun comes up, I will try to get some pictures of the yard, although I can already tell that a lot of the water has soaked in.  Last night, a huge section of the yard was like one big lake and the pool water had gone up by 2 inches.  The wind was so strong at times that we went out in the rain last night to try and get some trees re-secured in hopes that they wouldn't topple over.  From what I can see in the dark, they are leaning this morning, but still standing.  The ground is just too soaked to hold the stakes in place.  The rain stopped at some point overnight, thankfully.  Some parts of the valley got double the rain we did, so I'd hate to see what the yard would have looked like then and the pool probably would have been close to overflowing.  DH built a burm on Wednesday to try and keep the water from pooling around the pool equipment and that side of the house and it seemed to do the job pretty well, except during the worst of the storm.  We'll see how the equipment does when we turn it back on.  We've had it off for the past several days.

Update: Here's some pictures of the results of the storm.  All of the areas with standing water had 2-3 times more water last night.  The bird feeding area (the dirt area at the end of the sidewalk) was a small pond.  The ground is so saturated in parts of the yard that you can't even walk across the rocks without starting to sink.  The pool water is supposed to be below the first tile.  It's so high right now that you can barely see the first tile above the water.

On a quilty/stitchy note, in between propping trees up, I did get a couple of dishcloths crocheted last night while watching a new show called The Deep End, which I enjoyed, followed by Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, both of which were good episodes.

And now I better go get some work done and hope that the computer gremlins that messed with my system yesterday are gone, as well as the hormone gremlims.  I know those won't be gone yet, but I took some Excedrin Extra Strength that I hope will at least keep my functional.