Rain

We picked up Big Brother's Daughter Sunday night at the Orlando airport.

She's 20 and down from Utah to visit with us a while. We plan to grind her down to nothing with just how boring life can be in Florida. It seems that the rain will be an integral part of our nefarious plan.

Almost every day for several weeks now it has been raining. Florida rains are a bit different from what the rest of America gets.

The thunder storms mostly happen in the afternoons, when the winds shift between westerly to easterly. The warm ocean air hits the drier air of the morning and Poof!, instant rain showers.

Then, when it's all over, since most of the ground here is sandy, the water is gone pretty quick, so you can get back out and do stuff.

The land is so flat and low here, that anywhere buildings are put up, they are required to dig retention ponds next to them to provide adequate drainage until the water can be absorbed.

These retention ponds around businesses are often made into an attractive part of the landscape. The one for the set of buildings where I work is really full and pretty now. It has a nice sidewalk all the way around it and is a great place for walking...when it isn't raining. (And if we're really lucky, an alligator wanders into a pond at work, prompting our Security to interrupt their endless games of spades and send out a warning email to us all to neither approach or feed the alligators. Duh.)

The buildings where I work are mostly without any windows, and are pretty well sound proof, so when I can hear thunder inside at work, I know it's really bad outside.

So Niece and Number One Daughter went to the beach this morning and hopefully got their fill of the incredibly hot sun and humidity before this afternoon's storms started.

If you have ever been near here to Orlando's attractions, you've probably experienced the afternoon showers, only ours here on the coast tend to be more stormy than the one's in-state.

The worst part of the storms is that one of our dogs, Lilly, is scared of thunder, and when I hear it thunder during the day at work, I picture her cowering under something at home, trembling. She's really emotional and thunder truly scares her, while the other dogs look at her like, "What's wrong with you?"

Here's a pic of Lilly in Alpha Dog Mode, barking at us, demanding whatever food we were so foolish as to leave on the counter where she can smell it.

That's about all I have to say for today. In fact, I'll probably be entering this post in the "Most Boring Blog Post Ever" contest, if there is such a thing.

I think I have a real winner here.