Warmed Cloud Belly

What a day for photos!

If I had a terrific camera and a photographer lived inside of me . . . then this page would dazzle with what I'd post tonight.

Today the sky was twice as wide as normal and filled to capacity with BIG HUGE clouds that looked like they'd be so fun to bounce around in and on. I could have stared at them all day, but my calendar kept saying, "Come on, Come on! Enough lookey lou-ing! You've got places to be, and things to do! Come on now!"

So I "came" or maybe that was "went."

I am on the evaluating team for another instructor. So I left the house late morning. When I left, I was dressed warmly, but I forgot to bring my long coat. In the short drive to the campus, the rain began as a mist and very quickly I had the wipers on in order to see through the rain. It was pouring. I parked at the college and thought, "I can't walk to my office and then across campus in this rain. I'll be soaked."

So I sat in my car for a few minutes and like any good southern California girl, I thought, "This will stop in a few minutes and I'll get inside without getting wet and before it starts again."

So okay, 10 minutes later I was still in the car and the rain was still coming down. I drove back home and into the garage. Dashed inside and up the stairs, grabbed my coat, actually grabbed two in case one got soaked, and drove back to the campus. Of course, it had stopped raining during the coat getting escapade! That's okay. I love my long luscious corduroy coat.

I had brought my laptop with me, papers to grade, and a little of this and a little of that. In my office, I "docked" my laptop on the docking station (sounds like a boat), but it's not. Well, maybe it is. It is almost 5 years old and misbehaving all too often and I've considered throwing it in the ocean. But the college hasn't offered any new computers lately, so I just talk "sweet nothings" to my laptop and hope that it will respond. So, when I pressed the "on" button and it finally powered-up, the icons on my desktop were twice their normal size. Maybe they'd eaten a box of chocolates when I wasn't looking, but honestly, I did not think it was very funny and I was not finding the magic place to click to reduce them back to their normal size.

I missed an online workshop that I was registered for (thankfully it was free). And then quickly it was time to get across campus to the classroom where I was to evaluate a colleague. I stayed there for 90 minutes and now have a serious report to write and present to the evaluation team. It's not a favorite part of my job.

Finally it was pack-it-up time; load-it-in-my-car time; and get-'er-home time. I realized there wouldn't be much at home to prepare for dinner so I phoned Mr. Fun to announce that we needed "a wife" because someone had to do the shopping and I didn't draw the short straw. He likes to eat considerably more than I do, so he agreed to make a detour through the grocery store on his way home.

I arrived home -- I set the table for dinner and then ran upstairs, grabbed the phone to pay a couple bills that are due tomorrow, and then started grading papers.

Then, beneath me the garage door went up, his car rolled in, garage door went down, and the man of my life was inside. I trotted down the stairs to greet him. Before I could count to 5000, dinner was on the table.

We had evening functions to attend. So all the other photos -- the clouds that would make Joni Mitchell sing; the rainbow, a sight that always triggers the thought "somewhere over . . . ;" and everything else I clicked were out-voted when I captured this moment as the sun was warming the belly of the sky. I stood there on one of the busy streets of our city clicking my little "point and hope" -- the one that is held together with a fat rubber band, and hating the thought that I had to go inside to the gathering that I was supposed to be at and miss the light show in the sky.

But there it is -- in all its blandness -- a Wednesday that I'll always remember because I took the time to Blip, to Blipfoto this day. Even though it didn't come with any star-studded sidewalks or neon billboards, it did come with sighs, deep-breaths, and contemplation of puffy clouds, rainbows, and the sun's glow. Now, I've got to finish grading those papers.

If anyone has read this far, I'll just be flat-out amazed!
Good night from Southern California.

Rosie (& Mr. Fun--the grocery shopper), aka Carol

P.S. I hope to do some serious commenting soon -- actually commenting is anything by serious; it is actually usually so fun and funny, but I've got to face students tomorrow and they are hoping for my comments and they are the reason that I get a paycheck, so I'm gone now to their papers. Ugh!