I had the weirdest dream this morning, in which I had a house, a car, and a baby. And a bike, I think, though that might have been in the previous dream.

The house was just down the road from my mother's, but oddly, in that neighborhood of 1950's and later semis, it was some kind of ancient barn conversion, all bare stone walls and exposed beams. The car was brand-new and yellow, but I don't think I ever actually saw it in the dream; I was marching the whole family -- including my father -- down the road to show it off, but we went into the house instead, and I lit a lot of candles. The baby was sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for me; he was about eleven months old, not walking yet; the point at which he started talking, not very clearly but in complete sentences and five-syllable words, was the point at which my suspension of disbelief snapped entirely and I woke up.

It's possible I've been watching too much TLC. (There was a moment in What Not to Wear last night when the victim handed Stacy, the female host, a baby, which she seemed rather unsure what to do with.)

to marykaykare!

Another wind/dust storm this evening; I was struggling to make headway against the wind on my way home from the bus stop. This one brought a tiny bit of rain: just drops in the wind here, maybe a bit more on the campus.

Until a couple of years ago, the official definition of the start of the local "monsoon" was that the dewpoint stayed above 55F for three days in a row. The new definition is "July and August," I believe (Edit: June 15 to September 30), which is simpler to identify but not very informative.

Well, we've had our three days of 50-degree dewpoint, and some cloud build-up in the afternoons and even a few drops of rain. What we haven't had is an actual storm, so far. This afternoon there was a storm warning out, but it didn't come to anything but cloud and wind. The wind was quite impressive when I was on my way home, thrashing the trees about and whipping up the dust and thrumming in the overhead wires, but there hasn't been so much as a rumble or a flicker, let alone the pounding rain and hail that usually herald the breaking monsoon.

The temperature did drop by the best part of twenty degrees in about an hour, though, which suggests either a front moving in or some rain somewhere nearby.

Reply to this meme by yelling (or any other form of writing) "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

green_knight gave me these.

( astronomy, beading, photography, SF, cacti )

Necklace 24 Indian seed beads on thread.

My first venture into seed beads and thread. I'm not completely satisfied with the finishing, and it remains to be seen whether the glue-soaked knots will hold, but the basic idea has been in the back of my mind for months. That's twenty-four 15-inch strands, with at least a couple of hundred beads on each.

Night-blooming cactus Early morning on the UA campus, June 2009

I do love these fragile, flamboyant flowers, though I have to get up uncomfortably early to see them. Yesterday's expedition was a good one; six flowers on the big plant on the chaplaincy corner and a couple in the grove in the shade of Centennial Hall. It was cloudier than usual, which gave me softer light to work with but rather took away the point of being up that early in the summer -- it was no hotter at lunchtime than it was at 7am, really.

No, really.

I went out after night-blooming cacti again this morning, and found some. I also happened across this pair, exploring and blending into the gravel around the Old Main building. Considering the location, they may well be relatives of the little guy in the icon, who was seen just across the street from there a few years ago.

( Bunnies! )

I went out on the first bus this morning, in the hope of catching the night-blooming cactus in the act, but I picked the wrong day; none of the usual spots had anything but buds and spent blooms. It was still very pleasant out, in the long shadows and soft air of the hour after dawn. I bought a second breakfast of latte and cinnamon roll and sat at an outdoor table by the student union to enjoy them. Presently a police car arrived with sirens blaring; two cops got out and jogged in the direction of the bookstore, or maybe the coffee shop I'd just left, leaving the car with the lights flashing. About half an hour later they came back, more sedately, and drove away.

The cicadas are already going full blast; it's going to be a hot day.

Guy 1: I work in software development.
Guy 2: Swamp cooler development?
Guy 1: No, software.

If anyone wants a Dreamwidth invite code, I have three two spare. (They gave me two a few weeks ago, and two more today, but I'd like to hang onto one to make myself a Sekrit Second Journal, I think.)

Let me know your email in (screened) comments, if you'd like one.

I treated myself to a little genuine Swarovski crystal, and it arrived today.

A handful of fire Swarovski crystal: fire opal, topaz, light topaz

I'm not much for flash and glitter as a rule, preferring the subtler sheens and hues of natural semi-precious stones and shell, but these are rather lovely.

Dessert tonight was a fresh (well, supermarket-fresh) nectarine. It was ripe, juicy, and delicious, and it came with a little sticker proclaiming it to be "organic" and "sugar-free."

I don't know which is more disturbing to contemplate: the notion of genetically-engineered fruit with artificial sweeteners built in; the idea that ordinary produce-section fruit might be injected with sugar-water; or the idea that the American public is gullible enough to fall for a label like that.

EDIT: alternatively, I can't read. On closer inspection, the label says "Sugar Tree".

It's a funny thing, being a pedestrian shopper in Tucson. No-one expects it, or makes any concessions or accommodations for the foot trade; presumably the powers-that-be assume that if I had money I'd spend it on a car first and shopping later. Except that I do have money; I just don't want a car -- or the hassle of learning to drive.

It's always been difficult-but-possible for me to shop in the big-box area around my local mall. It involves long slogs through the heat, treks across endless parking lots with not much in the way of pedestrian paths, politely turning down offers to carry my purchases out to the non-existent car, lugging the bags from one store as I shop at another, vaguely aware that this gets me looked at askance. This afternoon, though, hit a new level of awkwardness.

My local Michael's, source of a lot of my beading supplies, shares its parking lot with a Target that since early this Spring -- since the first weekend I went bead-shopping there, in fact -- has been in the process of being pulled down and rebuilt as a SuperTarget. Getting to the Michael's has been ... interesting ... for a while, but it's now reached a stage where there is no unproblematic pedestrian access at all. Both the vehicular entrances open on streets with no adjoining usable sidewalks, so that there's no way in on foot without either jaywalking across a busy main road or traversing a closed and thoroughly dug-up sidewalk. The least-infringing solution I could find involved crossing a few yards of churned-up but not actually fenced-off dirt at the far corner of the lot to get between the crosswalk and a shiny new concrete apron in front of the Radio Shack.

Lily leaves Apartment sign display, Tucson, June 2009

Oy. A couple of months ago, my workplace switched its wireless network over from WEP to WPA2. I had to install a patch on the Palm (which cost $6 and required a hard reset) to make it work with that, but then it was fine. And I got the idea that maybe I should go to WPA on my home network, too. I did that a couple of weeks ago, without too much trouble -- except that the Palm got very flaky about connecting to the home network; it would do it sometimes, but usually only after repeated failures even when sitting a few feet from the router. Tonight, I decided to reverse the operation. (I tried going to WPA2 first, but the Behemoth laptop was having none of that.) The Behemoth laptop happily connected to the reconstituted WEP network, but then wouldn't actually connect to any sites until it got a (rather overdue) reboot. Beetle the Eee was fine with the change; the desktop switched over without missing a beat. The Palm -- still isn't sure about this connecting-to-the-net business. (Though it's fine with all the other networks it meets; it's been connected to another WEP home network, the Phoenix airport free wifi and the UofA public wifi just today.)

I did manage to get it to sync my Plucker version of the latest Shadow Unit, though.

Compass Barrel cactus, UA campus, June 2009

I was sorry to hear that David Eddings has died. (Obituaries at Tor.com and Suvudu.com.)

If you look closely at the icon you can see the Belgariad in MMPB and the Malloreon going MMPB-TPB-HC over the first three books. That was one of the first series for which I haunted bookshops when I knew the next volume was about to come out.) I remember that finding Guardians of the West was like reuniting with old friends, at a time when I badly needed something like that. I grew out of the books a while back, and no longer own most of the later ones, but they gave me many happy hours in my younger days.