"Partly Cloudy"

I walked down to the Market, stopping for a visit with my favorite golden retriever on the way. He's so nice and shaggy. I have no idea what his name is, but I always call him "Pal." He barks when he sees me coming down the street, I've been stopping to scratch his nose through the fence since he was a pup.

I told him to go inside, because I thought it was going to rain. I had no idea how right I was.

So, I got down to Ben and Jerry's and they actually had the flavor I wanted. I ate my scoop and read one of the free community newspapers. Right as I was leaving, raindrops started to fall from the sky. Aha! It's a good thing I brought my umbrella, I said to myself. (OK, so I didn't say that at all. I walked under the awning for a block, and finally opened my umbrella as I crossed Seventh Street.)

There's nothing quite like the smell of rain hitting a city street. I think it's ozone, but to me that's what rain smells like.

So I'm walking home, and I notice that my spiffy umbrella has a hole in the top where the fabric has ripped. I'm not sure when that happened. The way the thing is constructed, with a mesh lining, I didn't feel any water coming through. That was pretty cool.

I had a feeling that this line of storms might be worse than the ones we've had recently, namely because I was outside as it came in. The wind picked up when I was about a block from home. My pal the golden retriever had gone inside, and the lightning was starting to bug me.

It actually got worse after I was inside. The water seemed to be coming down in buckets; the wind whipped everything around and I ran around the house closing windows. It was about that time when I heard the hail.

I was standing under the skylight trying to determine how badly it was leaking when I felt little tiny pellets coming through. It seems to me that if there were cracks large enough to admit ice pellets, more rain should have come through. Anyway, the skylight needs to be fixed. I don't even know who you call to have your skylight fixed.

The hail continued for about five minutes and then stopped as suddenly as it had started. The whole thing freaked me out.

Random.

before - after