Nature’s Fireworks- Soundtrack of a Thunderstorm

6:13 am. It seemed awfully early to be awake. I was trying to figure out what woke me up, when I heard it again. Thunder. Oh goody. As if I didn’t get enough rain through my last 2 weeks in Philly, I apparently brought the weather home with me. I decided to go ahead and get up because thunderstorms in the desert are really something to see.

Here Comes the Rain Again
So I threw on some clothes (cut offs and tie dye seemed reasonably clean from the pile in the chair. Better than the pile from the floor, anyway), went to go make some coffee and then sit out on my balcony and watch the show. It seemed pretty cool outside for once. The temperatures out here in July aren’t for the faint hearted- dry heat or not. 107 degrees is still like standing in a hair dryer. So I checked the temperature and sure enough it was about 82 degrees. Awesome. Once the coffee was done, I decided to go ahead and stick with the Holiday theme and used my Christmas tree mug (or as Marienne might refer to it- the Chrysler Building mug). Now fortified with my drug of choice (since I am now closing in on 3 weeks strong for not smoking- thank you Jesus), I sat outside and watched the rain come down across the valley.

The Sound of Silence
Aside from the sound of the rain hitting my carport, things seemed pretty quiet. Now that may not sound unusual for about 6:30 in the morning, but I assure you, there is generally some noise going on at all hours here. I realized what I wasn’t hearing were airplanes. I don’t live in a flight path, but I do still hear the planes taking off from McCarran since they tend to take off in my direction before turning south. After a few minutes, I realized they had changed the takeoff pattern. How lucky am I to be so intimately familiar with the flight patterns at my airport? So, I decided that the thunderstorm needed a soundtrack to make it a little more interesting. Generally, rain is rain no matter where you are. The differences between the rain here and in the Midwest is that it doesn’t take much to flood the streets here and it doesn’t rain constantly, all day, for days on end. Thank God.

The 1812 Overture or perhaps a nice Sousa March?
So I started going through the iPod and trying out some music that I thought might be appropriate accompaniment for a Thunderstorm. Just to make it more interesting, I also threw in the Holiday slant to it as well. Can you believe how exciting it is to be me? Here are some of my top picks. And by top I mean until I got bored.

• America- Horse with No Name- How cool is this? I get America and a desert all in the same song. There is even talk of a flood at some point.
• Billy Joel- Goodnight Saigon- The song is way too long and way too sad, but I thought it was suitable for the violence of the weather and the holiday.
• Bob Marley and the Wailers- Redemption Songs
• Creedence Clearwater Revival- Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
• Diana Krall- Garden in the Rain
• Ben Folds Five- Missing the War
• Beatles- Here Comes the Sun
• Barbra Streisand- On a Clear Day
• Enya- Exile
• Eva Cassidy- Early Morning Rain
• Green Day- Wake Me Up When September Ends
• Hollies- The Air that I Breathe

Yeah, so I got about as far as “H” in my iPod before it was too hot outside, my coffee was gone, and the storm had essentially moved on. Good start to an otherwise uneventful day. The other highlights included organizing my CD’s into albums and finally getting rid of those jewel cases. And then reorganizing my DVD’s in the space created by my CD’s. But wait, it got even better than that. Throw in some lemon sorbet and an Eddie Izzard DVD and you have a pretty complete picture of my 4th of July. I think I looked out my kitchen window at some point and saw some fireworks, but Eddie’s dialogue about the Death Star canteen was more entertaining. And the very funny observation that America always seems to win the “World” Series in baseball.

Hope you all had a nice holiday.