Rain, A Gunman, and An Owl

The first real rain of the season arrived yesterday, making the sidewalks slick with a pasty brown mulch of leaves and mud, and making the asphalt slippery with a mixture of water and several months worth of accumulated oil. I spent most of last night worrying that the power was going to go out at work, especially since they've rerouted the backup generator to only supply power to the main office building and science lab construction site. That means that, if the power goes out, the building I'm in and the buildings that the campers are sleeping in are without power. I ended up not having to break out the battery powered lanterns though.

At our second site there was some concern about a deranged gunman headed their way, but evidence now points to him heading in the opposite direction. This started when early this morning, a man showed up for a meeting at the nearby quarry and opened fire, killing 3 and wounding others. He has also been implicated in a carjacking. The last time I checked, he hadn't been caught and most of the area schools were still in lockdown mode.

It's hard to segue away from that one, so consider this my attempt. I'm still trying to walk every day, and one of my goals this month is to finish walking all of the trails at Almaden Quicksilver County Park. It won't take me long because I've nearly walked all of them already. My most recent hike there was with Willow, when we went on a twilight hike over the weekend. We hadn't intended it to be a twilight hike, but the combination of our tardiness and the early autumn sunset made it so. It's a good thing too, because if we'd been earlier or the sunset had been later we wouldn't have gotten to watch a Great Horned Owl hanging out in a tree near the trail. The city lights, as viewed from the darkened hill, helped set the mood as well. I've always enjoyed looking down at the glittering constellations of street lights, although to properly enjoy them I have to stop thinking about things like electricity and suburban expansion.

The forecast today calls for thunderstorms. I haven't heard any evidence of this yet, but my ears are open and ready.

Currently listening to: Sand "Desert Navigation" and Opeth "Heritage"