Rain, Rudy and Shortages

 It rained!  It's not enough, but we did get precipitation yesterday.  The desert is so dry, the deer are back in droves eating the leaves off the orange trees.  This is the worst eating they have ever done.  Fortunately, they do not like the lemon trees, probably due to the thorns, and those are the only fruit I'm concerned about.  

Look at this poor tree, all the leaves on the bottom are eaten by the evil deer.

We actually had a weather alert yesterday.  It wasn't all that bad here, there was no hail and we're happy about that.

So all of that was exciting, and then we had a decent sunset, which was unexpected.
 

This morning dawned dark and stormy, the weather system was not quite gone.  About 11:30 the sun came out and we decided not to be such loser slugs, and so got dressed and out on the bikes.  It was a good ride.  By the time we got back the wind was up pretty good.  Then it rained some.  The hummingbirds are not liking this, they all look like tiny drowned rats.  But now the sun is out here, and we are much happier.

That's a mourning dove on the flower spike.  He's a little puffed up due to the chill.

So, they served search warrants on Rudy Giuliani this morning.  They were at his house at 6 am.  This just tickles the living snot out of me.  They also went to his law office.  Apparently, people from Ukraine have been in New York spilling everything they know about Rudy.  One person gave the investigators his email and phone passwords and spent about 10 hours going through each and every text and mail, explaining their significance.  I really hope they nail his worthless hide to the wall.

Moving on to first world problems. 

 Last summer here was pretty hot.  We literally had weeks of 110 degrees.  So, we've been thinking about a summer house since all the RVs have been sold, and all of the slots in the RV parks have been booked until the end of time.  So, we thought how about the PNW?  They have good summers generally, unless there are fires in British Columbia.  We've all heard about how nuts the real estate market is at the moment, but we did not fully appreciate just how nuts.  Tiny, old, dumpy houses are going for 20 to 25% over asking on Whidbey Island and everywhere else in the area.  Brokers put the houses on the market Friday.  Everybody spends the weekend touring these dumpy little houses, some of them are actual old fishing shacks that have been remodeled.  The following Friday, the owners review all of the multiple offers they have received for these tiny dumpy houses, and choose the one they like best.  We were interested in one house, but the agent told us it was going to need a lot of work, and it was going to go for way more than we wanted to pay.  So, we're done with that thought.  

In Hawaii, tourists are renting U-Haul pickup trucks for transportation because the cheapest car rental if $773 a day for a Toyota Camry.  Yes, that's a day.  Rental cars are in short supply because the car rental places dumped their inventory because no one was traveling in 2020.  New cars are in short supply because of the global chip shortage.  Prices of used pickup trucks are sky rocketing.  Additionally, gas shortages are predicted for the coming summer travel season.  It's the perfect storm of lack of demand for gas in 2020, which lead to layoffs of the people who drive tanker trucks and deliver gas.  Many of those people were approaching retirement and decided to pack it in.  The schools that train those drivers closed during the pandemic, so there are not any new drivers in the pipeline.  So, there's gas, but no one to bring it to the pump.  Finally, chlorine shortages are predicted for the summer.  One of the plants that makes chlorine burned down.  Apparently, there aren't many of the plants, so there's now a huge hole in that supply chain.  Pool maintenance will be difficult.  It's more of no matter what you want, you can't have it at the moment.

So, things are not dire for us, but it does look like another summer in the Hot Pueblo.