"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky." the quote from Willa Cather, was rummaging through my mind as I biked to work today.

The grip of oppressive summer is weakening here in the Sonoran desert, and this morning the sky was about 75% clear blue and sunny, with a few grey clouds hanging over Phoenix and South Mountain. Out of these isolated clouds hung several thin grey tendrils of rain, perhaps each sprinkling an area of only a square mile with a few drops or known at all ("virga" is the rain that falls but never hits the ground). One pocket passing by over Papago Park let out some lightning flashes and thunder.

There were perhaps 6 or 7 of these seperate climate systems sweeping across the desert floor and the brown smug hanging over Pheonix, sputtering and reforming into a more solid mass of rain near Central and Camelback. I was riding in the sun but 3 miles away someone's windshield was getting splattered.

There's nothing like a beautiful sky to put perspective on things, like Mark's friend that recently moved on, or Scott's dealing with his son's bike accident, or Miles sharing the birth of his daughter. I was not even bothered by yesterday's wasted afternoon on a programming attempt that I thought would take only an hour, that was fine until I tried to clean up and comment the code. I even ignored the woman too busy yapping on her cellphone to stop at the light I was crossing.

Have an interesting day.