Holy humidity, Batman!

Before I even address what I was originally going to post about - the crazy weather we're having - I must take a moment to say, "What is UP with Blogger????" It's taken me all day to get the screen to come up so I could post. Sheeeeeeeesh.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. It's been a heck of a spring so far for us Central Texans. We came into the season in a drought - really hurtin' for water. And the past couple of weeks, that little problem has been solved, or at least improved. We've gotten a lot of rain. Like 10 inches this month, and it's only the 9th. Maybe people in Seattle are used to that, but here in the Land of the Parched Earth, that's a lot of rain. Luckily, it's spaced itself out a bit, giving us breathers for the water to soak in before the next patch of rain comes, so that we're not having flooding problems. But the mosquitos are already out in force, and that's something I could do without.

And we *are* having hail and wind problems. Two weeks ago, they had a crazy bad hail storm down the road from us in San Marcos, and it really made a mess out of people's cars and house roofs. Even traffic lights got the crap beat outta them with some of the little hoods that go on top of the lights so you can see them better getting shattered. You could even see on the pavement near the freeway where hail stones had blasted away some of the grime that had accumulated from years of car exhaust and the elements. I went to the outlet mall Saturday and thought some of the shops were abandoned until my mom told me that no, they were still open - their signs had just been destroyed. It was bad.

Then last Thursday, it came Austin's way. A huge storm with hurricane force winds (or so I'm told - about 70 mph) and hail just battered the whole area. I know people who have been without power since last Thursday because so many trees snapped power lines. A sidenote on that is that alot of people in high-dollar neighborhoods with mature trees fought the city's tree-trimming program, because they liked the leafy look of their big trees and didn't want the city doing "excessive" trimming. Now those people have been without power for almost a week (that's where the long-term outages were), and guess who some of them blame? The city. How much should people like that be slapped? But I digress.

In any case, I guess this is the first time I'm grateful that my trees are little baby trees that provide no shade and probably precious little carbon dioxide. But they stayed rooted in the ground during all that, so they get to be called Trooper Trees now! I may get to see my Trooper Trees grow into mature, leafy, shade trees someday if the home prices keep rising around town, everywhere except my neighborhood. I read a story in USA Today about how prices are rising in Austin, and I just sighed. I got my property appraisal last week, and my valuation actually went down. Depressing since the hope was that this home would be an investment - that after a few years, when the neighborhood was all built out, values would go up and I could sell and upgrade. Doesn't seem to be happening that way.

There's a state highway going in less than 2 miles from my neighborhood, and I'm hoping that will increase, not decrease, values as development pops up because of it. I'm sad for development to happen since the area around my neighborhood is rural and it's nice to feel like you're in the country. But it's even nicer to see the biggest investment I have appreciate rather than stagnate or depreciate. I'd have to take a pretty huge loss when I sell for rent to have been a better deal, so I know it wasn't a mistake to buy, and I do love the house, but I grit my teeth now when all my friends talk about how much their houses are appreciating. As Ren from "Ren and Stimpy" would say, "That's just great. For YEW!!!!!!"