Cometh the Students, Rain, Marching Band, Dogs and More Rain...

For the past several days the campus has been abuzz with the new students moving into the residential dorms. It's the largest Freshman class in the history of the school.  Thursday was like a ground swell of ants. Observing the move from the 4th floor of my office building, I could see multitudes of moms, dads, and students with their push carts full of suitcases, pillows, refrigerators, roll-able carts with drawers full of necessities of dorm living, busy going from cars to dorms back to cars and so forth until the rains came...Oh my gosh, wet stuff falling from the sky!  It rained for at least 30 minutes. Just enough to make it very humid outside, but at least it wasn't 100 degrees.  Some of the parents and students ignored the rain and move their stuff anyways.  

Friday morning found the "The Pride" OU Marching Band conducting an early morning practice.  There is nothing like listening to a first class marching band practicing, which means that Sooner football is around the corner and hoards of Sooner fans will ascend on the city. I detected a touch of cooler air and witnessed a woman taking her morning walk in shorts and a jacket with a hood.  Dave and I looked at each other and mouthed the word "jacket!"  Really?

It was nice enough Friday afternoon that I decided to walk home from work.  It takes about 20 minutes for me to walk from my office to the house.  I have been riding the bus so as to save money.  Dave takes me to work and picks me up for lunch. By riding the bus or walking we save about $340.00 a year.  I could ride the bus in the mornings and then that would save us $680.00 a year.  But Dave and I have a ritual each morning that we are not willing to give up.  It's something that has made our marriage strong for 40 years. 

The "CREW" before the bath

Saturday morning brought forth the sun peeking from behind the heavy clouds. It was nice outside so we decided that the dogs needed a bath.  Dave got the little wading pool out that he bought for the dogs to splash in, I gathered the soap and wash mitt along with my coffee.  We put them in the garden area as the whole area is filled with grass. First we washed Fitz, then Lizzy then Bear.  Fitz loves the water so he decided that he had to chase the water coming out of the hose.  It became a game between he and Dave.  Lizzy is leary of the water but let me scrub her down. I even managed to get her down into the water by flipping her on her side and rolling her in the wet stuff.  She was a good girl and just laid there.  Bear on the other hand had to be retrieved from the farthest corner of the yard and put in the pool and washed.  He is one animal that does not care for the water unless it's to go outside and take care of business and chase frogs, except he is terrified of thunder, go figure. 

Once done I brought them into the other back yard, we have three back yards, to let them start drying off.  I set up my chair and had my cup of "Joe"and was enjoying the morning when I noticed the sky getting a dark, dark grey to the north of us.  I shouted to Dave to check the Weather Underground site and he came back with "Get the dogs in the house now and put up the chair, we have a storm moving in."

I no more got the dogs into the kitchen, in which Dave had the area blocked off with the gate, we wanted the dogs to finish drying, when the heavens opened up and let er rip! The atmosphere was so heavy laden with moisture that  we lost the satellite signal from DirecTV.  It slowed to a drizzle then poured again about an hour later for a good 45 minutes at least.  The system moved out of the area around 3p.m.  It's the most rain we've had since last spring.  We have desperately needed the moisture.  By 8p.m. this evening the ground was dry again and the only way you could tell it had rained was the grass was holding onto the water and the dogs paws got wet when let outside.

Dave got a movie while he was at the store this afternoon. So we had a date night in the living room and watched "The Hunger Games"  It was different but good.  I will have to see it again to really get the gist of it.  By the time it was over the dogs needed out and we were tired.  Although I managed a rally to type this blog. 

Happy trails...