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 Well, considering the blasting some states  got yesterday, our mild temps and moderate winds were pretty good. I had some late evening quality time outdoors. Glass of wine. Book. The usual thing.  Did a Kant refresher. That was very important. The Critiques are something everyone should be familiar with, although the reading can be tough going, but some synopses are available, and those cut through the ponderous verbiage and give you the essential points. Food for thought in times like these.

Sometimes the best advice I can give myself is this: RELAX!

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 Windy and dusty again today, but not all that bad. It actually seems to be somewhat humid. A little weather change is on the way, and a 20% chance of rain has been reduced to 5%. It just won't rain here. That's not a good thing. Lubbock is getting drier and drier. Nobody seems to be much concerned about that, but they probably should be. I could check on the status of our surface water sources, but I'd rather not know. I might panic.

From official sources, you will never hear anything but optimism and no problems regarding Lubbock's water resources. Of course. Anything else would be bad for business. 

Lake Alan Henry is close to full, but...

Lake Meredith

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 But it doesn't bring out the worst in everyone-- not everyone gets caught up in the holiday insanity. You can never go wrong by keeping things simple. KISS. Especially at THIS time of year. Covid seems to be an on-going crap shoot. At any time, a future variation could produce the worst case: highly infectious, able to evade current vaccinations, and much more deadly, making people much sicker for longer periods of time, with significantly greater mortality. No one can say this can't happen, and no one can give the odds, for or against. Not a comforting thought by any means. 

Will Covid be the sort of thing that brings about a "paradigm shift"? Who can say?

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 There's something about this season that really seems to bring out the worst in people. 

That has not always been true. This has not always been a stressful time. But shopping is a terrible experience. The traffic seems crazier than usual. "Happy holidays" is kind of a bad joke. "Merry Christmas" is an excursion into pure fantasy. For most people the whole thing seems to be kind of an ordeal, doesn't it?

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 I really should not complain about a minor dust event here, when on the same day so many states got hit with unprecedented tornadoes. I remember well the F5 that hit Lubbock. I was living on the track of that storm at that time but survived. It's an experience I would never want to repeat. My neighborhood got a sort of glancing blow. I was just a college kid at that time. My 1956 Chevy was parked in the driveway and had only a cracked side window. Trees were down all over, power lines down, and some houses had severe damage. I was living in a garage apartment, brick, and built like a fortress. Lucky me. At one end of the block there were fatalities when the second story of a house there got sheared off.

In those days, Lubbock had a very active tornado season. Many alerts, many funnels, thick black clouds, were things you just expected. Not any more. All that activity seems to have shifted to other areas. The problem today is drought-- prolonged periods of little to no rainfall.