How to tell a local.

Haven’t put up photos in a while, more of not taking the time to Photoshop ones in the camera, and not carrying the camera around as much. But here are a few to catch up.

We recently had a ‘heat wave’ here in Nevada. It is supposed to be something unusual, but weather report today calls for a high of only 99f. During the recent hot weather we ended up with 9 days of over 110f, matching a past string, and five days of over 115f, which is a record. One of those days we had a nighttime low of 93f, which again was a record warm night, and a high of 117f, which tied the 1942 record high temp ever recorded in Vegas.

But with thunderstorms last evening it cooled off a lot. At sunset at our house it was down in the 80s, so I pulled out the Ipod and took a walk, something I haven’t done for a while due to the heat. It’s usually around 100 at sunset, but 87 now feels real nice. I listen to music and walk for about an hour – the range that the diet group I worked with in SD suggests. For all of the walk I could see the thunderstorms off to the east. There was a flash flood alert for that part of the county and northern Arizona. It was almost continuous lightning. Looked very interesting, looking past the well lit strip hotels at the lightning in the distance.

Here’s a little test – how do you tell a local from a tourist? Usually on the street it’s hard – but possible. Most locals wear the free t-shirts from the locally oriented casinos – the Stations, etc. while the tourists get the t-shirts from the big strip casinos, or the ones that say ‘Las Vegas’ on them. That’s ‘cause the locals get the t-shirts free off of assorted promotions while tourists buy them to show off.

In the parking garage? Look at this car and notice some things.

Two things to note – first is the window tint. You will find that most people in the southwest pay for the tinting. Not like LA, where they do it to hide, but here to block the sun. If you buy the good stuff it blocks 98% of the UV rays. In this example the back windows have the real dark stuff and the front windows have a little lighter coating – that’s what is legal here, but some people go for the dark on the front too. It will get you a ticket if stopped, but you can hide behind it at traffic lights, and when you cut somebody off.

The other item in this shot is the towel on the steering wheel. You can’t tint the front windshield, and the sun here will make the seats and steering wheel too hot to touch after just a short while. Most people get cars with cloth seats to avoid having skin come off when wearing shorts. Sometimes you buy a cloth steering wheel cover, but some people don’t like them so they usually cover the steering wheel when parked. Sometimes you will find one of those reflecting folding screens in the front window, but not always.

Our second shot is inside the car.

Here you will see an assortment of sunglasses and a bottle of water. The water will get hot sitting in a closed car, but it’s better than nothing when you are dying of thirst.

On to other topics – we put a large trumpet vine in the back a few months ago. It seems to like the sunlight –

and the hummingbirds really like the flowers. We will be training this one up the post and over the top of a little open area between covered sections. You can see our bushes are doing well too. The purple sage are starting to bloom. I'll take shots of those when they are more colorful.

For those of you that are Buffy fans, or Lord of the Ring fans, I came across this trailer last night: Lord of the Rings (with Buffy) I don’t know how they were able to merge the new people, and can’t imagine Sarah working for this, but it seems to complicated to fake so she probably did it as a joke.

And back to my local updating – granddaughter Eli. Here with grandma

and here with great grandma