As for example

Yesterday was a day that underscored things I’ve talked about in recent posts. That’s not unusual, of course, but it’s not often that I see examples so close to each other, and certainly not on the same day.

The photo up top is of my weedy back lawn yesterday afternoon. It had become about as overgrown as around a month ago (“almost” because it was three weeks between mows, not four), and this happened because of the reason I talked about last Tuesday: Rain—lost and lots of rain. The only days it didn’t rain were days I wasn’t able to do the mowing. As it happens, I was planning on visiting my mother-in-law yesterday, but when the sunny weather wasn’t going away, so I decided to do the mowing first.

When I got to my mother-in-law’s place, were laughing about not being able to remember what day it was, something I mentioned in a more serious context yesterday. After I left from my visit, I headed to one the home centres, Mitre 10 Mega, to pick up some suplies the other one (Bunnings Warehouse) doesn’t carry. I didn’t know what traffic would be like, much as I talked about on m post about Boxing Day. But wait, there’s more!

When I went to Bunnings on December 27, it was technically an ordinary Saturday, so I knew the hours would be the same. But yesterday, January 2, was a public holiday, and I realised I had no idea what the opening hours were for Mitre 10 or the supermarket I was going to afterward. I looked them up online before I left my mother-in-law’s place—and had some trouble finding the answer. Mitre 10 seemed to be their normal 7pm, but the supermarket closing was 7pm, a couple hours earlier than normal.

I got to Mire 10 around 5 to 6, picked up the first thing on my list, and then a minute later an announcement came over the P.A. that they were closing in four minutes. Fortunately, I’d looked up the aisle and bay that other items were in, and just skipped over what I hadn’t written down, and headed to the checkout, feeling a kind of disappointed frustration (though, to be clear, I still like the store: It’s NZ-owned and closer to my house than Bunnings is, but Bunnings has greater depth in some specifically hardware things, which I won’t go into right now. You’re welcome).

When I got to the supermarket, they had a sign with all their holiday hours for past two weeks, and it was, in fact, 8pm, so I could take me time shopping. I was back home before 6pm.

And speaking of rain, it was still sunny when I got home last night, but the clouds moved in and around 8:30 I heard some of the expected thunder, accompanied with heavy rain. Around midnight, the rain became extrelemy heavy and there was louder thunder. All of which was over in around an hour or so. Today started out sunny again, then yet more rain, and then thunder, returned early afternoon.

Rain has clearly been the number one topic over the past month or so in particular. I thought it was interesting how just one day had so much of what I talked about over the past week or so. But the holidays are over for now (the next one, Auckland Anniversary Day, is Monday, January 27), so it’ll mostly be mostly ordinary days. And mostly rainy, too, apparently. Oh, well.