{"id":5622,"date":"2014-05-22T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T01:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5622"},"modified":"2014-05-22T01:00:12","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T01:00:12","slug":"weather-need-not-be-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5622","title":{"rendered":"Weather need not be boring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>When I was a kid, I&#8217;d gripe incessantly about the weather.<\/p>\n<p>It rained seemingly forever in my hometown of Portland, Ore. I&#8217;d whine to my parents. &#8220;I hate the raaiiin,&#8221; I&#8217;d say in the whiniest voice I could muster.<\/p>\n<p>Dad&#8217;s response was usually the same: &#8220;Go talk to God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gee, thanks Dad.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I moved away from home. I went into the Army, traveling to Virginia, to Vietnam, then back to the Pacific Northwest to finish my two-year hitch. &#8216;Nam produced some interesting weather: buckets of rain, followed by stifling heat, then more buckets.<\/p>\n<p>Years after that, my career took me to the Texas Gulf Coast. It rained a lot there, in heavy quantities all at once. Then the clouds would break, the sun would come out. The humidity was, shall we say, stifling.<\/p>\n<p>Then we came to the Texas Panhandle.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike the Gulf Coast, where the weather routinely changes day to day, the weather patterns here have fallen into the same kind of sameness that the rain did when I was a kid.<\/p>\n<p>Then it occurred to me some years ago: It wasn&#8217;t the rain that bothered me in Portland, it was the monotony of it. A similar monotony has settled over the Panhandle in recent years. All that damn sunshine is making me whine, &#8220;I wish it would raaiiin.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, my wife hasn&#8217;t told me to talk to the Almighty, at least not yet.<\/p>\n<p>Well, today the weather turned. It&#8217;s pouring rain as I write this. The TV weather folks say it&#8217;ll be raining for the next few days.<\/p>\n<p>Bring it! Our farmers and ranchers need it. My neighbors and I need for our lawns and gardens. A brief downpour, followed by sunshine, followed by more rain &#8230; that would be heaven for us.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was a kid, I&#8217;d gripe incessantly about the weather. It rained seemingly forever in my hometown of Portland, Ore. I&#8217;d whine to my parents. &#8220;I hate the raaiiin,&#8221; I&#8217;d say in the whiniest voice I could muster. Dad&#8217;s response was usually the same: &#8220;Go talk to God.&#8221; Gee, thanks Dad. Over the years, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5622\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Weather need not be boring<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[276,3672,4609],"class_list":["post-5622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amarillo","tag-portland-ore","tag-texas-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}