Google Earth Rocks!

Not too much has been going on in the Gibson-Rice household although we did discover Google Earth last week. Chuck downloaded the software and it is amazing! We had a great time finding our house, Mom’s and Christine’s and watching the program fly between each (we’re watching you ladies). We also went cruising the world and looked up Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Eiffel Tower. What a kick-ass program! They even had buildings rendered in 3-D for various cities. One of my co-workers said she had heard that the satellites caught a picture of a woman bathing in the nude. Perhaps it’s urban legend but I suppose it’s possible.

We were supposed to go camping this weekend, but Thursday night I became aware of my throat. As my wise father once said, “You should not be aware of body parts.” By Friday morning, I had a full case of body melt down. Alas, I felt to pooey to go camping so we had to postpone our trip. Hopefully we will go next weekend as long as Chuck doesn’t catch what I have.

On a more interesting note, last night we had a tremendous storm role through the Junction. Winds of at least 50 miles per hour, torrential rains and power outages created an exciting evening.

You can’t really see it in this picture, but Chuck’s radio antenna is at a 30 degree angle. I was really worried a window was going to blow out. Apparently some folks near-by had their roof blown off. It was intense. The power was off for two hours and we both read our books by the remaining daylight. Once it got dark, we decided to play cards by candle light. It was pretty romantic despite the lack of air conditioning. Once we got all the candles lit and the cards out, the electricity came back on. We still played and I kicked his butt 2-0.

We have baby birds in one of our hanging baskets and Chuck noticed during the storm they had been blown out. He was only able to find one of them and put it under a tarp until the rains subsided. This morning I saw the momma bird and her other baby back in the nest. Yipee! A happy ending.

This picture was taken last week. They have grown considerably. Take note of the “Popeye” look — the sun was pretty bright that day.

Here is the bird yesterday huddled away from the storm.

Chuck has been working really hard to get some shots of all the hummingbirds in our yard. He got some great ones yesterday and I think this one was taken last week. He also got a beautiful shot of the mountain and a rainbow — again, from a storm last week.