Morning and morning and morning.

Last night was good. I got home with milk, so that I actually have some I would dare to drink or pour on my cereal. Then I roleplayed most of the evening away whilst browsing through the Bill Delivery of the month. Aie, but not unexpected, anyways. We'll survive them all. The homeowner's association fees have gone up. :P

I didn't get out of bed 'til about 20 minutes ago, it was so nice and warm. I figured I would make myself late, but that's not bad, because I can get to work between 8 and 9 and everyone's cool. As it is, I won't be very late if at all; as soon as I post this, I'm going, because I'm ready for the day.

The sunrise started as a lovely flare of orange in the ease, and has progressed to a pink-and-purple confection sort of look. It's quite, quite pretty, with the rest of the sky a cloudy grey-blue.

And now, off to work. Hope the traffic is nicer than last night's was. (Stop-and-go. Mostly stop. There was an accident on 217 NB, north of progress. There was a three-car thing with a fire engine present, not reported by the radio, in the left lane of I-5 NB, north of Tualatin (lemme tell you, it backed up I-5 SB really solidly too). There were about 4 more accidents in major highways or on a major Portland road in one case, that the radio reported, that didn't impact my drive.

On the other hand, I was feeling pretty good, I got home at a reasonable time despite that since I aimed to leave at 5 and managed to leave by 5:30, and I wasn't in any of the accidents. Plus, I have fruit snacks. Now I'm going to go grab a couple'a those fruit snacks and take them along to work. :) Hopefully today will go as well as yesterday, and slightly more productive. (Meetings yesterday. Three and a half hours worth of meetings, plus followup to them, plus catchup from last week's sickness and training. Good grief. ;)

I own three umbrellas.

It's raining, and this reminds me that I can't find any of them. I hate to buy another one - it's pathetic - but I'm not that fond of getting soaked when I go walking, either....

So far, the day is going okay. Had an unexpected task, but it was something I could do and I think I can still get the rest of the week's stuff done - it dislodged squeezing in an extra, maybe.

I just paused in the middle of my day for a camera break.

And not one of the photos will come out, I imagine. I don't have a chance. But, oh my, is it beautiful. The dark clouds are scudding across the sky now, a bit before they were still. The right half of my window space is dark, dark charcoal grey; the central is upper charcoal grey and lower silver-white, and the left is a broader spread of light.

The next wave of storm has arrived, and it has arrived with drama. It's dark enough out there to be 3-4 hours later than it is, the wind is still light at ground level but the rain is pouring down, and what isn't dark of the sky is rapidly darkening.

It's beautiful. Even in the time it's taken me to type this, elements of steely grey-blue have touched the right-most edge, and the silver-white is almost gone.

I had to try. I had to try to catch it with a camera, although I almost didn't; I almost couldn't stop staring long enough to get the camera out. I'm pretty sure none of the photos will work, and I'm not even sure I mind completely.

It's dark out now. It's dark, with just barest hints here and there that it might not have been, five minutes ago.

Absolutely beautiful.

PICTURE.

The pictures of the storm did not come out, as anticipated. Some of them sucked most impressively, but most just failed - too dark or too light or too blurry. (None of them managed to succeed technically, so I didn't have to watch them fail on composition.)

However, as the tail end of the storm passed some while after that, I took a few more shots. Three of them were technically okay (two if you object to having it tinted very blue, when the reality was not blue), and of those, one I think actually works. So here it is: