Hello. It’s me!

Yeah, that’s me these days. Just sittin’ there like a fool waiting until the vaccine is available for Mom & Dad (currently scheduled for sometime in mid-August 2023).

Since Mom & Dad don’t want to die at Applebees we don’t leave the house much. This means that I need something external, something outside of my control to create excitement.

Today was a day where external excitement was in abundance.

At about 1:00pm a Severe Thunderstorm rolled through the Valley. As an added bonus, the storm dropped a healthy dose of graupel on our parched desert landscape.

But that’s not even the most interesting aspect of the storm. The cold upper atmosphere was forced downward by the storm … and by about 2:00pm the temperature dipped to a frosty thirty-six (36) degrees.

That’s the coldest afternoon temperature ever recorded in Phoenix.

Dad’s a storm chaser, so he asked me if I wanted to go on a reconnaissance mission. Who wouldn’t want to investigate storm damage. If the choice is sitting in a plush bed or heading outside, I’m heading outside, #amirite?

My first job was to assess threats.

Now, if you are saying to yourself “Hey Dash, you look just a little bit thinner than usual”, you’d be right. Every day Dad serves me a microwaved bowl of peas and carrots (mixed with a dollop of butter and a drizzle of chicken stock or I won’t eat it). My collar is about to fall off of my neck. These are the salad days, so to speak.

Well, I found a threat.

I found a palm frond … this thing fell off a palm tree, descending via the aid of gravity and straight-line winds to the parking lot pavement below me.

Within seconds I applied my maxillae to the frond.

Dry and tasteless, I quickly abandoned the fallen soldier. I think I’d rather die of COVID after eating at Applebees than injest any more of the woody fragment pictured above.

That’s what passes for excitement these days, my dear pups.