Sorry for the relative dearth of updates today. Becky’s brother Casey is coming into town tonight, so we’re busy cleaning the apartment and getting ready for his visit.

Here’s one thing I definitely need to post, though: a suspect has been arrested in Phoenix’s other serial-killer mystery, the “Baseline Killer” case.

It seems the news story about snakes in a movie theater in Arizona was a m*****f***in’ hoax.

Taking the joke a little too far:

Two live diamondback rattlesnakes were released in an Arizona movie theater during a showing of the new film “Snakes on a Plane,” according to Local 6 News.

Authorities said pranksters released the young venomous rattlesnakes in a dark theater at the AMC Desert Ridge near Tatum and Loop 101 in Phoenix.

The two snakes caused a panic in the dark theater, according to the report. …

No one was injured in the incident and, so far, the culprits have not been caught.

Officials believe the snakes were smuggled into the theater in backpacks. …

The snakes were released into the desert.

I have had it with these m*****f***ing snakes in this m*****f***ing theater!

P.S. Snakes on a Senate!

Here are some pretty views from this morning’s drive through eastern Arizona:

We’re all moved out of our apartment in Glendale. Here’s the view of downtown Phoenix as seen from the I-10 East this evening, en route to Becky’s parents’ house in Gold Canyon:

Tomorrow morning — at 6:00 AM, if everything goes according to plan — we depart for Indiana, via the 60 East into New Mexico and then state routes 36 and 117 through the lava beds. After that, it gets boring: we’ll most likely be taking the I-40 to Oklahoma City, the I-44 to St. Louis, the I-55 to Chicago and the I-90 to South Bend. Last time, we did the drive in two days, stopping in OKC; we’ll see how it goes this time.

Oh, and there will be no “CamryCast” this time around — sorry! Becky vetoed the webcast idea, having been somewhat annoyed by it the first time. :) It wouldn’t really be feasible anyway, as we’re even more crowded than before; we acquired additional stuff over the course of the summer (as always seems to happen), so there wouldn’t be room for the webcam(s) or the always-on computer!

Even so, it should be another adventure: two humans, three cats, a betta fish (whose tiny tank is literally buried under clothes in the backseat) and a greyhound, in a Camry, heading back to Notre Dame. Wish us luck!

Adios, Arizona!

P.S. Click here to view highlights of “CamryCast” back in May. (I actually finally updated this page, just now, with all the “highlights” that hadn’t been added previouly.)

All of my blog posts from that trip can be viewed here. Speaking of which, never fear, I will be blogging this trip, too — I just won’t be webcasting it.

…you lost in the previous election, when you were the incumbent… and now that you’re running to get your old job back, you don’t get new signs… you simply re-use the old signs that asked voters to “re-elect” you, covering up the “re” with a (slightly different colored) sticker that says “bring back”… thus resulting in a phraseology (”bring back - elect”) that doesn’t really make any sense at all!

Heh.

But clearly the best signs in the Valley are these ones:

Now that’s a campaign slogan! ;)

It may not have meant quite as much as the Rose Bowl, but Reggie Bush got the better of Vince Young this time in their preseason NFL debut.

In a game whose most notable event was a collision between a mascot and a quarterback, Bush’s Saints beat Young’s (and LenDale White’s) Titans, 19-16. Young, who came into the game in the second quarter, was 4-of-11 passing for 56 yards. Bush, who played only in the first half, ran the ball six times for 59 yards — most of that yardage coming during a vintage Reggie Bush Moment in the first quarter (”all of a sudden, the Titans looked like Fresno State,” said the SportsCenter guy) that went for 44 yards:

source file

Bush also had two receptions for 10 yards.

In other NFL news, the Arizona Cardinals won the first game at their new stadium, in the city where Becky and I have been living all summer, Glendale. The final score was 21-13. But although Arizona won, quarterback John Navarre was not exactly impressive: “Unsigned first-round pick Matt Leinart’s negotiating position seemed to grow stronger with every ball Navarre threw to the wrong-colored shirt.” Speaking of Leinart…

A new future allegedly began Saturday at a shiny new stadium in Glendale. Except a big piece of that future was about the only one not in attendance.

Instead, Matt Leinart was back at home, watching on television.

“This was a huge day for the franchise and a day Matt really looked forward to,” said Chuck Price, one of Leinart’s agents. “I mean, he’s a Cardinal. He wanted to be a part of this.”

In some ways, Leinart was a part of the Cardinals’ 21-13 victory over the Steelers. While he watched from a distance, his jersey was being sold inside the building. In fact, his was the only quarterback jersey available at a pro shop on the main concourse.

Thus, the terrible contradiction: The Cardinals are already profiting off Leinart, even though he’s the only unsigned draft pick remaining in the NFL.

“Eventually, it’s got to happen,” said head coach Dennis Green, although he didn’t sound too convincing.

The “Serial Shooter,” linked to 36 shootings of humans and animals throughout the Phoenix Valley — killing 5 people and injuring 17 — has reportedly been arrested. Two arrests have been made here, and “one is the suspected shooter, the other the driver,” according to the AZ Central homepage.

The Serial Shooter is one of two serial killers currently stalking the area. The other is known as the Baseline Killer (or Baseline Rapist).

One of the underappreciated benefits of having a dog is that, by virtue of the necessity of going outside at odd times to walk him, you sometimes see things in the sky that you would otherwise miss. Once, while walking Robbie, I saw the International Space Station pass overhead; another time, I saw a meteor. Just last week, I caught an awesome lightning show because Robbie demanded to be walked at just the right moment.

Well, today it happened twice. This morning at just after 4:30 AM, Robbie woke me up with his characteristic whine that, translated from dog to human, means “I have to pee!!!” Needless to say, my initial reaction was something other than gratitude. But, as it turned out, the dog’s timing allowed me to catch a rare, beautiful glimpse of the very early pre-dawn sky — including the morning star, Venus:

(Of course, Venus is really a planet, not a “star,” but you knew that.)

Then, almost 15 hours later, at a time when I would normally be sitting inside blogging or watching TV, Robbie again demanded a walk — and, looking at the very same horizon, I witnessed a beautiful, fleeting display of sunlit clouds:

The timing really was perfect. Literally five minutes later, the sun had moved on — except for a tiny, tiny sliver of pink at the top, and that too disappeared with 10 or 15 seconds after I took this picture:

Pretty neat. Thanks, Robbie. :)

P.S. Sometimes, walking the dog gives me the even rarer opportunity to videotape myself breaking my elbow while attempting to jump over a tennis net. But that’s not quite the same thing…

As you may already have heard — Texasyank certainly has — Reggie Bush signed a contract over the weekend worth $62 million with the New Orleans Saints, and thus is no longer a holdout at their training camp.

The same cannot be said, however, of Matt Leinart and the Arizona Cardinals. Not only have they failed to agree on a contract — as a result of which Leinart is a no-show at training camp, which started yesterday — but they aren’t even talking.

More on both Leinart and Bush here.

As my previous posts (”An AWESOME lightning show” and “HOLY CRAP!“) attest, we had one heck of a night of thunderstorms in the Phoenix Valley this evening.

The storms are dying down now, and unlike 20,000+ SRP customers, we still have power — and thus, air conditioning — here in Glendale. Phew. (Knock on wood.)

Here’s an article about the storms. It quotes KPHO helicopter reporter Scott Clifton as calling this “the largest electrical storm I’ve seen in years.” It was certainly the most fantastic lightning show I personally have ever seen. As of ~10:15 PM, the KPNX lightning tracker had picked up 2,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes throughout the Valley. (See KPNX video here.)

Wow. What a storm. You can see my lightning photos here and here (or just scroll down).

Anyway, I’m going to bed. G’nite.

Just when the aforeblogged severe thunderstorm cell seemed to be weakening, an enormous line of thunderstorms popped into existence, out of nowhere, and is now stretched across the Valley just south of us. The entire southern sky is lit up with frequent, vivid lightning. Amazing!

Also, I think the storms may have taken out the radar, which hasn’t updated in over 40 minutes. (UPDATE: Yup.)

P.S. Although the Phoenix radar is down, the long-range Tucson radar still gives a general (if lower-resolution) idea of what’s going on.

UPDATE: Here’s another radar view.

The “Newshawk 5″ helicopter reporter for KPHO is calling this “one of the largest electrical storms I have seen in years come through the Valley.”

8,000 customers without power right now.

There was a microburst in Scottsdale with winds in excess of 80 mph.

Severe street flooding.

Where we are, in Glendale, there has been very little rain or nearby lightning strikes, and only a mild breeze. We were sort of like a hole in a donut of storms. But we got a great view of the lightning all around us!

Lightning map here.

UPDATE, 10:23 PM: Now 20,000 without power, according to KPHO.

UPDATE, 10:45 PM: Here’s a pair of videos I took — one while standing in our parking lot, one while walking down the street — that give you some idea how frequent the lightning was (though it was even more frequent at the storm’s peak):

source file

And here are a few more lightning photos:

UPDATE, 10:50 PM: I keep talking about this storm in the past tense, but in reality it’s still happening. In fact, we’re just now finally getting some serious rain and loud thunder (i.e., from nearby lightning) here in Glendale. I just hope we don’t lose power…

UPDATE, 10:58 PM: The NWS Phoenix radar is back online. You can see orange-colored radar echoes directly over Glendale, which is the storm we’re getting right tnow.

UPDATE, 11:15 PM: It looks like the storms’ direction has changed (again), and the cells in North Scottsdale are now headed this way. It could be a long, noisy night in Glendale.

I just came in from watching one of the most incredible lightning displays I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. As you can see on radar, a severe thunderstorm cell is moving south through the east-central Valley — due east of Glendale — and at one point, I swear it was producing 5 to 10 visible cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per minute. It was amazing. Pictures to follow shortly.

UPDATE: Here are a some of my better photos…

UPDATE: Much more in a new post above.

En route to Becky’s parents’ house in Gold Canyon this evening after work, Becky and I drove smack into a bitchin’ haboob:

Here’s the view looking back into the Valley from Gold Canyon. (Here’s a close-up look.)

But the most truly awesome sight was the dust cloud running smack into the Superstition Mountains:

The dusty sunset was pretty nice, too:

The Phoenix Valley’s monsoon season began on July 2 — the first of 3+ consecutive days of dew points 55° or higher, the official criteria for the start of the monsoon — but thus far, we’ve been getting more of the bad stuff that the monsoon brings (high humidity on top of the stifling heat) than the good stuff (bitchin’ thunderstorms).

That changed this weekend, though, at least for a day, when an awesome thunderstorm hit Gold Canyon just as Becky, her dad, her brother and I were enjoying a nice relaxing dip in the pool. There didn’t appear to be much threat of bad weather when we started swimming; the forecast didn’t call for storms in our area, and what thunder we could hear was very distant. But about 20 minutes after we got in the pool, the wind changed, and very, very suddenly, stuff started blowing around, the sky opened up and began pouring, and an ear-splitting thunderclap sent us scampering out of the pool. (Admittedly, there are dozens of much taller things nearby that are more likely to be struck by lightning than that small, below-ground swimming pool, but still, it’s obviously not worth taking the chance.)

The thunderstorm that hit us basically developed right overhead. You can see for yourself on this animated-GIF radar loop. (We were located near “J” in “Apache Junction.”) Here are some of my pictures of the storm.

Once out of the pool, we saw lightning strike the iron-laden Superstition Mountain several times, which was totally cool. The heavy rain and wind, flooding and rain patterns in the sky were also pretty neat. But the most impressive thing, actually, was the temperature drop. It went from over 110 degrees — which is very hot for the far East Valley where Becky’s parents live — to 78 degrees in the course of about 20 minutes.

UPDATE: Here’s some video of the storm. I didn’t catch any lightning on video, alas, but you can see the rain and wind:

source file