Nighttime.

Driving back from the airport was just magical tonight. It had just rained, and off in the distance there were still lightning strikes within the retreating cloud-line. There were also fireworks lighting up the sky - the rain must have lifted the ban for the Fourth. Some of my favorite songs just happened to be playing on the radio, and H. enjoyed mocking the horrible rhyming in some of them (rhyming "things" with "things" apparently isn't legal). It was just the perfect ending to our exciting and wonderful trip.

I might have mentioned that our downstairs neighbors had moved out. Well, walking up to our apartment I noticed we already have new ones. These neighbors seem classy. Maybe it's their umbrella and patio furniture on the balcony, or maybe it's their crib and rocking chair that they've got in one of the rooms. (I promise I'm not a creeper - they just left their lights on and their blinds open, and I was curious.) While I can't say I'll ever meet them on purpose, it's nice to know that they aren't doing anything illegal in their apartment.

The one thing that stopped down the apartment homecoming bliss lay in the kitchen. Before we left, I had rinsed all the dirty dishes, loaded up the dishwasher, put some detergent in there, and closed it so that I could clean the rest of the kitchen. I distinctly remember not starting at that moment because H. was working from home and I didn't want to disturb him with our incredibly loud dishwasher. As you may have guessed, I never actually turned it on. But, it is running now, and hopefully everything comes out clean.

Did I mention practically every utensil and dish was in that dishwasher? Everything was dirty, but I wanted to eat an Activia while I typed this up. The closest thing we have to a spoon is a teaspoon, so that's what I'm using. My percent efficiency of eating this yogurt is not where it would be if I had a spoon, but at least it scoops.

My wedding flowers didn't die over the weekend. It's always nice to come back to living things. Wait, I meant living plants; if there are bugs in this apartment, they've got one more night of freedom before I suck them up with the vacuum. I gave the little green guys a nighttime sprinkle. I imagine if I were a sproutling I would want a midnight snack of aych too oh.

I might request mid-evening flights instead of early-evening flights from here on out. It means we get to see the sunset as we descend into the airport. I tried to take some images on my phone, but we'll see how well those turned out in a minute. There was some heavy duty cloud coverage around our little burg (it had just rained probably ten minutes ago). The sunset was so beautiful on the mountains that now it's all I want to paint. I might run out and grab a small canvas tomorrow and see what I can do.

So apparently my phone can take decent photos. I always thought that they would be minuscule once on a computer screen, but they're actually kinda nice. Those white-ish striations you see are from the window, not my phone.

Lots of clouds highlighted by the sun. 

Ominous cloud is ominous.

Kind of a bad picture, but the sunset was so beautiful.
By the way, those little hills are 2500 ft. tall. 

I hate that they make you shut off all electronics way before you're anywhere near the ground. All I've got is my memory of that sunset to go off of; I just hope I can do it justice. Fingers crossed.

Lots to do tomorrow including laundry, mail-grabbing, painting, job-applying, and general everydayness. Hope you all had a great Fourth of July weekend, because I most certainly did. =]