Something happened in Tucson this week that almost never happens.  We had some record low night-time temperatures.  It actually dropped to 17 degrees on Monday night.  This is really cold.  This cold snap lasted almost two weeks with the coldest being at the beginning of this week.  Houses are built here with exposed and usually non-insulated outdoor pipes.  Thousands of people had pipes burst all over Tucson.  I kept my pool pump running but I still managed to get a broken joint.

On Saturday morning I was up very early and I went around to check on things to make sure that everything was fine.  Everything looked fine so I went back to bed.  What I didn’t realize that though my pipe joint did break, the water was still frozen inside.  Around 11 AM, my neighbor knocked on my door and told me that I had a geyser.  I walked out and sure enough there was water spraying everywhere from that joint.  I turned the water off that goes to that joint which fortunately only controls a holy hose and the irrigation system which I still haven’t fully figured out.  Once it warms up, I’ll get out there and fix it.

This morning the temperature jumped almost twenty degrees from yesterday morning 38 degrees) and will go up even more into the weekend.  Daytime highs during the cold were in the forties and fifties – enough to melt the ice during the day.  Yesterday was already sixty during the day again and today is expected to hit seventy…which is where it should be.

This took Tucson by surprise.  It was very cold.  I didn’t see a cloud the whole time and there isn’t much moisture in the air here so there was no ice to scrape off of the windshield.  It was beautifully clear out and the stars were amazing.

That is about as much winter as I can take.  The cold doesn’t bother me as much as the ice and snow and we didn’t have to deal with either.  Also if it warms up during the day it is easier to take.

I found a real-life Mario Kart video.  It looks like so much fun.

This picture is making its way around the internet.  I don’t know who to give credit to for it but it will make you smile.