I’ve written before about how we don’t get much in the way of weather ’round here. The pattern of boring weather was broken last Friday morning when a rare pop-up thunderstorm hit central California. Jen and I were both awakened by the sound of thunder. I first put it off as a truck or some other large thing rolling by the house. But once it happened again, I was certain that it was thunder. It’s always a nice surprise when something like this happens. And this storm was particularly surprising, as none of the weather forecasts I had seen recently predicted rain or storms. But a PG&E weather dispatched i received just before 7AM that morning confirmed the presence of actual weather:

A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.

The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo

As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).

(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:

The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.

I hurt my back earlier this week, and because of that, I’m on drugs. Nothing too severe. Just enough that my ability to concentrate is a bit skewed. Hence, this won’t be a long post.

We went to the California Mid State Fair a couple weeks ago. We walked around a bit and saw the Stone Temple Pilots play on the grandstand. Those pictures are here.

My sister gave us an aquarium she no longer needs (because she replaced it with one that’s big enough to hold small whales). Photos of our new aquarium can be found here.

OK, Wells Fargo isn’t really stealing my money. At least, I doubt it. Jen ahd I have had a joint checking account with the bank since 2005. And in that time, we’ve had several issues with overdrafts. I believe I do a pretty good job of keeping the checkbook balanced. And each time we’ve been hit with overdrafts, I’ve implemented new methods to help keep track of the account balance. And still, every couple months, it happens again. The most recent round of overdrafts happened yesterday. Fortunately, we have overdraft protection on the account, thanks to the Wells Fargo credit account I opened for this very reason. (Though there’s probably still some kind of fee involved, it’ll just be connected to the credit account instead of the checking account.) As it stands, we have no money in the bank. This is especially discouraging, as our finances had been riding high lately due to cash infusions from several sources. But now we’re back to zero. This has happened more times with Wells Fargo than any other bank I’ve ever used. I’m not one of these corporate-conspiracy cranks. I really don’t think Wells Fargo is taking my money. But something is off, and I’m not sure what to do. I suppose that one of the bank’s employees could try and track down the error. Most likely, it was caused by an ATM transaction I missed. The difference between what I was showing in the checkbook and the amount of money that was overdrafted would equal about the same as a typical ATM withdrawal. But I’d really like to just start all over again with a new accoun. I’ve been considering opening an account with a local bank. Sure, the local bank may not have the world-spanning reach of Wells Fargo. But you can e-mail the bank’s president right from the website. That’s pretty cool. And I’ve noticed that throughout my banking history, the larger the size of the bank, the more problems I’ve had. Of course, switching banks comes with its own set of hassles. Between me and Jen, we’d have to get three direct deposits changed, and that’s likely to take weeks. Still, I think now’s the time. Before Wells Fargo has a chance to take any more of my money.

Today is our four-year wedding anniversary. Remarkably, we’ve both managed to get this whole week off from work. So we were able to do whatever we liked today. We decided to head out to Pismo Beach in the early afternoon. The drive there was uneventful, but we were surprised to learn that the city is now charging people to park in municipal lots. It’s only $0.75/hour, and it’s only enforced from 10 AM to 6 PM. But it’s still annoying, especially when parking used to be free.

We walked out on the Pismo pier and sat for awhile, enjoying the scenery and sounds of the ocean. I didn’t take many photos, mainly because I’ve already got plenty of photos of Pismo Beach. Then we walked for a little while out on the beach. We saw this cool sandcastle:

Read on …

Another video made with footage from our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Music in this video is by Colin Gazeley. You can also see another short jellyfish video here.