Repurcussions of lots of natural beauty

Kyle and I just spent two weeks immersed in the amazing-ness that is the Southwest US.  We went from California to Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona to Nevada before going back to California.  No stops were made at any place that didn't warrant it, and through the course of the trip we went through a lot of places I haven't been since I was a little girl.  It was amazing and incredible and at some point Kyle will finish posting all the pictures or I'll get tired of waiting and will put everything on Flickr.

Less about that trip, more about coming back to England.  It was absolutely chucking it down when we got back.  A week of rain and commuting on the Tube to work has put me solidly back into grumpy London mode, which was made even worse by the great weather and great scenery that we saw - so at odds with the normal dreary same-ness of London.

It's definitely been a struggle to not get bogged down by the awful weather these past five years in London.  A woman told me today that this is the worst summer she can remember in the past 25 years.  Kyle and I still run the heating in our apartment since we've gotten back, and it's mid-June, for heaven's sake.  But it's summer, which means the sun doesn't start to really set until almost 10pm...and on good days, summers in London run a close second to summers in southern Orange County - southern California wins by a hair only because there are beaches.

I went out for a drink after work tonight, so I didn't emerge from underground until after 8pm.  My favorite time of day at home is that wonderful late afternoon where the day has spent itself basking in the sunlight and that heat still remains  - resulting in an almost-hug from the day, thanking you for appreciating the goodness of a summer afternoon.  In London, these twilights can last for a couple of hours, and with the crappy weather we've been having, can sometimes result in some spectacular banks of rainclouds reflecting the last rays of the day across a faceless, grim urban sprawl that only has glimmers of architechtural splendor dotting the landscape in the 'good' parts of town.  Natural beauty is a difficult thing to find in London, especially for someone who loves a good vibrant, violent sunset like you find in the desert landscape of Las Vegas.

At any rate, there were some of those magnificent billowing storm clouds out this evening, thumbing their collectives noses at the patchy sunlight London saw today.  They made me smile despite their threat of more rain and slate skies, and for the first time since we got back almost two weeks ago, I didn't despise my geographic location. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that as much as I loathe having to spend so much time surrounded by homogenous gray buildings and homogenous gray people, every now and again London surprises me with a beautiful cloud bank or a wonderful new acquaintance.  So my half-year resolution is to take a moment out to appreciate those flashes.  I know I've been doing it all along, otherwise there's no way I'd have survived this long, but sometimes it bears mentioning in a more public format.  If nothing else, it serves to remind me that London ain't half bad, even if there are greener pastures on the other side of the pond.