How dry has it been?
Really frickin' dry.
All of the grass along the highways is completely brown. So is the grass in most parks and the lawns of commercial properties. Residential lawns vary, depending on how much people water and how much shade they get, but most at least have brown spots. Mine is mostly brown and crunchy. A lot of the weeds are wilting a dying and all the corn looks stunted.
I drove through some rain out between Madison and Spring Green on June 11th. I have no idea if any of that rain made it to Milwaukee, but that's the last time I can remember seeing rain until this last Friday. We had a small, localized thunderstorm that started with hail and ended with water washing down the street in a torrent. It was not enough to completely revitalize everything, though, and certainly not the region-wide, long, soaking rain we need.
Just because it's been dry doesn't mean it hasn't been humid and hazy:
Swans (?) on Lake Michigan
The local classic car show this year was a bit smaller, but simultanrously more interesting. They seemed to have kept out the modern cars and while there were some cars from the 70s, I didn't see any from the 80s, so a higher percentage of the cars there were old enough to actually be different and cool.
Truck with a carved wooden bumper! When I was a kid and we'd go to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, there would be an RV parked in the employee lot that was covered with carved wooden panels. It was right up there with "castle" and "treehouse" as an enchanting fantasy place to live (although probably expensive to keep gassed up). This was like a smaller, much more low-key version of that. (I think this vehicle had a lot of wood on the interior, as well.)
Pontiac wagon with a surf theme. I'm not sure of the purpose of the clear yellow flaps (reduce glare on the window so you can see the side mirror?) but I'm kind of fascinated by the lights mounted on the outside that point inward. I realize that it may not have been possible to construct a very flat light back then like we can today with our small bulbs and LEDs, so having interior lights that weren't inside the dashboard meant having large fixtures and it made more sense to put them outside where they wouldn't be in the way. Still, it's got a sort of steampunk/Brazil overcomplicated vibe to it.
The secret revealed!
I also went to Bastille Days this weekend and went to an open house. I've been trying to ease myself into the scary world of house shopping by going to at least one open house every weekend I'm home, but I'm reaching the point where I need to move past dipping my toe in the water and I should get serious. I think this will require a buyer's agent, as I'm just not around enough to put a lot of time into this.