We had a big storm last night, though it didn't involve rain.  (How could it?! Sheesh...)  The winds blew with tremendous force, and Dennis wondered if we'd gotten engulfed in a huge dust devil.  Think of it as being caught in a dust tornado rather than a sandstorm.  If we were caught in one, it was huge because the winds blew for a very long time.  I woke up when the windows sounded like they were going to rattle out of their frames.  Come to find this morning that my newly cleaned truck (Dennis washed it by hand a couple days ago!) is pelted in dirt, and Pam's rose bush got ripped out of the ground and ended up in the pool.  They fished it out and stuffed it back in the ground before I got up, so there's no photographic evidence of that horticultural horror.  I think it took Dennis an hour to get the big bits out of the pool, and the filter pump has been working overtime clearing out the dust.

On the subject of my dirty truck, there are a lot of cars out here with out-of-state plates on them, mainly from California.  I've noticed you can usually identify the out-of-towners without looking at their plates in a very simple fashion--those of us from out-of-state have all different car colors whereas the natives all drive white or silver vehicles.  Black is not the way to go out here.