Weather You Will or Weather You Won't

I don't know if I've always been this way, but I know that since living in Colorado with it's average of 300 sunny days a year, I've loved weather. Storms, hail, rain, clouds, wind, sleet, snow, drizzle, clouds, you know, weather. I just find weather variety so much more interesting than "Oh, it's another sunny day again" over and over again! I know some people will hate me for writing that, but it's true! The ironic thing is that we moved from Colorado to Redding, California, which, according to one website, has 250 sunny days a year! I just can't get away from the sun, apparently.

It took me a while to figure out why I'm just not a fan of the sun (other than the fact that I hate getting sunburnt and I hate being hot). I realised that, after years of growing up in England, which gets 150-190 days of rain a year, sun makes me antsy. See, with so much rain in England, a sunny day becomes an occasion. You go for a picnic, a walk, a bike ride. You go to the market or sunbathe, or dare to take a dip in an icy outdoor pool. You drive to Brighton and walk along the sea. You drive to the cliffs and walk along the sea. You take a day-trip to London and just walk, walk, walk, soaking up the sun. You NEVER sit inside on a sunny day. That would be unthinkable. What a waste it would be! Do you get my point?

For the first few months in Colorado, I would wake up every sunny day thinking I HAD TO GO OUTSIDE to make the most of the sunny day. And since I was on my own, waiting for my work permit, and my husband was off working in Denver every day, it was hard to come up with fun things to do to spend an entire day outside by myself. So, I would stay inside. And I could never quite rest, having this ingrained thought within me that I was just wasting my day!

When I finally figured all this out, I felt so much better. And I do much better with sunny days now and don't get quite so freaked out. I do, however, still just love rainy days because I can rest inside and get all cosy and feel so peaceful and relaxed. Rainy days just don't stress me out like sunny days do!

We had a small thunderstorm last night while it was still sunny outside - hail and a double rainbow and everything. Tried to catch some pix of the torrential rain outside our house, however, it was raining so hard that I had to stay as much under our patio roof as possible to keep my camera dry, so I didn't get a lot of great shots. Also discovered it's hard to take a photo of a rainbow? If I slowed the shutter speed and upped the ISO, it was too bright to catch the rainbow against the whiteness of the sky, so I had to take the pictures kinda dark. I was able to brighten the sky in Photoshop without brightening the rainbow (LOVE editing in Photoshop), but it would have been nice to get a clear, bright rainbow (I mean, it was a double one, after all). Any thoughts on photographing rainbows???