Seen while running: Week of July 22

When I rounded a certain corner one evening, I thought I'd stumbled upon a miniputt course and started having flashbacks to Wisconsin vacations.

An office park in West Des Moines. My sources weren't kidding when they said this was the nice part of town ...

On the same route, if not the same run, it wasn't just the humidity making me think of the tropics and tropical drinks.

This is actually someone's house in West Des Moines. Makes our summertime Christmas lights seem a lot more subdued and less of a statement.

Can you guess what this is? Nope, it's not old carpeting. It's grass, on some stretch of land not owned by a business with money and water to spare on sprinklers.

A much better picture of drought than the one I took the prior week.

By far the scariest thing I've encountered on a run, including silent Lance Armstrongs: a possum. Before you laugh at me, just remember that our family dog had to visit the vet after tussling with one of these. The poor dog got bit in the jowls by that filthy creature ...  (Edited Aug. 1: Laugh at me. The dog fought a woodchuck, not a possum. I stand by my assertion that possums are nasty, though.)

Wild animals definitely have the right of way on rec paths. I yielded at a safe distance, hence the blurriness of the photo.

And of course there were Wednesday night's storm clouds, if you didn't catch my tale of daring ... or, rather, my tale of underpreparation and some darn good luck.