Rainfall test

I have been home for this week, trying to use up my vacation before the end of the year.
In the afternoons around 1-2pm, we have been getting rain showers. These are local thundershowers that are approx 1-2 miles wide (in a N/S direction) and 5-10 miles long (E/W). This orientation is caused by the prevailing winds from the east and the thermal effects of the island. I have a weather station and on Tuesday afternoon, it registers 3" of rain in 3 hours. Now we do get heavy showers but this sounded as quite a bit. Thinking something was wrong, it registered another 6" on Wed. Wow! What is going on here?
I decided to make a simple rain gauge from some clear plastic tubing, and a funnel and placed it outside as a temporary measurement device to compare against the weather station. I calculated the amplification factor (diameter of the big funnel entrance divided by the diameter of inside of the tube) and waited for the next rain.
On Thursday, we once again had two heavy showers and I recorded 4.7" of rain in a little over 2 hours. The temporary device also confirmed that amount. While this is no world record,it does let me know that the grass will need to be cut every week for the next little while! :-)
On the chicken front, egg production has increased to between 2-3 eggs per day. It seems that the more nesting cubicles we build, the more they lay. It probably does not hurt that I have fed them a bit of Layena to see if that will assist a bit - but only one cup full. I do not believe in turning the chicken into laying machines and disregarding their health.
In the photography arena, I am getting ready for a upcoming trip. I have managed to obtain from the US of A a Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 lens (that the cost of the lens plus shipping was more than buying it here). This is a replacement for the one destroyed in the lathe. It will make a great low light lens for portraits and city scape night scenes and should also come in handy for astrophotography of the night sky. I also have plans for a simple astronomy camera orientation device called a barn door mount. It allows one to manually track the motion of the stars while taking pictures. Yes I can throw everything on one of the telescope mounts and have it the stars accurately tracked for me but there in not much challenge in that! Besides, there are a couple other nuts... I mean persons who are interested in night sky photography and it will make a nice group and learning project.
Looking forward, I have purchased Photoshop CS4. This is for processing all my photographs. It has a large learning curve but with the long winter nights coming up, it should keep me busy!