We spent the 4th down the street at our coach’s house: Joan has a house facing an overlook of the downtown, and they let off a big display down in the heart of town, in Riverfront Park: thousands gather down there, on the bridges, and this year on a friendly parking garage rooftop; but those of us up on this ridge all hike to this hill…must’ve been 500 or more out there, last night. Joan and Buzz served us a lovely supper. Then we sipped wine and watched fireworks from the front porch…then walked a couple of blocks home to spot the NYC display on telly. Can’t complain.
It’s supposed to turn for the 90’s this weekend: the door to the desert has opened and finally pushed the Pacific air aside. So we’re going to do a little yard work today before the heat hits.
One strange recommendation for anybody who’s in the market for new sheets and wants something cool: the SleepNumber Bed store (or website) has some sheets and mattress-covers that are made out of a spaceage fabric that disperses heat. Dunno how they do it, but even a pillowcase keeps your pillow cool, and a full set of it is real nice. I’ve got the pillowcases and a mattress cover. I think my next sheet replacement is going to be their sheets. Even in the winter, I could like that.
The littlest fishes have discovered the whole pond is safe, now. They’re coming out to join the others at feeding time, and they’re so darn cute.
Writing is at one of those sit-by-the-pond-and-think stages…I’m doing outline, so far as involves just writing down the sequence of events; the plot, I’ve got; but the sequence of events comes next.
“The door to the desert” sounds like a book title!
Good luck sitting and thinking. When I’m home later today, I plan to do some clickety-clackety keyboarding, interspersed with mouse and stylus clicking.
I know that I probably couldn’t survive East-of-the-Mountains….I get crabby if it gets above 75 or so. We’re supposed to get into the low 80’s by this weekend. I’m hoping to finish up mowing the dog-exercise yard today. I got about half done yesterday before the explosions started going non-stop. It’s about 1/4 acre. Luckily my neighbors aren’t much into fireworks so it’s the folks on the next blocks N/E/W (woods are to the S). I’m in unincorporated county territory so it gets LOUD!
CJ – Do you have any young-of-the-year showing up in your ponds yet? I’m expecting to see some any day now since there was lots of spawning activity going on about a month ago. It’s hard to miss spawning frenzies when they happen if you are around the pond at the right time….they get pretty violent!
We were gone for about 2 weeks, then had that low-oxygen event that took out our youngest, except for one clever gal who hung out, I suspect, up by the waterfall, such as it was at the time. OTOH, we’ve been quite cold for a bit, and our females are still looking very ‘hippy’, so they may not have spawned. Or we may have lost all the fry.
If not this year, then next, for baby koi. I think we’ve finally got a stable pond situation.
I just went to the Sleep Number site to price those sheets, and oy! $180 for a king sized set! While it might be nice, I’m too cheap to shell out that much for a set of sheets.
That’s why I got the pillowcase. But they do work.
I forget how many days the temperature has been in the low to high 90s here. With the storm last Friday that knocked out power over most of the region (yours truly excepted), people without air conditioning (e.g., my elderly parents) were really suffering. I was talking with a gentleman from Richmond, Va yesterday, he’d come up to see his family (and possibly to go to the Country Concert). There were areas of Virginia that were without power since Friday, and were not expected to be restored until sometime this Friday. This is worse than a Santa Ana, not as hot, but the humidity drives the heat indices above 100 degrees. No yard work, no sitting on the deck in the back, I’m not even cooking out. Staying indoors with the cats is about all I can do.
We’ve been in the 90’s here but the humidity is starting to get high — it’s up to 34% today! LOL! Staying indoors with the cats is the way to go in this kind of weather. When I went out to get the mail a while ago, it was like walking out into an oven. Once I switch from heat to AC, I stop using my clothes dryer (why use electricity to heat the house up with the clothes dryer, and then use even more electricity to cool the house back down again with the AC? I’ve got a clothes line out back and the sun is free.) However, lately, with it being so hot, I’ve been doing stealth laundry — hung out a load at 11 pm and they were dry by midnight. I’m a GID Caucasian (Glows In Dark) and without a liberal slathering of sun screen, I can be medium rare in about 15 minutes. This time of year is when my natural tendency is to keep vampire hours.