O.O July is gone!

Whew! Time continues to zip by. The summer will be gone before I know it, especially since in three weeks I'll be off for vacation. I have a BUNCH of stuff to get done at work between now and then.

Let's see, what's going on? My big laptop died. The hard drive crashed, taking ALL my pictures with it. I'm told that it's dead enough that it will cost me big time to retrieve them, if they can even be retrieved. Those pictures are the only thing I wish I had not lost. Everything else is replaceable or re-downloadable. Yes, yes, I know. Always back up your hard drive. Everyone knows that. And I'm betting most people are like me and remember to do it after it's too late. So I'm typing this from a new computer. I did try to salvage the old one by replacing the hard drive, but it seems the graphics card was also toast, and the general consensus for replacing those is: buy a new laptop. So I did.

It's hot here. Yes, I know that's typical of Texas in July, but it's really HOT here. 29 days in a row of temperatures over 100 degrees with no end in sight. That puts us in second place as the longest string of 100 degree days, with only the infamous Summer of 1980 having more (42). At the rate we're going, we may break that record too. Despite watering my lawn and shrubbery nearly every day, they are struggling. The Bermuda grass out front is really struggling, and all my shrubs along the front of the house are turning brown. Even with water, the continuous heat is just too much for them. The house faces west so they get all the intense afternoon heat.

I was gone to a convention for 5 days and the dogwoods succumbed. Poor little things are dead, but I'll keep watering that area anyway. The holly is fighting to maintain it's comeback, with its new leaves curling up and turning brown. You can kind of see that in the small picture to the right. If we don't get rain while I'm gone on vacation, my lawn, shrubbery and little holly are all going to be dead when I get back. That's because we've not only had the excessive heat, we've had NO rain. So far they're still letting us water all we want as long as it's before 10:00 am or after 6:00 pm, but considering we're under 'exceptional drought' conditions, I can see that changing in the not too distant future.

My silly peach seedlings are still doing well as you can see in this picture. I suppose it's easier to keep them well watered in pots. The big one is about 21 inches tall now and is putting on limbs as well as leaves, and the tiny one has decided to put on new growth since I transplanted it. It's not noticeably gaining in size, but it's growing little leaves, which it wasn't before.

I'm doing weekend chores today. Since I was gone last weekend, the house needs some attention. Yesterday I was busy setting up the new laptop into the configuration I want and downloading the necessary programs etc. I like the keyboard on this laptop. It's easy to type on and you can turn the mouse pad off if you're using a wireless mouse. That's a boon for me because I have a tendency to hit the mouse pad while I'm typing, with often not good results. So so far I like it. The Windows 7 OS it comes with uses bing as a search engine though, which I had to change. I like Google. And of course I've been busily restoring all my bookmarks and settings. It's pretty close to how I want it now although I'm sure I'll find other things I need to add as I go along.

I also bought a kindle yesterday, although I bought that online and so need to wait for it to get here. I was convinced to buy one by two things: a couple of my colleagues at the convention were advocating it, and the fact that I couldn't take my newest book with me while traveling. It's a HUGE hardback book and weighs too much to cart around, and it's available on kindle. I could have been reading it on the plane. So I broke down and ordered one. I suspect I'll still read books at home, but since I'll be doing so much traveling this next several years, I figure a kindle will come in handy.

I guess that's about all for now.

Long July 4th Weekend

It was certainly nice that July 4th fell on a Monday this year. Long weekend! Yay!! Sadly the weekend is almost over now, but I think I've got time to get a post in.

It's been a very productive weekend for me, as well as a very hot one. The thermometer on my back patio read 108 yesterday and 109 today. Yes, it's in the shade, but the patio itself radiates heat, even when it's shaded. So no doubt it hasn't actually been 108 and 109 in the area, but it has been over 100 both days.

I did something new yesterday, or anyway something I've never done before. I washed my house. Yes, the house. I had siding put on the house a number of years ago, and lately I've been noticing that it's pretty filthy. So a couple weeks ago I bought one of those scrub brushes on the end of a long pole, that you can fill with soap and attach to your hose. Then yesterday morning I tried it out. It wasn't hard at all! I started with the front porch and front area around the garage door because that area is in the shade in the morning, and like everything you do outside in Texas at this time of year, you try to beat the heat as much as possible. Then I moved to the back yard and did about a third of the back before the sun got too hot. Then I quit and went in for lunch. My house is partly brick, but the back is all siding, so I knew that would take the longest and be the hottest.

Anyway, I figured I'd quit and eat lunch and wait for the sun to move over the house and enough shade to appear in the back to be able to go out and do the rest. The back is the area all across the back of the house and around the back door and patio. The same patio where the thermometer was reading 108. When there was enough shade for me to be in shade while I worked I braved the heat and went back out to finish the job. I was determined to finish it because I had a lot of odds and ends around the house I wanted to do this weekend, and that was one of them. So I started again and as I was getting into it, and thinking how glad I was that at least I was working in the water if I had to be out in that heat, a couple of huge thunderheads built up! In less than 30 minutes the whole sky was overcast and the temp reading on the thermometer dropped from 108 to 88! It was amazing. I finished the house in relative comfort, and 30 minutes later the sky was clear again, without ever dropping a drop of rain. I was a little sorry about that actually because I could use the rain. But I was really grateful for the heat reprieve while I was working. Of course when the sun came back out the temperature bounced back up to 103.

So, I would say that I'll probably never take a job washing houses for a living, but it wasn't bad. As long as you don't mind being wet and doing some manual labor. I wonder if I may discover I have some sore muscles as time goes on though, reaching up over my head and scrubbing with a long pole scrub brush. The house looks absolutely great! It was even dirtier than I thought and it looks beautiful now. Maybe I won't wait so long in between washes now that I know how relatively easy it is.

This morning I mowed the lawn before the main heat of the day. Even so, it was plenty hot out there. Even the cats are staying inside, and they usually like laying on the patio in the shade because it radiates heat. Just too much heat right now. I hope everyone thinks before using fireworks tonight, given how dry the area is.

Other things I've done this weekend that make it fairly productive include taking my car to the shop for them to replace the heat/exhaust shield, some minor shopping to get more potting soil and pots, some minor trimming of the shrubbery out front, changing all my anime calendars to the new month, basic cleaning and laundry around the house, fixing my door lock so that the deadbolt will work and transplanting the peach seedlings, which I actually did on Thursday evening. This picture is Zoe, also trying to figure out why only one tree is growing. This was before I transplanted them. I put the big one in a larger pot and moved the small one to the ceramic pot. I figure if it's going to grow at all, maybe transplanting it again will help. We'll see how it does. The holly is still putting on new leaves but is also struggling big time in the heat. I tried rigging some shade for it, but I'm not sure it's helping much. I think the only thing that will help the holly is cooler weather, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

The car trip to the shop was because my car decided it didn't want to start 2 Friday's ago. I managed to convince it to start, both before and after work, but after work I drove immediately to the dealership for a new battery. I figured I'd have them do the scheduled maintenance too and while they were doing it they discovered my exhaust shield was ripped and mangled around my exhaust pipe. I seriously don't know how it got that way. I haven't bottomed the car out or hit any road debris that I'm aware of. Anyway at that time they took off the mangled shield and ordered a new one. So this trip was to install the new shield.

I did something else this weekend which I haven't done in a long, long time. I sat down and read the Declaration of Independence. What an amazing document. Then I sat there trying to imagine the feelings of Thomas Jefferson who drafted it, and the other amazing men, all of whom believed so strongly that we should no longer be British Colonies, but should be our own free Country. They had so much courage of their convictions that they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to make it be true. Considering all their sacrifices to make the USA what it is today, I think I should try to take some of the freedoms I enjoy a little less for granted. Although, perhaps they would be happy that those freedoms that they fought for are now considered the inalienable rights of every American. Still, I think I'll try being a little more grateful.

Bye, bye, long weekend. It's been fun.