Record High

I complained about the heat yesterday, but that was mild compared to today. The high was 96.7 (heat index 109), which beat the earlier record high recorded in 1998 of 96.0. It sure beat me! After brunch, we started out on our walk. We usually do a longer walk in the morning and a shorter one later in the day. After a few feet we turned to each other and said, "We could do our short walk now and a longer one later...."

When we got back from our 20 minute walk, I started to feel pretty sick and actually thought I might be coming down with something. Now I think it was probably just heat and mild dehydration. I took a nap and felt somewhat better after a couple of hours.

This evening there was a potluck at the clubhouse, and we went over. Before the meal, a gentleman standing by a small table set for one led a brief ceremony of remembrance of POW and MIA members of the military. Retired and active duty military were invited to take the first places in line at the buffet table.

On our walk tonight (after dark and with the temperature still 91), we spotted a large toad. It hopped quickly away when I walked over to look at it. It's been quite some time since I've seen a toad, much less one as big as my fist. Yesterday we saw a skunk browsing in the grassy field along side of the road. It looked cute, but we gave it a wide berth. When we passed the first time, it beat a retreat into the woods, but when we came back past, it just continued about its business. It probably decided that we posed no threat. Unfortunately we didn't have the camera along.

I got up my courage to use the convection feature on our microwave/convection oven to bake the bread pudding we had for brunch. It worked really well. I've been very leery of using the convection because the last time I tried, the whole microwave got very hot and heated the cabinet above and automatically ran the exhaust fan for a long time. I got to thinking that maybe the problem then was that we were on 30 amp electricity; now we have 50 amp service, and none of those nasty things happened.

Terri finally got her first issue of La Cucina Italiana, a magazine subscription we gave her for her birthday in January. After several followup attempts, Amazon finally apologized and said oops. The subscription had never been placed with the publisher. That's the first time we've ever had a problem with Amazon.

We're planning to leave the a/c on tonight. The predicted low is 72, but the humidity is stifling.