Heat

Out of bed and to the kitchen, crippling along and cursing that right knee because of it's early morning stiffness, I made it to the coffee pot and brewed a pot of Community coffee. Since I quit smoking, Maxwell House and Folgers coffee have a bitter taste to me so I've switched to Community Coffee, a local vendor.
Next I tried to power up my laptop. I should say get online. It powered up fine but refused to connect to the Internet. A problem that I will solve at another time. I poured a cup of coffee and while sipping my brew, I headed for the office and the office computer for my daily fix of the Internet. I have a feed to the local newspaper so I browsed the headlines and found this article on the local university here.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/49898627.html2theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/49898627.html
That young man kneeling in this picture is my carpenter! That's Carl The Carpenter who last year spent every weekend for 6 months doing carpentry work for me.
It looks like the budget cuts will be affecting the university; I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Carl. He needs his job as I'm sure everybody does. The last months layoff reports were another horror story with a now 9.5 percent unemployment rate.
Ok, enough with the depressing stuff. Happy 4th to everyone! We have no plans to attend any fireworks celebrations. Sweating in the heat and watching fireworks is way on the back burner of things I want to do. Finding a cool pool of water would be great but all the outdoor pools here are simmering and slow cooking an egg in it's shell in a pool would probably be possible.
Have I mentioned how hot it is here? I did. I know I did but I can really harp on hot weather and sweating.

To go somewhere I race to my car, turn on the a/c and by the time the car is cooled off, it's time to get out at the store and return later to the sweltering heat; the blast furnace that the car has become while sitting out in the sun. I have to open the door and let all that pent up heat escape before I crawl in and then wait for the a/c to move some cool air around and again before the car gets cooled off, I'm out to run another errand or I'm back home and it's time for another shower to remove the sweat. Can you repeat after me? "I do not like summers in the south" and this summer is especially brutal. Usually we have lots of rain that provides a short relief from the high temps. This is not a usual year.
I'm off to get showered and dressed but first I'll go outside and water the flowers and by that time I'll be nice and sweaty for that shower!