it's hot and that's about all I have to say

Not quite true, have a lot to say actually.

Coming home from yoga class I pass a new shop that opened this year, sort of a combination of general store, close out new clothing, rental space for other vendors, and outside in the parking lot, a small plant nursery. Coming home one Wednesday evening near the end of last month they were setting up a fake christmas tree under the canopy where the plants are. The next evening, it had ornaments on it and christmas swag above the windows on the building and around the canopy. Two days later, christmas lights adorned the building. In July. Granted, the last few days of July but…JULY! Seriously? Can we not start the christmas crap in the middle of summer? I drove by there yesterday morning on the way to SHARE and the swags were gone as were the ornaments on the tree. The tree and lights on the building were still there though. I wonder if they just had some kind of event over the weekend.

Meanwhile the white wing doves have made an appearance at the bird feeder, not allowing smaller birds access. They emptied it Tuesday and it will stay empty until they leave. I was only providing seed every other day as it was so that the birds wouldn’t become completely dependent on it in the summer. Get out there and forage!

Mississippi kites summer over here, and I see them occasionally soaring overhead. The past week or two when I go out in the mornings there’s a juvenile, I assume, in one of the pine trees across the street calling constantly, again I assume, for it’s parents and food. I have not been able to put eyes on it until last Monday morning when I finally located it high up in the tree and only because there was a pair of mockingbirds mobbing it, swooping down and pecking it on the head. By the time I got back out with my phone camera the mockingbirds had moved on but I did get a picture of the kite at high magnification. 

Here’s a link to its call and a much better picture. 

It’s hot out. Been hot out but now it’s August so officially the Dog Days, the hottest, most humid, and sluggish days of summer although September can be almost as rough. If I want any work done outside I have to go out soon after I get up which these days is nearly 8 am. This morning I went out about ten after and it felt almost pleasant. Amazing how just a few degrees less than hell can feel almost cool. I set up the sprinkler and then pulled grass out of a neglected narrow section of a flower bed, cut dewberry vines and pecan and hackberry tree sprouts down to the ground in various areas. Forty minutes later sweat was dripping off me and I came in. That was Wednesday I guess.

Just a few of the things happening in the upside down world:  

The Thxmp administration was crowing about the expected job gains of 85,000 in July's jobs report, gaslighting us of course. The actual July jobs report that just came out showed not even a single job gained but a loss of 23,000, and another 100,000 loss via downward revisions. The only people stunned by this are the incompetent idiots in charge of the government. 

Apparently the New York Times got tired of people complaining about all their news stories being behind a paywall so they instituted a new item in their Morning Newsletter, three free articles every day. Sound great, right, until you get to that part and so far every free article is just fluff BS.

Scientists have used AI to create new viruses (that infect bacteria, not humans…so far) that don’t exist in nature, touted as a possible therapy alternative to antibiotics and drug resistant infections. What could possibly go wrong? How long until the military gets involved? Chemical and germ warfare is universally illegal but when has illegality ever stopped this administration?

There’s way more but that’s enough. 

I've been seeing more butterflies lately, mostly fritillaries and black swallowtails and skippers but either I don't have my camera/phone on me or they don't cooperate.

I finally finished Artemis. I was wrong about the sequence of Andy Weir’s books. Artemis came in-between The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Plus he’s written a bunch of other stuff.

And speaking of books, here’s two more book reports:

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley - This is the third book of hers I’ve read and the one I’ve liked the best. Her writing style is to tell the story from the viewpoint of various characters moving back and forth from the past to the current timeline. Four couples…Giles and Samira, Miranda and Julian, Emma and Mark, Nick and Bo and one single Katie…friends for nearly two decades dating back to their Oxford days are spending their once a year getaway over the New Year’s Eve holiday, this time at an extremely remote and isolated Lodge in the northern Highlands of Scotland. This year’s getaway was chosen and planned by Emma, the newest member of the group when she hooked up with Mark three years previous. Aware of her lack of history with the group of friends she hoped the trip would cement her position. This year though, relationships seem strained and the joviality seems a little forced as the aging beauty Miranda tries too hard to maintain her position as the fun girl of their youth. Cracks appear, old resentments bubble up, secrets get revealed as everything disintegrates and then Miranda goes missing, her body discovered by the gamekeeper. The story is told in turns by Emma, Miranda, Katie, and the manager of the Lodge Heather and the gamekeeper Doug. 

Spasm by Robin Cook - the blurb on the inside cover sounded interesting and the book is ok but the author has written a buttload of books, 41 others to be exact and I gather the main character is a recurring character. Nothing wrong with that but I found the writing to be simplistic, all the characters are men with the few women being mentioned as wives and having nothing to do with the actual story. So with that, Jack, a forensic pathologist in NYC, gets a call from an old medical school buddy practicing in a small town in upper state New York and also acting as the county coroner and asks for his help doing an autopsy on a man who died suddenly with poisoning symptoms. When Jack and his wife arrive he also learns that there is a forming epidemic of rapid onslaught dementia and death in people too young and test negative for Alzheimer’s which the symptoms mimic. When Jack starts a full scale investigation he stumbles on a plot and a race against time that endangers his life.