I recieved an email from my daughter-in-law and she was commenting on the odd summer they've been having in Vancouver, Washington. They have lived there seven years and this time of year has always been dry. This year is different. The rainy conditions usual in other times of the year have continued all year. She's wondering if there has just been drought conditions the past 7 years and now it is reverting to normal. It's possible that's true, of course, but it seems to me that the weather patterns have been pretty skewed all over this year. I live in Utah and we're high desert country,so we're pretty used to dry conditions. Two years ago we were recovering from a 7 year drought. This last year, we didn't have enough snow pack and this summer has been hot and very dry. This July was the hottest July on record. We've had I think, 18 days of temperatures 100 degrees or over. We're nearly 6 inches below average in our water year. Even so, there are places in the South where they've had 100 degree temps with 90% or more humidity, causing deaths in the populace. It seems as "odd", in the sense of weather is getting to be the norm. I guess time will tell if this is a persistant trend, or if it's a fluke.

Internet Decisions

I realise that in my previous life,(living in the city, working full time with more money) that I got pretty spoiled with having broadband service. I also had a pretty good rate, bundles with my cable service. Now I am living with a relative,working part time so having considerably less money, and dealing with dial-up again. The bigger problem is that I have to move my laptop into the kitchen to be able to plug into a phone jack, as the other one is being used by my Aunt who logs on maybe once a week. In addition, it's an old house and until I get an 3 prong adaptor, I can only plug into the kitchen outlet. I've been looking at signing up for broadband again, but can't decide if I can afford it.The other option is to have a new phone line in my name put in and stay with dial-up. That may be the way I go for now, but eventually I'd like to send pictures to my kids and download music and that's really slow and sometimes impossible with dial-up. Darn,decisions, decisions. Changing your life always results in both positives and negatives. Heck, not changing your life is the same both positive and negative. I guess we just have to try to make choices that result in positive changes more than we choose changes that end up with negative results. The problem is choice. We don't always know whether the outcome will be the positive result we're hoping for. I'd had a little more frustrations lately, and that usually means that I need to spend a little more time in reflection and meditation. Now to find the time.

Back to Heat

The weather has gotten hot again. We were at 100 degrees on Sunday, 102 yesterday, and it's supposed to be over 100 again today. It's been staying fairly warm at night too. We may get some rain storms tomorrow, hopefully. The normal temp right now is 90 and it should drop into the 80s by the end of August, but who knows anymore.

Our miners are still in the collapsed mine. There seems to be very little progress being made. They've shown pictures from the camera lowered into one of the bore holes. There's empty space, no miners. They've started another hole farther down. They've been pumping air into the other holes, just in case. Nobody wants to give up hope just yet. I guess that's all the families have, that and the support of thier nieghbors.

There are some of our school districts that are starting school next week. It's going to be warm the first few weeks, most schools aren't air-conditioned. Many teachers around here buy fans out of thier own pockets to help make thier classrooms bearable. I know that's what my Aunt, a retired teacher used to do.

I just had my yearly review at work. I earned my raise for this year. Nice. They've made some changes this year in how your sales are counted and I wasn't sure I'd made it. You're given sales goals on whatever product you're demoing. It used to be 3 times the average daily sales, now it's 4 times. The fun thing is, the more successful you are by raising daily average sales, the higher your goal is the next time the product is demoed. Soon, they've raised the bar nearly beyond reach, unless you make a big business sale. Even if that happens, the bar is raised again. Still there are some good things about the job, like the people you meet and there are some sweet kids along with Mom and Dad too. Nice perks. That's it for today.

Just Musing Again

It'sfinally getting a little cooler here. It's still in the 90s, but the lowerand mid 90s.We'recloser to our average normal temps. Sofar, no 100s this month, though it is early in the month. We had a little fire just south of town yesterday,but they got it out fairly quickly. It only burned 45 acres.

There's been a mine cave-in down in central Utah. There are 6 people traped in a coal mine about 1500 feet deep and 2 and 1/2 or more miles from the mine entrance. It seems very scary to me to think of working that far under ground for any length of time. I'm afraid I'd get claustophobic. Maybe you get used to it. The mine owner claims that the collapse was caused by an earthquake. Scientists are claiming that the mine collapse caused the earthquake,which seems a little wierd. Yesterday, they were claiming that there was no quake,that the siesmic trace was just the mine collapse. I'm pretty sure that the miners and thier families don't care too much about the cause just now. They're more interested in being rescued,assumming that they are still alive,which nobody knows just yet. It may take several days to get to them, but they are drilling holes in the mountain above where they're supposed to be in order to get them air and supplies and communicate with them. That should be done sooner. In the meantime, everyone just hopes and prays.

Then there is the bridge collapse in Minniapolis. That certainly was a horrific site. The surprising thing was that there weren't more deaths.Maybe it fell slowly enough for people to get out,although the first people to go down probably had less chance. There have been warnings for a long time about the status of America's infrastructure. It's a shame it takes a disaster to get people to do something. I guess that's one problem with our form of government, it's run by committee. At least there's been inspections here in Utah, and I imagine most other States are doing the same.

We'reall going to see"the Bourne Ultimatum" tomorrow. It shoud be good.I enjoyed the first 2 a lot. Well, enough gab for now.

A Sunday Off

I finally have a Sunday off! My supervisor made me a deal. She needed me to work an extra day at the end of July to finish up the extra demos we'd been sent for the end of the quarter. I know most businesses have a different schedule for quarters, but our company's finacial year goes from Feb 1 to Jan 31. Go figure. Anyway, for doing the extra day, I was offered the whole weekend off for the first of August. I couldn't afford to take off 2 days, but I was more than happy to take off Sunday. I was invited to go to church, but I declined. I want to do mostly just what I want that is rejuvenating or uplifting or even lazy today.

So far, I've read my spiritual reading and added more, after all, it is Sunday. I've devoured the Sunday paper, I usually only hit the high points. I've checked my email, and I'm now updating my blog. I've also done dishes and thawed some chicken for dinner. Next on my list is making fruit smoothies for lunch.

I try to include God in my life everyday, so I'm not really prone to spending one day in church to spend my time with and for God. I think Spirit is with me always, I just need to quiet myself and listen, there He is! I admit, there is a nice social element to church, being with people of like minds, and it is a good place to organise people to help others that need help. To me, that element of serving those that need help is church's greatest function.

I erased my last paragraph as being too judgemental, something I keep trying to work on. Well, off to the rest of my Sunday.