I didn't know what hot was until...

That's actual temp, not heat index, which was higher.

When this heat wave was predicted for Friday and through the weekend and early next week, I went to the grocery store Friday morning when it opened, 8am. I quickly did my business at the Dollar Store and Grocery Store, and got home for 9. The temperatures raised up by 12 degrees just in that time, being 74 when I left and 86 when I got home. I haven't been outside since, except in the very early predawn to water my plants.

It really is dangerously hot out. At 10 pm it is still 89 degrees. Several folks I know go walking and they said that even at that hour it was the hottest they ever felt, and this is from lifetime Georgia locals.

I'm not looking forward to the electric bill next month. I rarely turn it on for lengths of time, the last few years being bearable until August. I never have the AC on through the night, preferring the night air and night sounds to the humidity, which wanes as the night deepens anyway. Not last night, I had the AC on all night and haven't turned it off yet. Even set at 78 degrees on energy saver, low fan, I know it will be a bear to pay. Oh well, 115 degree heat index is not really livable or survivable even.

At the grocery store I bought a lot of bread, turkey cold cuts, and fruit. I don't mind eating cold meals! Not if it means not having to use the stove. And I bask in time to write, to study, to read, to surf, and to goof around watching Cheers clips from thirty years ago. Man, that show was funny.

I am the epitome of hunkered down. It's like in Maine during the winter when a Nor'easter was predicted, except the temperature opposite. Stay cool and stay safe everyone.

Historic heat

That is the ACTUAL temperature, right now, not a heat index value. But tomorrow's predicted heat index of 114 is amazing, absolutely amazing. The near future offers no relief, says the weather service--

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PEACHTREE CITY HAS ISSUED A HEAT ADVISORY... WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM EDT SATURDAY. AN EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH HAS ALSO BEEN ISSUED. THIS EXCESSIVE HEAT WATCH IS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY MORNING THROUGH SUNDAY EVENING

* LOCATIONS... EASTERN AND SOUTHERN PORTIONS OF CENTRAL GEORGIA LOCATED SOUTHEAST OF A LINE NEAR ATHENS THROUGH MACON AND LUMPKIN.

* HEAT INDEX VALUES... NEAR 105 DEGREES THIS AFTERNOON AND INCREASING TO 110-114 DEGREES SATURDAY AND 110-112 DEGREES SUNDAY.

LOL I have my AC on. It is a window unit doing its best to keep up. I laid down for a nap and just got back up, HOTTER than when I laid down. How does one get sweaty hot just by sleeping?

Cute overload: Live cam of Puffin burrow

Baby puffin so cute!! Live Cam of underground Puffin Burrow It is from Audubon's Explore series. The live puffin cam was just opened yesterday. It is located on Seal Island, Maine, a natural rookery for the Atlantic bird, being well offshore and having no predators that can get to them.

Here is a still of the baby. It is looking at its mother.

Here is the mom, who went outside to take a walk, perhaps to lounge on the loafing ledge. Here is a link to video of the loafing ledge cam.

Puffins are definitely adorable!

"Audubon ornithologist Steve Kress says the video, which went live Wednesday, marks the first time high-definition cameras have been used in North America to stream video of Atlantic puffins." (source)

Here is where Seal Island is:

The island is 10 miles offshore from Machias-Cutler Maine, but both the US and Canada claim it. However, the birds know nothing of this sovereign kerfuffle, and simply enjoy baby-raising, fish feasts, and sun all season. The cams will be open during the summer months. Which, at that latitude, lasts for about a minute.

You can take a birding tour to the offshore Island. I did and it was wonderful! I had a blast. We saw puffins galore, swimming and flying. The puffins are really small, and in reality look like a flying cigar!

Hot! 108 degrees is just ridiculous

We are going to receive the record-breaking heat the Midwest has been having. It is predicted to be 108 actual degrees tomorrow. It is pretty hot as it is, today. At mid-morning, I went outside for a stroll around the house. Here are the photos I took.

This one is of the front of the house. The trees and the bushes plus lawn makes this side of the house cooler. It looks lush, and it is. There are flowering bushes and morning glories here.

This is the back of the house. The driveway, cement patio, and less foliage makes my back room hotter. This is the pasture adjoining the property. It is mostly brown.

Here is the side yard. Atop this tree was a huge robin singing cheerily.

Stay cool and make sure to check your hot weather tips. This last one is from CouponCabin on Facebook

The pictures say it all

Weather Underground says:

Weather.com says:

And I am so sad that for once the different weather reporting stations are in agreement. It is gonna get ugly around here...dangerously hot and ugly.

Corner View: mineral

Corner View: Vegetable Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments at the Corner View link, and be sure to visit other participants you'll find there too. Today's theme is "Mineral" and it comes from Dana. It's part of a trilogy inspired by the game "animal, vegetable, or mineral?" (do you have it in your corner of the world?)"

I love minerals. In Maine there are lots of opportunities to dig for gems just lying barely under the surface. There's tourmaline, beryl, amethyst, quartzes of all colors, and more. Perham's of West Paris Maine was a 90 year old store that sold minerals and gems as well as books and equipment for prospecting. Unfortunately it closed in 2009. The store sold local gems and minerals and pieces from around the world. Perham said the area is rich in pegmatite, a rock composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica. The slow cooling of such materials allows crystals to grow. Green tourmaline mined on Mt. Mica was the store's specialty when it was founded. The store was featured in Reader's Digest in 1957; Perham said recent visitors still arrived with copies of the issue. Yankee Magazine also cited Perham's as "The Best Place to Rock" in Maine in their May-June issue. More about the famous mineral store here.

Tourmaline is actually Maine's state mineral. Digging for minerals is a Maine tourist attraction for those so inclined. They stay at Mining camps as a home base like the Poland Mining Camp and are taken to quarry locations to prospect.

Living in and near the locations for best mineral collecting, we were fortunate to belong to the Maine Mineralogical Society. As a club they had permission to go to quarries where the mechanized gemologists had already dug out the vein and dug up the earth from around it. We sorted through the tailings, as they called it, happy as clams and finding lots of pretty gems and rocks. Here is a collection of a few I found whilst digging with my nose to the ground under the Maine skies:

From front and clockwise: amethyst ,2 quartzes, geode, smokey quartz

Oh, look, it's an ugly rock!

Ah, but look what's lurking inside! It turned out to be a geode!

Smokey quartz closeup. In real life it looks like there is smoke inside the mineral. I just can't photograph it so well so the picture didn't pick that up

Amethyst, note the light purple. In Maine, amethyst came in all shades, from light lavender to deep purple.

Green tourmaline

Did you know that minerals grow so big? A cave was discovered in Mexico where the crystals have grown as big as a pillar and tall as a house!

You can read more about the wonderful crystal cave in NatGeo here.

Finally, there is a new mineral that has been discovered!

Meteorite Hunter Discovers New Mineral
"Hidden within a rock from space is a mineral previously unknown to science: panguite.The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials, including panguite."

So thanks for taking the mineral tour with me! Be sure to visit the other Corner Views. Happy Corner viewing!

What I think...

This is very true for me

Our visit to an Etruscan tomb

I was re-reading my old travel journals. This one was from 1996 or so. It was a long trip I took with my family and my husband. First, the bunch of us went to Paris. When that part of the trip was over and they scattered either for home or for other European nations to visit, my husband and I went on by train to southern France, and then to Italy.

We had rented an apartment on the Tuscan/Umbrian border near Cortona, in a little town named Tuoro Sul Trasimeno. Each day we would take our rented car and explore.

This particular day I'd written about involved an Etruscan tomb. I remember our experience there like it was yesterday and not 15 years ago. Here is what I'd written.

"after laundry and a rest, we struck out for Camucia, a town at the bottom of the hill from Cortona, in search of an Etruscan tomb we'd heard about. Sure enough, after a few minutes of poking around, we saw a sign for the tomb and a small sign for the parking lot. So we parked. But we did not see anything even approximating an ancient tomb.

As we wandered about the lot, we saw an ancient woman in a vineyard clamber up and part the vines, yelling the whole time. She had a scarf on her head, a plain dress, clumpy heavy black shoes, an apron, and a few teeth. I heard a couple of words, mainly "custodia" caretaker. We asked where the tomb was and again she said she was custodian and seemed to wait expectantly.

Mike dug in his pocket and as he did the woman eyed us and said, "Americani?" When we said "Yes", she pronounced, "20,000 lira!"

Of course that was too much, but we didn't bargain and we handed it over. In return, she asked us if we wanted some white grapes, and sliced off a big bunch. They were SO sweet!

She hobbled down a neat, graveled path, banging her cane all the way to the gate. At the gate, she dug her out of her apron of a huge key, the kind you see in cartoons. It must have weighed 10 pounds. She opened the gate wide and took us around a bend. There it was.

The Etruscan tomb was built in the 6th century before Christ, making it close to 3000 years old. It was 5 rooms large, meaning it had intended to house personages from a rich family. The Etruscan tomb was deep, well constructed, and impressive. There was even writing on the wall, as old as Egyptian hieroglyphs, describing the married couple whose tomb this was.

The old lady began speaking in a loud measured voice in what was obviously a memorized spiel. She'd gesture to this side or that side with her cane, and whack the wall, with it, and sometimes dust would come trickling down. Then she asked how we liked her grapes."

That was our trip back in time 3000 years ago to the tomb. It was an amazing archaeological site to see. But the real feature of the day was the old lady with her cane and her key.

Ratatouille

What to do with the yellow squash? Make a version of ratatouille. Put in oil to cover the bottom of the pot, add chopped Vidalia onion, stir till golden brown. Then add the cubed yellow squash. I didn't peel it. Turn stovetop to medium low, add salt, cover and let simmer down till the juices are almost gone. Then add the green pepper, and when they are almost soft, the tomatoes. The tomatoes adds the juices back in. Part way though I added margarine.

To save electricity, I turn the stove off when the veggies are cooked through and just let the residual heat on the burner and the pot simmer and blend the flavors. I ate it with a slice of crusty bread. Yum! Lunch is served.

It is another hot day today, but we have been blessed with perfect weather and temperatures up till now. I've got the fan on but I might break down and turn on the AC. It is 87 degrees right now. Once temps get above 90, no amount of nighttime open window policy will let in enough cool air to sufficiently cool off the apartment. It starts over the next day already hot, and piling on is a dead end road I don't like to travel.

I'm starting a new book today, "Shadow of Ashland." The blurb goes, "As she is dying, Leo Nolan's mother asks him to find her brother Jack, who left home during the Great Depression and dropped out of sight. Leo's quest for his uncle takes him south to Ashland, Kentucky, where he discovers that the present lies in the unbreakable grip of the past."

Oh, the past, the past. I don't like to look at the past. I look to the future, because it is filled with heavenly delights. I look to the future so much I can totally understand Leonard Ravenhill's quote, "I'm convinced that the greatest thing about those Puritan preachers (is) they lived in eternity six days a week and came down to earth on the seventh!" But I still hope the book will be good. If it isn't I have four others on deck to give a try.

The construction at the school across the street is finally getting noisy. Hey, maybe one good outcome of turning on the AC is that with the windows shut I won't hear the jackhammers...

Have a good day everyone and stay cool on this long, longest summer day!

Corner View: Vegetable

Corner View: Vegetable Corner View is a weekly appointment - each Wednesday - created by Jane, where bloggers from all corners of the world share their view on a pre-arranged theme. If you'd like to join in, please leave a link to your Corner View post in the comments at the Corner View link, and be sure to visit other participants you'll find there too. Today's theme is "Vegetable" and it comes from Dana. It's part of a trilogy inspired by the game "animal, vegetable, or mineral?" (do you have it in your corner of the world?)"

Access to good, fresh food is a worldwide problem. Living in the verdant and richly soiled American South, with a long growing season, I have access to fresh food that is local and usually organic 9 months per year. Though I don't frequent the local Farmer's Market each week, I I never take for granted that it is there and the hard working farmers are offering a treasure to the people.

Comer Farmer's Market

Tomato plants in a friend's garden

Thank you for stopping by to see my virtual vegetables, and be sure to visit other Corner Views this week! :)