Good morning, again, everyone. They predict another hot day with temps in the high 90s and heat indices in the 105-110. That means we are under an extreme heat advisory until early tomorrow morning. We had some rain Tuesday and because we had some urgent matters to attend to inside I didn't water Wednesday morning. By late afternoon, with the temperature on the patio hitting 100, my poor little jungle was looking very wilted. As soon as the fence shadow covered the east containers I went out and thoroughly soaked everything. Thankfully it all came back quickly. I did get back on my watering schedule this morning but, with what we expect in the way of temps today, I will be watching the gardens and will water again tonight if the plants need it. I did notice that a couple of the high leaves on two of my tomatoes are showing some heat/sun damage. I hope that will be limited. But Mother Nature won't be helping me any. We expect 90s through Sunday with mid to high 80s for Monday and Tuesday before the 90s hit again. Even with air conditioning this head is debilitating and there is not a day we haven't been thankful for the ac.

We have had a couple of days of domestic upset. The stove acted up--again. About a month ago I put the big pot of water on to boil, turned on the burner, and watched it spark a small fire. I quickly turned it off and moved the pot while Mom called our landlord's repairman. He came in quickly and changed out the burner. Everything seemed fine after that for about three weeks. Then we had problems with the burner again. It would start heating and then cut out and then start up again. We simply tried to make sure the burner was firmly seated until Tuesday when I heard it spark again. Our favorite little repairman came in thinking it would be a quick and easy job to change out the burner and plug. Famous last words. He had to chisel, scrape, pry, and abrade the blasted thing. When he got it out we found that the original spark had badly damaged the socket--so badly it was a wonder we got enough of a connection. While he was doing that we mentioned that we had a bit of a leak in the kitchen faucet so he came back yesterday to fix it.

We all thought he would simply change out a washer or two and everything would be good. Not even. This building was constructed back in the late 1950s or early 1960s and we doubt any significant changes have been made until the present owner bought them. The low-flow attachment on the faucet broke off taking the threads of the faucet with it so he had to replace the entire faucet. Trying to get the faucet assembly off replayed the scene of the day before getting the burner socket off the stove. He pried, hammered, chipped, sawed, and used his mini-torch. Then the saw slipped and he sliced a hole into the steel sink. So, four-and-a-half hours later, we had a new sink, faucet, and spray attachment. I shouldn't have been surprised at the corrosion given the amount of calcium I get out of the water I boil for our coffee, tea and ice cubes.

Allison Linn at LifeInc. has posted this little item describing exactly why Washington seems so out of touch with the rest of the country. While our elected (mis-)representatives bicker on endlessly about the debt ceiling the rest of the country is far more concerned over the general economy and jobs. Worse, in my mind, is the fact that whatever they do to lower the deficit will probably have a depressing effect on the economy and jobs. As I said to Mom a bit ago "We're damned if they do and we're damned if they don't." And they aren't really listening to us. Or, rather, they are listening to a fringe minority that reflects their own peculiar brand of fanaticism as indicated by this piece at MSNBC's First Read.

As usual, Tom Englehardt has a good post on our insane policy in Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Middle East. I can't add anything to it except to note that the amounts we are spending on these exercises in futility could easily account for the entire budget cuts in Obama offered in the 'big' debt reduction plan.

If anyone really thinks the 'Gang of Six' deficit plan is in any way balanced they need to check out this page on Bernie Sanders' page. This is a royal crock of s**t. And I like Susie Madrak's take on the repeated call for 'shared sacrifice.' When the hell is Cantor, Boehner, Hatch, and their Wall Street paymasters going to ante up their share?