We returned home from Portland on Thursday night. Our bags failed to make the Denver/Dallas connection, but that was no surprise. We almost didn't make that connection. The upside: I got to wait an entire day before tackling the campfire-smoke-scented laundry filled with sand particles.

Speaking of campfires, Mom sent a message last night saying experts recommend an easy way to keep mosquitoes away from s'mores: throw rosemary in the fire. She noted helpfully that rosemary was spelled with a small r.

Our last days in cooler climes included a visit to the Seaside Aquarium. For a buck we got some raw fish and fed the harbor seals. Each had its unique brand of show-offism. One got our attention by slapping his side. Another twirled in circles while his brother stood on his tail and ate the fish right out of our hands.

Back in Cannon Beach, a glassblower at Icefire Glassworks captivated us with his craft for close to an hour. We watched a little glob of something at the end of a pole turn into an orange/scarlet vase. I would prefer writing to working in two-thousand-degree temps, but I did enjoy watching someone else who did not share my need to stay out of the heat.

While we were gone, my bro-in-law phoned to say our city is rationing water. We get to water our lawn and plants once a week on Monday before ten AM or after six PM. Forecasters predicted rain today, but the sky is a defiant blue. Everything looks shriveled already. It's gonna be a scorcher in Texas.

In the scads of messages I read upon my return I found this news from the UK: Fertility experts become medical profession's highest earners: Helping desperate women to conceive earns these 'unorthodox' specialists more money than even the best-paid plastic surgeons.
Apparently fertility doctors have become Britain's new millionaires. The most appalling, whose name I won't mention lest it help his marketing efforts, earned $37 million last year. That's thirty-seven-stinking-million bucks! And I got incensed when I heard an adoption worker brag about earning two hundred thousand in one year.

I did a radio interview yesterday for WWJC in Deluth talking about my fave and not so fave judges in the Bible in connection with my new study Java with the Judges. I'll post a link when they upload, probably mid-week.

Stay cool.

P. S. I need to make a correction to my last post. I said Gary's choice of ice cream cone was wild huckleberry. That was actually not totally accurate. Wild huckleberry was the selection for his first cone. His second (ordered fifteen minutes later) was chocolate mud slide.