We are replacing our main deck after about thirty years This is a new milestone for me. Never before have I lived in one place long enough to replace work I’d done earlier. On the other hand, the original deck was installed about thirty years ago, and that is a long time for a wooden deck.

Rebuilding the deck is taking much longer than the original took, and I’m not sure why, but our house is in disarray, and poor Precious Mae is having a hard time adjusting. She has been very disturbed, hiding under the bed while the workers are here and then coming out to survey the change once they leave.

The downside is that the remodel costs a lot of money, and, when we are finished, we are basically back where we started.

For me, the biggest upside was that a lot of the plants that were on the deck have been moved to a small porch off our dining room where hey are much easier to see.

On the other things part of the post, while most of the US is suffering under a heat dome, it has been a coolish summer here. Today it was 81° and the forecast for tomorrow is 79° then 84° on Sunday^1., then a cooling spell 77°, 69°, then 72°, 72°, and so on. It sort of feels like we are cheating. The reason, I read, is that the direction the wind is blowing brings up cooler, deeper, water which cools the land next the ocean in our area. This handy map – from NASA, I think – shows that our area of the Pacific is about the only part of the world’s oceans that isn’t hotter than normal.

Speaking of heat, Texas is roasting, and the Texas Legislature and Governor Abbot took the occasion to pass a bill that has overridden local ordinances that required people working outside in the heat to be given water breaks. The article in the paper was one of those articles that I had to read several times, thinking I must be getting it wrong. But I didn’t get it wrong. It seems that eight cities in Texas have laws that require employers who have employees working outside in the heat must have water breaks.

When I worked as a carpenter, I never worked for a company that didn’t let us drink water anytime we wanted. And – see above – it is not as hot here as Texas. I worked in over 100° heat once, and it was miserable, I was sweating so much that my hammer kept slipping out of my hand. I can’t imagine not taking water breaks (including pouring water over our heads). I can’t imagine a company not giving their outside workers water breaks, but, apparently, the Texas lawmakers can.

Still, why make a law like that? Who does it serve? Are there really companies that want to see their employees drop dead from the heat? Are they saying that the electorate likes macho assholes so we’ll raise assholeness to a new level? Or is it just that they like to see people suffer? I have no idea but Jeez, what fucking jerks.

Lastly, I keep reading about vultures hitting giant windmills, and I keep thinking that it can’t be a real problem, vultures have great eyesight, they can see a small bunny from 500 feet in the air. It turns out that they do hit windmills and it is because birds, in this case, vultures have very different eyesight than us. Vultures’ vision field – for lack of a better name – is very wide side to side – close to 180° – but very narrow up and down. So, when they are searching for dinner, they are looking down, and they can’t see anything in front of them just like we can see anything behind us without turning our heads.