I'm happy your forecast looks so good. Our forecast shows a much lower chance of rain for most days and some evenings---20 to 30%, but we're not hurting for rain nearly as much as you are so we're okay if none of that rain falls here this week. Our forecasts show the same major cool-down by the end of the week. Our temperatures are still overachieving--yesterday we were 5 degrees higher than forecast, but even if those higher-than-forecast temperatures keep occurring, the cool-down still will make us significantly cooler than we have been in a long time, other than on rainy days. I hope you get to keep that bounce in your step all week long. I think it is a terrible shame that the June rainfall let you down. Once you get the pond bottom fixed so it holds all the water it is meant to hold, maybe you'll have insurance, in the form of water, to ensure that never happens again. Even with insurance, these last couple of years have been awful for the farmers in many areas. I don't know how much longer they can keep hanging on. The ranchers are worse off because I don't think you can insure your hay pastures the way you can insure planted row crops. When I look at how few cows there are in the fields around us these last two summers compared to what we had even as recently as 5 to 10 years ago, the decrease is herd size is just huge. Dawn

Akira Yoshizawa is my icon. I've been doing origami for years and have recently started using money as the "paper." Since we now live sooo far away from the kids, their spouses & the grandkids, and shipping objects which may need to be returned or exchanged is sooo expensive, and money is always the BEST present, but seems as impersonal as a check or gift card, I've gotten really creative with making amazing "things" out of cold hard cash. Thank you, Google, for reminding the world of this amazingly talented artist.

I checked in virtually.

Not sure what Loyalty Day means now, but several years ago it was a salute to the military. In Gardena CA they use to have the annual Loyalty Day Parade, and had horses, bands, and lots of military stuff. DH was in charge of that for several years and we actually lined up 2 of the parades. It was alot of fun.