Project 365 at Catobear.com!

The degus are here! And they are really, really cute! They were terrified when they first arrived, but what a scary transition it must have been for them. They were starting to become comfortable by the time I left, and were calling out to each other.

We received 32 degus...six males and 26 females. By the time I left work today, four of them had already gone on to new homes.

These are the containers they arrived in...six containers for all those animals. Their lives will surely be different now. The remaining 68-plus went to another lab...

Today I made an enormous pot of vegetarian bean soup. Tomorrow, I will freeze it into individual serving sizes for the next two weeks.

It's still hot and humid, but not as bad as the past several days. Rain in the morning, but no storms predicted. We had a tornado touch down at the corner of Columbia and Helmer on Thursday evening, just prior to our volunteer appreciation party.

The butterfly bush in the front garden is finally opening up. I can't believe how quickly this weekend went. I hope next week is better at work. What with Nina and the rock through the front door...

It's been super hot and humid the past week. We were supposed to have a storm today, but nothing really happened at all. It didn't even rain!

Today was the 5K Strut for the Strays, our first. Melissa coordinated it all and did a fantastic job!

Breakfast at the Griffin. Grocery shopping. Went to Quin's open house at Melissa and Joel's. Home to make soup and bread. Tired.

Back to work today from the vacation. After a short while, it was like I never left. Another hot day, and humid...the sort of day where you want to be inside in central air.

There are so many mosquitoes outside, it was terrible taking photos. I wanted to stay out and watch the hummingbirds, but I couldn't stand it. We did have a little rain today, and enough of a storm to knock a big branch out of the oak tree.

This shot shows my color scheme this year...purple and orange.

All of today's photos come from Mom's gardens. Today was the last day of my vacation, and I went over with breakfast and coffee to start the day.

After going to Mom's this morning, I did some minimal running errands but haven't been outside really since noon. It's miserably hot, in the 90s with high humidity and a heat warning in effect until 8:00pm.

I know I should go outside and water the flowers, but they might just have to be dry one day (I did water last night, and every night before that). It's just too hot!

I think it's supposed to cool off some over the weekend, but I worry about the rolling blackouts through Michigan...the power companies are shutting things down so the whole grid doesn't wipe out. But no electricity, no water...that's going to be horrible if it hits.

The smoking ban in Michigan restaurants went into effect May 1. It's amazing now to see all the places we can have dinner where we couldn't before...hello, Urbandale Speed's!

Took today as a vacation day, and it was glorious! Slept in a little. Got up, showered, had coffee, wandered around in the yard. Read some stuff on the internet. Ran on the treadmill (Bevy, you are an inspiration!). Took another shower. Bob came home and we had lunch together. Then I did an hour of yoga, made dinner. After we ate, I went out and took some photos. Now, I'm relaxing in front of the tv. Perfect!

Tonight I actually shot some video of the gardens, and realized the limitations of my very old camera. It's all much too blurry to put up on youtube or on this site. The limited video capability might be what makes me decide to finally get a new camera.

The weather is perfect, around 78 degrees at 8:30pm. It was sunny today. We were able to have the windows open all day without any of the neighbors burning their trash. I suspect the fireworks will start soon though. Maxy is so afraid of the noise, we'll close up the house and put on the a/c and crank the tv up to try to block the noise for him. Poor thing sits under the kitchen table shaking the whole evening...no calming him down.

Today Mom and I went up to Lansing to spend the day with Grandma. We had an excellent time! Lots of talking and eating. It was a great day.

Thursday, July 29, 2010