SIMILARITIES

 What do Florida and Arizona have in common?

It's 97 here in the foothills where I live.

111 down in Phoenix.

"But it's a dry heat!"

Bet you've heard that before.

Well, the humidity right now here is at 7 percent.

Now that's dry heat.

Kinda like the type that blasts you in the face when you open the oven door to check on your pizza.

But you can bet there won't be anyone in the back seat of your car waiting to kill you.

THE MURAL

Readers of this blog have been very kind in their comments about the mural Judy and Gayle are doing to the old, brown fence in our side yard.

So here's where it stands this morning.

I have left a bit of the original fence in the photo on the far left to let you see the difference.

Here is a closer view of the area that Judy has been "dabbling" on, to use her phrase.

As she says, there's a great lot still to be done but it is definitely an improvement.

( . . to be continued . . )

MY VERY OWN ARTIST AT WORK

I can't keep her away from her fence mural.

And why should I?

So my job is to help her with her supplies (you could ask her where she found a missing brush yesterday).

And from time to time photograph her and show you my impressions.

I think she resembles Van Gogh in that hat but thankfully she still has both of her ears.

SURVIVAL

Not having anything of any great moment to write about today I was about to leave this space blank and allow you all to contemplate the stumpers in the Friday Funnies some more.

But then Comical Carol saved the day.

By way of explanation, I should tell you that the heat is on here in the Southwestern United States with daily high temperatures pushing 100 degrees F. the past week and over 110 down in poor old Phoenix.

And it can only get hotter over the next several months.

So this advice comes at the exact correct time.

One other strange thought: when I was typing the first sentence above my fingers apparently were going faster (or slower?) than my mind and the phrase "great moment" came on the screen as "groment".

Maybe I've just coined a new word for the dictionary folks.

Les drôles du vendredi . . . (THE FRIDAY FUNNIES)

 With that teensy French lesson (see above if you missed it) we launch once again into our weekly nattering of noisy knockabout.

It is time one more time (hmm, is that too much?) for our timely humor time.

(Aw, geez!)

So let me shut up (PUHLEEZE!!!) and get on with the gaseous gagology.

(C'mon, c'mon)

Oh, you're groaning.

I KNOW you're groaning!

I love it!

So with that love in the air, please go out to your respective milieus and have a marvelous weekend!

And always remember to keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

( . . . ooooohhh . . . )

DESTRUCTION AND DEATH

 A sign marks the site of the worst act of vandalism my town has ever seen.

After the arson fire at the Legado apartment and shopping complex on April 1st, the remains of the concrete parking garage are being taken down.

In this photograph, you can see the town's event center, just kitty-corner across the street from the fire area.

And in this photograph of the parking garage being torn down, you can see in the center right the occupied apartment project just across a fairly narrow street.

Fortunately firefighters from several departments kept the flames from spreading beyond the Legado project which was about 50 percent complete.

Ironically, as I was photographing this today, a "dust devil" came directly through the destruction.

A relative of a tornado the swirling winds on the right took on a black hue from what it had come through.

Fortunately no lives were lost in this disaster.

Not so the other event we take note of today.

D-Day in 1944.

This is just part of the cemetery in Normandy, near where so many died fighting the menace of Nazi Germany.

PROGRESS

 The artwork is continuing on a relaxed pace in our backyard as Judy adds to her fence mural.

Our blogger friend down in Adelaide, Australia, who goes by the name of River was delighted at the "teeny, tiny trees" in my last post on the mural.

Well, they have been joined by some much larger trees in the closer view that are designed to show some perspective.

The lead artist creating this work says that darker blue is a lake.

I think it looks more like an ocean view but the mural is far from finished so we'll see in time.

The completed mural will have, in time, a 3-dimensional appearance.

I'll show you what I mean.

Those hot-air balloons she created yesterday are painted on balsa wood and when they're done they'll be glued to the fence.

The hacksaw, by the way, turned out to be a bad idea so Xacto knives were used to cut the balloon shapes out of the wood.

The BAD, who was here yesterday for a planning session, took the other pieces of wood home with her for she has a jeweler's saw that will probably work.

Between the two of them, these artists probably have all the tools, paint and brushes they need to turn part of an old fence into a beautiful work of art.

And all I have to do, in SWMBO's words, is "stay outta the way!"