Good Morning!!!! 77F @ 7:30AM. Sunny. Record high temperatures expected. High near 105F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Excessive Heat Warning continues through Wednesday, and we're now in an Exceptional Drought condition. Last night it only made it down to 85F, and the A/C ran most of the night. Every day sees new fires break out with Full Wildfire Response: ground and air crews scrambling to put it out before it spreads into something they can't handle. So far, locally at least, they've been successful. Most have been man caused: Idiots using lawnmowers on dry grass or running defective catalytic converters that spew white hot particles onto the roadsides. Thanks to someone writing down a license plate number, the last one of those idiots will be getting a huge fine for the cost of putting out the flames.
Beautiful lily, Ron. The deer out here would love it! The neighbors are complaining that they're even eating the deer resistant plants like lavender and sage because all the grasses and even the weeds are all brown and dried out.
That's a good report on the Makita, Paul. I wasn't impressed with the chain that came on the regular Makita chainsaw, so put an 18" bar on it and switched to a Stihl chain. Cuts really well now. Still have to see if the Makita Stihl pole saws use the same chain. I sure hope so.
I had ambitions of doing some outside work yesterday, but never quite made it out of the house. Did some paperwork first thing that dragged out, and next thing I knew it was in the mid 90s. I'm going to get an earlier start today.
Tried a new pizza crust recipe yesterday, this time letting the yeast set ten minutes in warm water before being incorporated into the dough. Came out nice and crisp on the bottom thanks to the pizza steel, but because I turned off the propane too early, it was a white crust on top. Still good though.
I also used the label maker to put stickers on the drone controller so I could remember what each of the buttons do. The controller is black, and the labels the factory puts on it are engraved into the plastic, which makes them almost impossible to read. I used tape with white letters on a clear background, and now they're easily seen. I also tried flying on a low controller battery, and lost contact with the drone when it got kinda high. Just the video went out, so I was able to get it back down OK, but it was an anxious time before I could hear the buzz again. It's supposed to have an automatic return to home function that kicks in after 11 seconds of lost contact, but it didn't kick in since the controls were still working. It's also very difficult to see the iPad screen in sunlight, and standing in the shade under the eves of the house cuts down on signal strength, too. Charging the battery fixed the problem, so now I'll just plan ahead and get everything on the charger the day before I want to fly.
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend...
