Alex joined us for dinner (and football) last evening.  He's been fighting a cold for the past few days (his major symptoms are headache and sore throat) so I cruised over to a "new" Thai restaurant 3 miles away (sadly the one just one mile away from us has closed) for some take-out Tom Yum Gai soup to accompany Tom's salad. 

I did get my ballot all filled out (deciding which judges to retain took the longest time) and now need to research where I can go to safely drop it off.

After this morning's walk (Brownie keeps finding goatheads) and soak I attacked the south-facing oleander hedge in the forest.  I did major cutting back (in order to keep that monster away from the new block wall), because obviously <g> we do NOT want a repeat of the previous problem!

   Before it got too warm and signaled quitting time I moved on to do some minor tweaks of the orchid tree, cape honeysuckle, and volunteer palm fronds, all of which should help to make mowing easier.  

Since our new Organics can has not appeared yet, all of today's greenery got piled up in our bulk trash staging area.  At least those piles are out of sight from our place - though not from Alex's.

Then I came inside to cool off.  

With triple digits forecast <sigh> we are "poised to set another blistering milestone today" with the most 100-degree days ever observed in a calendar year.  

As anyone can tell you, our heat has been unrelenting this year, and we set all sorts of records.  

Some of our more notable:

new high for the number of days at or above 110 degrees: 53 days, absolutely SHATTERING the old record of 32!

new high for the number of days at or above 115 degrees: 14 

And as if the days weren't bad enough, it didn't cool down at night; one night the "low" only dipped to 97, and for a record 28-night stretch during the summer our "low" never dropped below 90 degrees.

And how's this for another impressive number?

HALF of the days (143 out of 287) of the year so far, equivalent to 20.4 weeks, have hit 100 degrees - 

and as previously noted there are several more triple digit days in our forecast. 

Feeling sorry for us yet? 

FYI - Just a few (of the many) weather records from Summer 2020:

Hottest summer: The average temperature of 96.7 degrees topped 2015′s 95.1 degrees.

Hottest July: The average temperature of 98.9 degrees surpassed 2009′s 98.3 degrees.

Hottest August AND calendar month: The average temperature of 99.1 degrees blasted by 1989′s 98.3 degrees and broke the record for hottest month ever recorded, set just the month before.