Thursday July 3rd

What a nice day! I got up at 4:30am and watched Venus Williams win her semi-final match to get to the finals of Wimbledon. Her sister won later in the day, so it will be an all Williams final on Saturday. Friday is the men’s semi-finals and there is one match that has all of the possibilities of being an instant classic. Federer vs. Safin could be a match to go down in history but only if the “good” Marat shows up to play and the “bad” Marat is left in the hotel room.

I did a huge amount of yard work and cleaned up a number of places that needed to just be spiffed up. I do have more spiffing to do tomorrow but overall I feel that I did a fair job today of accomplishing some necessary tasks. I am focusing on tasks that can be accomplished with out a great amount of fanfare. I find that I feel a bit better about myself when I do not get bogged down in the minutia of the tasks and I just get it done! Sweating out any and all impurities in my system in the heat feels wonderful.

I had a bit of worrisome surprise this evening. As the monsoons circled around the city the winds picked up and a young bird that was born in one of my palm trees was blown out of its nest and was cowering in a corner. Its parents were loudly protecting their youngster and were not at all pleased to see my come out the front door to investigate the ruckus. I got an old cardboard box and got the frightened bird into and placed a few towels, water and birdseed in the box. The baby has no tail feathers yet and cannot fly, I am not holding out too much hope but I will do what I can to see if the baby can make it.

I am looking forward to another day if getting more simple tasks done tomorrow and then grilling out burgers swimming and watching the fireworks off of “A Mountain” as I float in my pool.



I am about 90% packed to leave on Monday for Puget Sound. All I have to do is pack up my bench and the classroom tools. All of the kits are finished and all of the tools are packed up in office boxes. I get to see the sweet Michele Goldstein & Gail Crosman Moore. I cannot wait to see them again so soon after B&B.