The Air Conditioner people are here to install our new central air conditioner. We thought it might be well to buy an entire new installation for the mansion because the old air conditioner was struggling in this massive heat wave that is burning the balls of millions of our fellow citizens including my own. LOL.

I never had a clue as to how involved replacing a central air unit can be. They actually have to remove and replace the furnace in order to install a new air conditioner coil which is located underneath the furnace. They have to go into the blazing hot attic area of the house to work on a couple of pipes that deal with water flow and pressurization of the new air conditioning unit.

The good news is that the Air Conditioner company sent a crew of three young, strapping, hunky men who seem to know what they are doing and the company we are dealing with has the highest recommendations of the surrounding community so i am not too concerned — I think they will do a good job.

Speaking of the weather, it is going to be 97 today according to all the forecasts. I have seen it hotter and I have seen it a lot colder. I remember one July day back in the 1950s when it actually snowed. But that was some kind of anomaly because it only happened once that I remember. Generally speaking, back in the 1950s when I was a kid, the weather in August was hot enough that we could go skinny dipping in a large pond in the middle of a pretty clean creek that ran past our little country town…about two miles out of town in a pretty pristine wooded area where few people except us ever seemed to go, primarily because there was nothing there except the creek, the trees, the weeds, the bugs, the snakes, and so on and so forth.

It looks like one of my favorite places on the planet, Joshua, Texas is going to have decent weather today– somewhere in the upper 80s at worst …..I love to keep an eye on Joshua, Texas because I have always wanted to go there and have never quite made it as yet –I used to have a friend there who once had a blog and he and I had some mighty stimulating conversations on those blogs. I haven’t heard from him in quite a few months now and I am hoping and praying that he is doing alright.

My friend, Jim, is cooking beef stew for us for lunch today — I hope that beef comes out tender. The beef we have been getting from the local super rip off market has been tougher than nails lately and it seems to be impossible to make it really tender even when using a pressure cooker. But it is at least chewable so I can get some good juice out of it and there are plenty of good wholesome vegetables as well.

Speaking of vegetables: I am scared to death to eat any raw vegetables right now because there is reportedly a raging parasite infection spreading rapidly across the country…I forgot the real spelling of the name, but the name is something like cyclospora and it isn’t reported as being fatal and it is treatable with antibiotics but it is reported to cause explosive diarrhea for weeks and even months if not treated properly. They are telling me that this outbreak has been very difficult for the Centers For Disease Control to track because of the massive lay offs at CDC by the DOGE people at the beginning of president Trump’s second term in office. I am of the personal opinion that we need a fully staffed and fully funded CDC if we, as a nation, are going to avoid some calamitous tragedy because of some new disease. But I guess the government is working on eliminating waste, fraud and abuse from our agencies — I just hope we don’t get eliminated in the process.