It's Not the Heat -- It's the Humidity

You hear that a lot in the Midwest. Today, it was both. The official high today -- so far -- 99 degrees. I stopped after a little less than six hours.

Between the heat, which caused me to break out into a sweat in the shade, the beating sun, and the bone-searing humidity, I could stand no more. Not to mention my wrists and fingers, which have borne the brunt of the sidewalk saga.

I got all of the debris (the sidewalk chunks photo from yesterday wasn't complete. There were three stacks still in the driveway) out to the alley and tried to pick out the bigger stray pieces out of walkway pit. I cut a few of the perimeter bricks and started pulling up the worthless landscaping material I'd put down last year. (It's made by DuPont and it's crap. And it wasn't cheap either.)

The masonry blade was worn out anyway so I slipped on the metal-cutting one and trimmed the elbow drain on one side. With the bricks on the porch, the drain is now flush -- and a little too flush -- with the porch, pouring water all over my bricks, and loosening two of them out of place. (They weren't completely in place anyway, but this had to get fixed.) With the drain fixed, I put those bricks and a few others that are fragmented on the other side, down.

Since rain is a possibility tomorrow -- and maybe severe -- I'm going to put plastic across the pit. I don't want it to get too soaked before I can get back to it.

We have water pressure again, but we're still under a boil order. And last night, just before 11, the POWER WENT OUT AGAIN. Ameren had it back up in about 2 hours. This is no time to be without power, that's for sure.

So, here's hoping that the next few days I can avoid overheating, flooding, and blackouts. (This is starting to read like a Biblical list of plagues!)

Welcome to July in the Midwest ...