More heat today

It's 106 now at 5 pm, and will probably get as hot tomorrow.  My house is like an oven, especially the kitchen.

I did have a good workout in a very cool gym this afternoon.  Don called and said he was going at about 3:30, so I decided to join him.  Jeannie has to attend an ice cream social with Arianna's soccer team this evening so she couldn't go today anyway.

I'm really working on my arms, shoulders and back - remember that dress I bought a while back and posted pictures of?  I haven't worn it yet and decided it will be ok to wear to my sister's wedding next weekend.  I found a little black cardigan with 3/4 sleeves in case I need a cover up.  But I want my arms to look decent and healthy and muscular!

The gym was so pleasantly cool and it was hell coming back outside - even worse walking into my house.  The swamp cooler keeps the air moving, as do the fans I use with it, but they just move the hot air around.  The gym was also nearly empty, which Donald says is typical everyday around 3:30 pm.  I like that because I'm a little self-conscious  once in a while when the crowd is mostly 20 somethings.  Usually I don't let it bother me.

Tomorrow Jeannie is having the birthday party at her house for Stephanie, Amy's daughter, who will be 25.  Ara turns 25 the end of September.  It doesn't seem like all that long ago they were sweet cuddly little baby girls.   I bought some beer to drink while I'm there, but I got the non-alcoholic kind.  I've noticed that just two regular beers in the evening causes me to wake up at least every two hours during the night with severe leg cramps.  

I asked the Park Manager today about the electricity costs when I paid my rent.  She said the solar wouldn't have caused my cost to go down so I must be using less electricity.  I try to unplug everything I can when I go to bed at night, don't leave lights burning when I'm not in the room, and just generally attempt frugality in my use of resources.   If I was younger I would build me a tiny cabin out in the mountains somewhere and live off the grid.   That has always been the kind of life that appeals to me - I was a fan of Mother Earth News in the 70's but by then I had a husband and kids and had to put my dreams on hold.  Never did get around to homesteading, but my 3 years in Ireland were about simplicity, at least compared to the consumerism in the United States.

I had a nice phone conversation today with granddaughter Ara, reminding me just how much I miss that girl.  She and I think alike on so many things.

A few people have suggested that I might try gmail; actually I started out with gmail several years ago.  Then Google changed it quite a bit and reduced the area in which you can write an email.  I can only figure it must have something to do with people writing emails on their smart phones so they don't need the space of a computer screen.  I still use my gmail account, but not heavily.  I then switched to aol as my primary email.  I used it back in the 1990's when you paid something like $25 a month for the service.  I loved AOL  then as well as all their forums, chat rooms, etc.  But of course it went the way of the dinosaur and today  it isn't anything at all like the original aol.   ATT uses Yahoo to handle their email, and every time I've known of a friend to have their account compromised with spam email it's been a Yahoo account.  When I loaded it yesterday to see how it worked, I already had 30 spam messages in my box!  Needless to say I won't be using Yahoo for much.  I don't think there is much I can do about my email and changing to something more usable to me.  Technology has just changed too drastically whereas I haven't, and we won't ever be a good match!   I like me better, though!