I have been thinking I might have been seeing a monarch flying around our milkweed plants n the patio but when I saw it I was either mowing the lawn or just didn’t have my monocular or phone to zoom in and see it. The lighting is pretty tricky for me out back with the trees and dark shadows contrasting with the bright sunshine so I find it hard to see them for now.

It was a nice day today and a surprise nice day at that so we just had to get out and go for a walk and grab a cache more. It wasn’t what I would call a nice day or anything like that but definitely a bit cooler and less humid than recent days. It was a tolerable day weather wise. Our caching wasn’t one of the most successful days but any day we can get out is a good day.

We had very heavy thunderstorms yesterday which made the air wetter than it already had been. Thankfully nothing in the league of that Bensalem Croydon had with the insane flooding. We did have a nice MCS move through in the middle of the night with strobe like lightning. It has been hot and humid and today is no exception to that pattern. We were doing some yard work, I was cutting the grass when it started raining from a blue sky.

For the past several years I’ve been doing challenges for my birthday when it comes up. Normally I’d do the burpee pull ups times my age since while the typical birthday burpees fro Crossfit suck I wanted to challenge myself. This year I decided to mix it up and do something completely different. I kind of have been having the goal of age times body weight for my birthday squats for a while.

We got pretty decent thunderstorms two days in a row. It’s a nice change of pace from the heat and the second year in a row now that storms have been pretty lackluster at best. Yesterday’s storms were well out ahead of tropical storm Elsa so there was plenty of moisture to work with. Lots of fuel with the slightly higher dewpoints too. While we didn’t get a direct hit from the one cluster that one feature lots of lightning.

I just saw an new article linked about the “heat dome.” that caused the record smashing heat in western North America. While the heat dome is a real thing but I just know the hype centric news outlets are only going to use that term as a big scary hype machine much like they do with the polar vortex during the winter. Sometimes I wish the news could be like it was when I was young where it was just on TV for short period of time a day r in the once or twice a day newspaper.

I have been feeling really run down from the heat. I can’t drink enough water yet I’m tired of drinking water. Thankfully today it is much cooler than the mid to upper nineties we’ve been having but it’s still warm and humid. Not terrible but a little uncomfortable would be how I’d best describe this morning. Once the remnants of Elsa move past and the cold front completes it’s push through we should have a much better couple of days.

I slept better last night than the past couple of nights since there were only a few early fireworks last night. I’m not complaining about them like so many people do, I’m simply stating a fact. It’s also a fact that Most if not all of the fireworks I’ve been hearing aren’t legal as their not 150 feet from a building but the cops don’t bother to enforce it so it is what it is.

I walked into the garage for something this evening and saw movement out in the back yards. I looked more closely and realized the movement wasn’t a butterfly like I had hoped but it was something nice to see nonetheless. I always enjoy seeing wild animals and it’s even better to see them adapting to urban backyards. It doesn’t really matter what sort of animals they are. I love seeing anything from birds, to squirrels to rabbits to even the occasional skunk roaming around.

This weather today is as close to the perfect summer day as you can ever get. It’d warm but not really humid with a decent breeze. The morning was sunny but there are some cumulus clouds forming now. The temperature is only in the upper 70s! It being the fourth of July I hope many people are outside enjoying it. Sadly the girlfriend is working so we’re not doing anything at all.