My sympathies, Molly. I really hate it anytime the plumbing goes ka-fooze!

I just heard that yesterday it was 115^o F. in Pasco, Washington, over in the Tri-Cities area (Hanford is just up the pike a ways). I usta woik in that town!!

I remember it getting up to 105^o F. regularly during the middle and late summer. There was air conditioning everywhere and they would crank it way up. I'd leave the radio station, where the temperature was around 60^o, after my morning shift and walk out into 105^o weather. Then I'd drop into a nearby restaurant for lunch where the inside temperature would by about 60^o. Then back out into the oven, and drive to the nearby Safeway to pick up something to stock the refrigerator in my apartment. In the Safeway, 60^o. Then back outside.

A few little shifts like this and you could start feeling a bit dizzy.

Sure glad I'm not over there now!

Years ago I had a friend, Fred Melberg, who was in forestry when I knew him, but he'd worked in various capacities as a naturalist. For some strange reason, he had occasion to be up in far north Alaska during the winter. He and the party he was with got caught in the middle of nowhere when a storm blew up, and there was no shelter around. So, quick like a bunny, they started packing up snow and built an igloo. Kind of a sloppy one, but it offered them shelter from the ravages of the storm. Inside the igloo, the temperature was about 35^o F. It measured around -50^o outside. Fred had occasion to crawl outside to get something, and as he slithered through the narrow tunnel they had cobbled together, it occurred to him that, between his feet and his head, there was a temperature difference of about 85 degrees.

When he was living in Seattle, he had an interesting pet. A fully-armed skunk. But that's a whole nother story.

Don Firth