Fifteen Cats In The Basement

We were about to go into the house when the owner opened the front door. He was an older man, with gray hair and a green polo shirt over his belly. He wobbled out and looked at us.

"You were supposed to call first," he said.

Our realtor said she'd made an appointment for Wife and I to see the house, and she sweetly explained that she hadn't seen any note that told us to make an extra call. No, the man said, you were supposed to call first. It takes me fifteen minutes to round up the dogs. We could hear them barking somewhere inside the house. They sounded big.

The Temperature, The Toilet and The Test

Here's how hot it is.

I left a baseball in the back seat of my car. I left my car parked out in the sun.

The ball turned brown on one side.

It is at least 100 degrees right now. We tied an all-time record of 104 in Charlotte over the last three days. We could have it worse. In Columbia, the city where God focuses His magnifying glass and tries to burn people like ants, it hit 113.

I just went to the store and bought a box fan. It's on a chair at the end of the couch, blowing luke warm air over Wife and me. Every blind in our condo is closed to repel the sun. The air conditioner, fresh off a Freon recharge, is working as hard as a 1985 Trane still can, coughing and wheezing and somehow able to keep the temperature in here down to 86. That's impressive. It's like a 90-year-old trying to run a 5K. The results aren't great, but you have to admire the effort.