I hope you are all well on this fine Sunday! It is very hot and smoky outside our house, so this is a good day for catching up on indoor activities.

Many thanks for all the birthday wishes and cards...I had a lovely weekend celebrating it--we spent three days in Bodega Bay. Simply one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It is kind of our happy place that we occasionally go to, since it is only a couple of hours driving to get there from here.

We had absolutely beautiful weather all weekend, but the night of my birthday was very unusual. Typically in the summer the fog rolls in at night, and then burns off in the morning. Well, Saturday night the fog stayed way off-shore, so when we got back from dinner at the Duck Club, I went to the back door and opened it--I wanted to hear the sound of the foghorn. Instead, I looked out back and said hey--what are all these lights? Suddenly it registered in my brain that they were stars. Millions of brilliant stars. Then I stepped onto the balcony to where I was shielded from the lights in the room. That's when the sky opened up, and I could see that the Milky Way was standing right in front of us, edge down into the horizon. It was as brilliant as I have ever seen it--rivaling the skies from when I would go backpacking. I had forgotten just how beautiful the sky can be. When we lived in the Bay Area, you really could only see the very brightest of stars. Then when we moved to Vacaville I was delighted because the skies were so much darker, and one could even see a hint of the Milky Way. But I had forgotten just how beautiful a truly dark sky can be.

So anyway, we sat out on the balcony and stared at the sky for a couple of hours. Saw lots of shooting stars. Made lots of wishes.

My darling wife got me several amazing presents, including a book about the Gemini spacecraft, a Charlie Parker CD, but then she also got me a 3Doodler! Those are the things that are kind of a cross between a 3D printer and a fountain pen. I have tried making a few things with it, but it doesn't behave the way I had imagined it to. So I'm having to adjust my expectations and technique. I'm going to ask Dot to post a photo of my first ever attempt at making 3D owls with it. The results are...interesting.

Then we had a bit of an alarming thing happen this week. I got our water bill, and in it was a letter from the City of Vacaville stating that they were obligated to inform us that the City's water has had increased levels of hexavalent chromium (aka Chromium-6). This is the same stuff that was at the heart of the Erin Brokovich story, and our levels are currently around twice the safe limit and rising. The problem is apparently that because the drought is lasting so long, we have industry and agriculture pulling more and more water out of the underground aquifer. So much so, that the water levels are getting lower than they have ever been since they started keeping records. Well, we're pulling our drinking water out of there, as well. So essentially we are "licking the bottom of the bucket." All of the contaminants that were heavier than water have settled down to the bottom of the aquifer, and now when we drink that stuff the concentrations are spiking. So we are taking all the precautions we can--we got a pitcher filter to use in our drinking water, food preparation, coffee making, etc. Hopefully this will only be a temporary problem--either we get a bunch of rain to fill the aquifer back up, or the City adds more filtration systems to remove the chromium-6 (at which point our water rates will undoubtedly go up).

But back on the bright side, I got a new toy yesterday. Kind of a combination gift to myself and from Mary (she's helping me with the cost of it)--I got a new Wacom drawing tablet. So I am hoping to do some more drawings for the newsletter (as well as some other projects). And speaking of that, I need to get back to the drawing board!

Have a great week, everyone!!