Hey Baby, It's the 3rd of July

And, as you might expect in early July, IT'S HOT!! This will be the 6th straight day above 90 degrees here in Va. And, the humidity has crept up little by little each day, until it is downright nasty outside: gross air. It is still a lovely thing that the forest keeps things a little more pleasant and just a hint of breeze helps with cooling (sweat+evaporation=cooling). Still it's toasty out there, not to be trifled with and sure makes you appreciate air conditioning!! The good news is; we are not to the summer days when it's always above 90 - and with the warming planet it's coming - and a cold/cool front currently chilling the northwest US will arrive Friday/Saturday and knock temperatures back into the 80's...but not until Saturday. A slightly cooler week is forecast for next week - I'm hoping with a lovely weekend for mid month with the 6th Red Wing Roots music festival on the horizon.
Hot conditions seem to prevail in Russia for the World Cup, too, and some hot soccer; the Belgium/Japan thriller yesterday was one for the ages. The last of the round of 16 wraps up today and there have been some shockers, some thrillers and some of the usual whining - give it a rest Mexico; you played like crap, were nasty with the fouls and got your asses kicked by a much better team.
The Ring of Fire is the place to be for quakes today but with only a couple of quakes in the 5+ range, but that includes a 5.1 quake from another eruption at Kilauea; still rocking on the big island - new rock that is. And, 4 states that wouldn't come to mind for quakes, right up the middle of the country, TX, OK, KS, NB, all with small quakes today - Thanks Fracking and the lovely injection of salt water back into the earth.  Yesterday, on the evening business news an oil price expert mentioned how with fracking there was now no end in sight of oil and then blahblahblahhed about what prices might do... bet he's not going to share his profits to help with ground water pollution issues, and rising temps and seas from all that hydrocarbon burning. As long as the price is stable and low enough for donniejohnie the chump to tell us how good he is...for everything. Going to be a long, hot, ugly century without some major changes...and as always, the reminder: the Earth doesn't care how hot or cold it is or where sea level is, or if there are humans on the planet - this planet couldn't care less.
There are some easy solutions, keep your religious beliefs to yourself, use contraception so you have none or one or two great kids and be nice to people. Then use/eat less and get out and do more under your own power. It's not tricky.
It's hot our there so go slow, but get out and check out your planet, Today on Earth.
And, if you can deal with the mugginess and mosquitoes check out the planet show in the evening sky: from the west above the sunset you can see Mercury (low and dim) Venus (crazy bright) Jupiter (high in south) and Saturn (lowish in east) Mars (rises red in East as Venus is setting). They are lovely.