Lemme tell you, it was freakin’ hot today. Like ten degrees hotter than normal, as this month has been to date. You can tell people out here are sick of this – the thinking being, enough is enough!. Arizona winter can’t come soon enough.

But at least we are living these hot days in a far more efficiently cooled house thanks to the good folks at Arizona Refrigeration Service, who came in the other day and worked their asses off on a blazing hot day where the attic got up to 115. They took the old Carrier unit out, and rewired and reconfigured a more efficient Rheems system (very highly rated in Consumer Reports) that should last long after I’m in the grave. It cost us $7K, but with the estimates of a 20-30 percent decrease in our overall monthly utilities costs, we’re hoping the unit goes a long way to paying for itself over the years.

But the days are surely getting shorter, and the sky at dusk sure looks like fall. Hope you like the pic of our newly-trimmed mesquite tree, I think it came out nice. The arborist who came out told us we were one storm away from having the tree come down on our house because of the thickness and weight of all the branches. It took him the better part of two hours, but we now have a mesquite tree that will grow into itself and in a way that allows the wind to move through it. I think it looks nice.

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Pool temp: 82 degrees