Pictures
2 August 2005, 4:58 PM

I thought I'd share some of the nifty random photos I'd taken last month:

*Cough*Cough*
2 August 2005, 3:04 PM

I was fine on Saturday. Better than fine actually. I was feeling great after a much needed rest. We both were. And then we woke up Sunday and felt like crap. Sneezing, coughing, stuffy heads and headaches.

What the heck? I checked our HEPA air filter. The carbon pre-filter was a bit dirty, but otherwise it was fine. The air quality had to have changed drastically. Sure enough, when I walked outside I could see a haze in the air. I've had trouble breathing for the past three days, and constant coughing.

It's very frustrating to see, since the Hill Country area where we live is usually fairly clean air. This kind of haze is a daily rush-hour phenomenon in Houston, but not out here, It usually means that there's a fire burning somewhere, or pollutants blowing in from elsewhere.

I did some checking and it turns out I was right - on both counts. Some of the bad air is due to drift from fires out west and some is due to pollutants originating in industrial areas of the mid-west. To add insult to injury, we're also sitting under a cloud of dust blown in from sub-Saharan Africa. That's right, a dust cloud from 6,000 miles away is sitting on top of parts of Texas and Mexico. Add that to high ozone levels due to the heat and you've got a recipe for respiratory problems.

Forgetting and Remembering
2 August 2005, 11:02 AM