This is beginning to turn into a very wet month even though it did not start that way. In fact, at least as far as I was concerned August involved a fair bit of travel. I started off by going to the Hague for a week. No, I was not visiting Slobodan, this was work related. Back in Houston we took advantage of nice (meaning hot) weather and headed to the beach a couple of times. The beaches are nice, unfortunately one cannot say the same about the water. Even though it is very warm, it tends to be rather silty. This produces water of consistency of typical office coffee. It is not unhealthy, just unappealing. But at least we do not have any shark attacks like they do in Florida. (I suspect that the sharks can't see anything and so they stay away.)

Last week I went on another company sponsored trip, this time to southern Idaho to look at Paleozoic limestones. It is important for office geologists to get into the field at least once a year and remind themselves how complicated rocks really are and how little we know. In addition, it was nice to visit a different climatic zone. Not that Idaho was any cooler than Houston, I suspect temperatures were actually a little higher, but it was dry. Very dry. In fact, if it were not for constant irrigation, there would be no Idaho potatoes or anything else, except for some desert shrubs and cactus. With addition of water, however, the desert turns into very productive farmland. Valleys are dotted with green circles (800 m in diameter), each with a long irrigation pipe on wheels that rotates and sprays water. Makes for a pretty sight from an airplane or a hilltop.

Well, the dry heat was nice but at the end of four days I was starting to feel like a shriveled plum. It was time to go back to Houston and rehydrate my skin. I am still rehydrating. It started to rain a few days before we returned and it is still raining. The problem is that by now nearly two weeks went by without mowing the lawn and it is getting very high. On the positive side, our moonflower, which normally opens its blossoms only at night, is taking a cue from the generally lower light levels and opens its flowers already by mid-afternoon. Have to look on the bright side.

In other news, the project I am working on has been moved to a different building and I moved with it. Moving is always a hassle, but I am now 3 minutes closer to home, have covered parking and (this is important in Houston) the garage is elevated so that the car will not get flooded. School year started in the middle of the month and so the daily grind started again for Monica. University of Calgary follows the more traditional calendar and so for Alice classes will start next week, after Labor Day. All in all, rather low key, uneventful month.

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