Fridays is when I cook chicken soup for dinner. Just one of those traditional things. And usually rice to accompany it. So I cook a little extra rice and refrigerate it until Monday. Monday morning that extra rice gets hauled out, milk heated up in the microwave, the rice placed in a pot the milk poured over, and the rice then cooks gently in the milk while we have our morning shower. I come downstairs first, and feed Jackie and Jillie, and add some brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins to the rice and more milk if needed. It makes for a creamy, delicious breakfast.

Of course that's not all we have for breakfast. Tea and coffee invariably follow, lots of cups for each of us. I'm the tea person. Aeons ago I used to drink coffee too, but with our first pregnancy in our fourth year of marriage -- that would be 62 years ago -- I conceived a violent distaste for coffee. And that 'allergic reaction' never left me. So tea it is, for me. As for what else we have for breakfast; the main course may change, but prefacing it is always a plate of fruit. Sometimes oranges, sometimes melons, and always bananas accompanying them.

This morning breakfast waited while we went out with Jackie and Jillie for a hike through the ravine. Once again we're into an extremely hot and humid day. When Irving brought in the morning paper before we left he looked as usual at the weather reports. Hard to believe, but British Columbia, that always-moderate-temperatured province of Canada, is sharing the U.S.Coastal heat stubbornly wedged over a large geographic area encompassing B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan as well as Washington State, California and a few others.

We think it's hot when the thermometer reads 30C, but today Vancouver has 40C, just so hard to fathom, much harder to imagine how to cope with that temperature. And some parts of B.C. in the interior are even more challenged; 47C, just mind-boggling. We were at Lilooet many years ago, at least close to it, same time of year and we had gone alpine camping. Climbed to a summit where we stayed overnight, hearing a glacier below drip-dripping into an alpine lake below. During the day we left our tent and went exploring, found what was left of winter snow still melting, covered with a pink fungus. It wasn't warm then, though the afternoon sun did its best. We'll hear all about today's weather from our son, but he always minimizes physical discomfort through his perpetual optimistic outlook.

As for us, hiking through the forest this morning the air was dense and humid, the sun penetratingly and acutely hot. As always happens when trekking through forest trails you come across areas that are hotter and others cooler; brief but notable. Despite the heat Jackie and Jillie weren't interested in having any water. Since we've been taking treats along with us on our daily hikes, they've been pestering us non-stop to empty the little bags of treats into their waiting maws.

We happened across an old acquaintance with his hound that we haven't seen in about a year. Just about everyone's sole topic of conversation is COVID and vaccines. Along came a young boy with a beautiful Vizsla, not yet out of puppyhood, anxious to find playmates. Jackie and Jillie are no other dogs' playmates. They know how to play with one another, but another dog? heaven forfend. If another dog is insistent they want to play Jackie and Jillie beg to be lifted up. On the other hand, neither was the wire-haired pointer interested in playing with the puppy. The youngster was a delight to watch in his graceful movement and his delirious happiness with life's adventures.

Back at home again, Jackie and Jillie took possession of the porch, persuading the squirrels assembled there that they'd do well to scatter, and the squirrels obliged. They know the drill; as soon as our two pups enter the house, the coast is clear once again and the squirrels return.