Update

It's been a very strange and busy couple of weeks.
Unfortunately, less busy in regards to the building, but strange nonetheless.

Work has been slapping me in the head. Revisions because of institutional shifts, at times seemingly arbitrary and designed to make poor beleaguered consultantants like myself wrapped up in endless changes to text that make my eyes cross.

Still, we've managed to get the posts in, pilled with rebar and concrete and we're getting ready to start framing soon. At some point (hopefully the end of October) we'll be ready for the straw bales and will be having a plastering party!

During the cement mixing phase we were very very careful about water and used a total of 3 buckets full. (Less than most people use in an average shower). Still the drought (see below) is really taking it's toll. Even though it is grey cloudy day, everything is so parched. It makes me wonder how much more things will change. Is this just the tip of the (last of the) icebergs?

It's a little ironic, that I work with international water issues, and here at home we're hit with one of the worst droughts in recorded history. It's also curious that my partner's home town of Cheltenham in UK experienced some of the worst floods. Talk about bringing our work home with us!!

Still, I think when people think about the ramifications of climate change they think of it in terms of far away places. We don't think of it really happening here. But yesterday I experiences the strangest thing:

I was zipping around on my scooter, Flash, (95 mpg!!), and it was raining. But the rain was evaporating before it hit the ground. It's so dry that nothing was getting wet below about 3 ft. from the ground. The other night we were eating dinner in a restaurant. We looked outside at the lights in the parking lot. It looked like a huge down pour. But when we got outside, nothing was wet. There was this eerie mist in the air, but the rain wasn't getting to the ground...

We've messed up in a big way. I just wonder if we really are past the tipping point... and what we, as a species will do if we have...

It's just a bit overwhelming sometimes.