HOT day, mail art, and our river James

 It is so hot out and the air is so thick, that it's hard to breathe.  I took N. to the train station this morning, then went to the office supply store and then went to the super market. While I know I'm fortunate to have a vehicle, mine is 12 years old and has no air conditioning. As soon as I got to the super market, the icy air hit me hard, so I picked up a bottle of one of those vitamin waters with electrolytes and opened it immediately.   It helped. I stayed in the store longer than needed to cool off before facing the oven again. I know I'm not alone, but I can't help being amazed - I'ts rare to see my car thermometer read 37c/98.7F.

 I decided to make a couple of series of Mail Art this morning. I haven't made multiples for awhile. I tool two mat boards and covered them with pages from a design/photo magazine.

 I added Washi tape to one of the boards.

 I was able to get 4 standard postcard sized pieces from each board, plus a couple of smaller pieces.

#233b

 Here's one of the finished pieces from one of the boards. I used one of the vintage postage stamps I got in Istanbul, a Blue stamp sent to me by Jenni Hinchcliff, and a lovely open eye. I added the tape because the card didn't seem interesting enough.  I'll work on the others later today.

 On the last day that my nephew and his wife were here, I took her to see some Richmond sites. One is an overlook in Church hill. Andy and I had talked about Richmond, Virginia being named after Richmond on Thames, just a couple weeks ago. On the hill, they've made a little park and put up an informative sign and a photo of Richmond on Thames. Our view must have been so lovely before industrialization. Still, our river is pretty attractive from up there on the hill.

Sightseeing and more.

 Our nephew and his wife are visiting us from California.  We wish it weren't so hot and humid but we couldn't do much about that so on a very very hot day, we headed up the pike to Washington, D.C.
Here's photo from inside the huge Air and Space Museum.

 The Capitol building was just so picture perfect. My photo looks like a postcard, right? To bad it was so hot that we felt like we were getting heat stroke! We tried to stay indoors for a long time.

 This Merman sculpture was at the National Museum of American Indians, which is a gorgeous building, with fabulous exhibits. We spent a very long time there and learned a lot, plus we ate lunch there, as there's interesting food choices based on various native foods. Lots of vegetarian choices!

 The next day, fully recovered, we went to the Virginia State Capitol building, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. We took a tour, actually 2, We caught the end of one, and then picked up the start of another, and we learned a lot. This is a sculpture of George Washington, done from life and life sized. 

 Sad news about the dove. Yesterday, I checked on her, and this is what was left: her simple twiggy nest was a mess, and there were some feathers, and that was it. No birds. A hawk? A cat? Who knows, but we're sad she's gone.

 Last night we had a birthday party in our patio for both myself and my honey. We invited our friends, and the neighbors, and asked them to bring food to share. What a feast. All of our friends are very good cooks. There were salads, fruits, cheeses, noodles with peanut sauce, a Turkish dish, a Persian dish, shrimp, chicken and pasta, pork barbeque, and more, plus desserts, and our birthday cakes. We didn't get a good photo of them as we just started to cut them up and eat them. 

 Mine had a curly design and my honey had stripes, like his art work. They were tres leches cakes and quite delicious. We danced a lot, which was fun. AND no one called the police on us. Possibly because   all the neighbors were there. Who's left to complain?

I had to include this little critter. This squirrel was very friendly. He came up to us while we were sitting on a ledge at the Police Memorial in D.C. I think maybe people sit out there at lunch time and share with the squirrels. It was quite used to people.