Some like it hot . . .

but it sounds as though most of us would appreciate a break from the heat.

So here, in bullet form (M & M's, or bullets, being easier to eat in hot weather than paragraphs or chocolate bars), are a few items:

* It's nice being a visitor in this place where I can't walk down a road without running into one or another of my cousins. It feels a little strange, though, to go to a town 30 miles away and still run into cousins, friends, or friends of friends. This is an advantage now. It was not an advantage when I was trying certain mild (not wild) feats of daring in high school.

* Borrowing from jo(e)'s pet peeves meme:

1. Grammatical pet peeve: random apostrophes on signs. Or should I say "random apostrophe's on sign's"? Actually, roadside signs are pretty entertaining. For example, some years back while driving on back roads in Vermont, we went by a small house with at least an acre of painted cement lawn elves, rabbits, turtles, toads, deer, and other assorted fauna along with the requisite plywood cutouts--silhouettes of deer, men leaning on posts smoking pipes, and the ever-popular backside-of-large-woman-in-print-dress. The sign read "lawn cutie's for sale," and ever after lawn decorations have been known in my family as "lawn cuties."

2. Arts and entertainment pet peeve: Probably the same as most women's--the conspiracy to pretend that women are naturally a size 2--and that the ample breast size of those size 2 movie stars is natural and never enhanced by the surgeon's art.

3. Wild card: People who ask a question and don't listen to the answer. My secret strategy for dealing with people like this (once I know who they are) is to answer the question with a question about themselves, which was the point of their question to begin with.