Ceiling Cat Remains Inscrutable

I spent this morning cleaning the cameras, every nook and cranny, of salt dust and condensation. Batteries too, and the tripod feet had to be soaked. We have just come back from another exhilarating two days on the Great Salt Lake, filming the governor and the first day of harvest. Only 103 degrees this time.

Animal crimes continue to irritate us. I had left the keys for Dee to feed Suscipe, but Scout had a rampage that afternoon, piled all the cushions in the laundry (barricade? offering?), ate the tv remote and maybe also my keys. The week before it was Stefan's keys and her rather expensive retractable lead, and just to round it out Scout badgered Suscipe until she took refuge on top of the amplifier , had one of her seizures, peed and blew it up - loud bang, pouring smoke, the works.

The GPS was stolen from the car on Friday too, just before we had to drive up past Jenner for a new and very remote vineyard, result: we were an hour late. When we got there we drove until I saw a purple post-it note on a very nondescript gate, "Stefan, in here", drove through the cows to the note on the house door,"continue to vineyard", and finally on the vineyard gate, "we are in row 14". Low-tech, but it got us there, and we won't buy another one, at least not straight away.

Somehow all of that was very tiring, and we have been very happy to sit in the evening watching the Democratic Convention. So hot last night, and we were just about to eat when Hillary Clinton was due to speak, so we turned the set and sat outside to watch it with great appreciation, noting all the points she made, her tone, her oratory, eating comfortably with our feet up on opposite chairs and the swallows playing around us. Then we had more fun deconstructing it. I don't remember politics being like this in the UK.

Apart from work, I have been mooning after horribly expensive fabric from the Design Center for the sofa cushions, to be made with thick welts like an old-fashioned mattress; I covered four of Carolyn's chairs with antique French linen flour bags, and made her a hanging from her store of vintage fabrics. I wonder when Norma gets back from rowing down the Douro, I miss her, and Paddy does too.

Which of my talented dear ones is going to PhotoShop Felix into the family portrait taken before his birth? for my (ahem) Birthday?