Today we had a reprieve from the heat. It came in the form of a thunderstorm. A rather vicious, localized one. We were just on the edge of what appears to have been a microburst wind, rain, and hail storm just a mile from us. At our place, it rained rather politely, with a little smattering of pea sized hail. Thunderstorms are funny that way. Very selective. Only thing is, after Sunday dinner at dad's place, we saw up on the hill the unmistakable sign of a forest fire. Not our favorite thing around here. Sunny and I came home to find a helicopter in our next door neighbor's field. They were filling a huge bucket with water from the pond and flying it up to the fire. Here are some pictures, the best I could do in the waning light of day...   Pretty amazing eh?  Notice our neighbor's chimney in the bottom of this photo. This fire is a little too close for comfort. Hopefully, the ground crew will take care of business tonight and get that thing put out. This was quite enough drama for me. Let's get back to boring. :-)