It’s better without the sound (Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You), and the story is right below the video.

Oh, and the leopard and shark photos are pretty amazing too.

Out of the blue, the connection gets weak. My airport status bar only shows one dark band. Sure enough, when I check, I see that three of my neighbors are online. Do I know them that well? Uh, no, but their names show up on the list of networks being used. One uses their real name, the others I’m fairly sure are right across the way.

Then I completely lose the connection. This is aggravating. I go back and unplug the airport base station. Plug it back in. This has worked the last few times. But it’s so annoying.

My sons the software engineers tell me this shouldn’t happen. Why does it persist? During school hours when the kids across the street are otherwise occupied, and the other neighbors are at work, no problem. Most of the neighbors are elderly or maybe they’re pc people. Is it just an airport thing?

Some days I spend 8 - 10 hours tweaking my photos with PhotoShop. By the end of the day I have lots of floaters, and the eyes are on the dry side.

Several times a day I move to another room where the light is good for taking photos. Last week, I was shooting an old suitcase full of vintage clothing from my mom’s house. I thought my eye fatigue had at last produced blurry spots at the edge of my vision. I would reararrange things, set up the tripod and there they were again, big dark things. I blinked. And blinked again. Wait a minute.

They were moths. Somehow they had gotten into the suitcase, and were rapidly vacating the premises with surprising speed. I started killing the ones in the case, but they left such a mess that I gave up.

I seem to have a bigger moth problem than originally thought. But less of an eye problem.

Fortunately, I no longer watch these while trying to eat supper. Unfortunately, I have a good idea who’s getting killed next, thanks to checking an episode guide.

Why did I feel the need to do this, knowing how there are spoilers everywhere, especially on the soundtracks I bought? Because I was concerned there was an episode missed.

Now I must carve out time after dinner to sit on the edge on my seat.

I depend on my Mac dashboard to tell me how hot it is, and for a while this morning, Cupertino temps were lower than those in SF. That has changed.

The thing about the dashboard - on days like this, the projected temperature keeps edging up. Around noon, the temp was 93°, and the forecast was moved up to 96°.

The tomato plants must be blissed out, but a few of them are getting droopy, along with the squash. Maybe now the basil will finally take off. I’m in the process of clearing out the ivy growing on this side of the fence, because next year, that’s where the pumpkins and zucchini will go. But there will be no garden work today.

I will stay in the a/c. My Macs hate this weather, and yesterday one of them crashed in the heat when I failed to cool the house down in time.

For a short time today, ShutterStock contributors were seeing their numbers doubled, in both photos sold and earnings total. It was baffling to see all of a sudden, but of course it was a bug. Some bug.

I had forgotten the frenzy that this can be, although we didn’t manage to go till the last day, which is always ‘by the bag’ day. While a lot of the good stuff is gone, there is still a wealth of books there. We got two bags at $5 each. So what did I do? I headed for the cookbooks, which were severely depleted. My stash of mysteries is at an all-time low, and at Palo Alto, the fiction is outside, where I was overwhelmed by the choice. The rest of the cookbooks were mixed in with the fiction, which made no sense.

It is always amusing to watch how people stuff their bags. The younger family members refer to this as ‘bin packing’, and I always thought they were indulging in some sort of codespeak. One day, one of them explained that in all honesty, they learned how to pack enormous amounts of material into small spaces because of some video game they used to play.

For a couple of years, the skin on my hands seemed to be deteriorating. There were odd patches that got itchy, healed halfway and then got itchy again. Late last year, my doctor said it was eczema, gave me cortisone cream and told me to stop washing my hands so much. I quit washing dishes, letting family members step up to the sink instead.

Actually, it seemed like the simple act of handwashing had become irritating. Was it something in the water? And how could I stop washing so often? Like many, I use a keyboard all day long. I also do a fair amount of cooking, handling raw meat in the process. I eat at the keyboard. I go to the bathroom. I go outside and plant things in dirt. I knead dough.

Meanwhile, the cortisone cream would heal the patches for a bit. Then they came back elsewhere. I still had spots on the back of my hands when I woke up, raised bumps that were excrutiatingly itchy. They would disappear after an hour or so, only to return the next morning. I was getting patches of itchy skin between my fingers.

Our liquid soap of choice was Softsoap, bottles at all the sinks, including the kitchen. A dermatologist mentioned years ago that Dove was one of the mildest bar soaps. Shower soap was either Dove or Oil of Olay liquid.

Once I read this, out went the Softsoap. And guess what? The eczema is all gone from one hand, and the one patch left on the other is healing. No new patches. No itching.

Check your soaps, dishwashing liquids, toothpaste, acne cleansers, deodorant and hand lotions (yes, even that). You probably don’t want this on your skin and in your system.