updates from Minnesota

[mellowtigger]

This hot and mostly dry summer weather is the opposite of our recent winter, which set a record for snowfall plowing costs. When I checked around 3:30pm yesterday in my WeatherBug app, the heat index in Minneapolis MN was higher than Austin TX, and we did reach the predicted high temperature.

	Minneapolis	Austin
air temp	35C/95F	37.8C/100F
heat index	40.5C/105F	38.3C/101F

Read my dream during a frequently interrupted night of sleep...

I am short on sleep again after last night, due to the temperature. I couldn't sleep until sometime past 11pm, then I woke many times during the night. It was just hot and muggy. My little a/c unit in my upstairs bedroom couldn't keep up. Downstairs yesterday, I was still sweating even while sitting in front of the television trying to be still. Today is expected to be cooler. I woke up late again this morning, with an immediate concern that today was a "work day" and I was late! This wake-up panic followed after a dream in which I was concerned about the time I was waking up.

Within the dream, I was living in a hotel-type building as a permanent resident with a few other people. I was bumped from my usual bedroom by guests who were visitors rather than paying guests. Instead, I was sleeping in the room with the owner of the place, some man that I don't recognize from real life. At some point, I had slept much too long (maybe I had been ill?) and woke up at midnight, but I didn't know what day it was. I had to ask someone if this was Friday-morning midnight or Saturday-morning midnight (a work day, as in real life)? The answer was Friday morning, so I tried returning to sleep. Around 4am, I woke up again, and I started searching the hotel for a potential room for me to use while I was bumped from my normal bedroom. I found a large open area that was a kitchen, which somehow reminded me of the Brady Bunch tv show with the worker who was there to cook meals for hotel guests. While looking down the row of rental rooms, I encountered a woman that was the mother of the owner of this place. We started talking about my confusion about the day of the week. I woke up at this point in real life, and I had to check my phone for the date to make sure I wasn't late for work.

Thankfully, it's still Friday. With the date settled, and with no news in my feeds yet if yesterday broke any local temperature records, I wanted to pass some fun news from Minnesota. The Minnesota Zoo previously had an elevated monorail ride called "Skytrail" around their large outdoors exhibit areas. They have converted it to a pedestrian walkway. They say this treetop trail is the world's longest elevated pedestrian walkway.

Watch on YouTube