Hotter, drier, and windier — that’s the prediction as regards monsoon season from the National Weather Service Forecast Office here in The Duck! City.

A heat advisory is in our immediate future, as in tomorrow, the actual Fourth of July, which this year seemed to start sometime around last Thursday and will end … well, who knows? Not me, Skeezix.

There are a few fires going, prescribed and otherwise, the largest being the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest. Nothing like what’s been going on in Canada; not yet, anyway.

Yesterday I rolled out for a little 30-miler with 1,200 feet of vertical gain — the lion’s share of it coming in the final grind from I-25 to The County Line barbecue joint — and it got a little toasty there toward the end. The brain was not quite at a rolling boil but even a brisk simmer gets your attention a couple hours into what should be a two-bottle ride.

Today it seemed wise to skip the Monday spin with the ould fellahs and instead go for a half-hour trail jog with Herself. Early. Before Tōnatiuh fired up His comal.

Tonight brings the cul-de-sac’s Fourth fiesta, featuring non-explosive, ground-based “fireworks” of the type that would have caused my younger self to use descriptive language that would get the 69-year-old me canceled in a heartbeat if anyone paid any attention at all to what I thought, said, or wrote. Which mostly they don’t, lucky for me.

Neighbors to the east have two kids, neighbors to the west have three grandkids, and the couple on the northeast corner have a toddler, so there will be sprouts of various sizes gamboling around and about, shrieking at the pips, pops, and poots as the Buck supermoon rises.

If we’re lucky the skeeters will take the night off. It’s too bloody hot to don the Levi’s body armor, and I don’t have a sword small enough to behead the little bastards.