“What’s that smell?”

That was Dan’s first question for me this morning when he walked outside. The smell is smoke from wildfires in Canada that have caused poor air quality for many days this summer in the Midwest and East Coast. Today was our strongest blast yet:

The intensity of the smoke—it smells horrible, our eyes burn, and throats are scratchy—means that even on a cool day and night, we are running the air conditioner to limit our exposure, particularly overnight. This is expected to last several days until a low-pressure system moves east. I won’t mention that because of our lack of an oven, Dan relies on the smoker for dinner quite often, including tonight. (Oops!)

The smoke is annoying for the two of us working from home on computers and I cannot imagine how difficult it is for the crews doing physical work inside and out all day. Work here was on hold, but crews were working on other homes and I suspect that at this hour, workers are happy to have stopped!

Tomorrow the tiler arrives to begin installing our new backsplash, which will be a big step forward. We hope that tiling also includes the new bathroom. We think that’s possible because the crew swapped out the pocket door again and cleared the room. Cutting tile will be loud, but we’re excited to see our rooms start to look like the planned design.