If you were wondering where last week’s rain came from, you can thank me and Zack. We learned years ago what works for calling down those precious drops of water. We don’t use our magic, rain-making superpowers except in dire emergencies. Last week, that time had come. 2020 didn’t need to add severe drought to its ongoing list of crazy.

Trees are almost as old as dirt in the construction industry, but they’re new to Texas in the form of the state’s first mass timber office building. The Texas project generating the buzz is The Soto, which opened last week at Eighth and Broadway streets in San Antonio.

While others may be enjoying paroxysms of house cleaning and closet sorting during this pandemic, I’ve been mostly hard at work outside, taking time from my own chores to help Zack as needed. Just as my priorities were interrupted and rearranged at his insistence, so were his feral hoghunting and fence-building ventures delayed when the stock troughs went dry. And it all trumped painting the house.

As thousands fled southeast Texas ahead of Hurricane Laura, Texas A&M promoted an Ike Dike as a critical way to protect the region from devastating damage. Texas escaped a direct hit from Laura, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, just east of Port Arthur.

2020’s been a stinker, and it’s only half over. I saw a meme the other day that said, “I need to ask Mom if that offer to kick me into next year’s still on the table”. We’ll be happy to see certain things about 2020 in the rear view mirror. So to recap some highlights, lest you forget--- and try to bring a few smiles to your day:

Students across Texas returned to campuses last week as schools and universities scrambled to put into place new lesson plans that best accommodate a pandemic. For many school districts, this meant greatly expanding the technological resources of their students to support a mix of in-person and online education.

Congratulations to us all. We survived the worst of the hot, Texas summer of 2020.

A Texan’s speeding ticket put her in the legal history books last week. To combat the backlog in criminal cases created by the pandemic, a Travis County justice of the peace conducted the nation’s first virtual criminal trial.

It hasn’t been difficult for us to manage social distancing. Zack quips that he’s been working up to this for years, enjoying the life or a virtual hermit these days. He still visits the hardware store, but swears he wears at least a bandana--- even when I’m not there to nag. He also claims to clean his hands with the disinfectant I leave in the truck.

T h Back-to-school lists aren’t the same this year. Gov.