Only on Guam

~ It was a hit at Christmas time so they're running the "snow" machine (actually more like soap flakes than snow flakes) for Christmas in July at the GPO mall starting Sunday. The picture is of Cheryl getting "snowed" on at GPO in December.

~ We noticed that at another shopping center they've put up decorative banners with the word "summer" on them. That's the only way that we can tell that we've entered a new season on this island where summer never really ends. The high today was 88 degrees -- the low will be 77 degrees -- almost identical to the forecast for a December day -- except that the low might be 75 degrees.

~ Guam is a place of disconnected extremes. One more example, the new real estate fee is jumping from $1 per to $5 per $1,000 of the cost of transaction. The $1/$1,000 has got to be way too low to recover the government's cost. However, $5/$1,000 seems outrageously high. The problem is that they haven't done any kind of realistic work audit to figure out what it costs to provide the government services. The legislators just seem to be pulling numbers out of the air because they're looking for a quick fix to the budget problems caused by decades of poorly written legislation, mismanagement. and corruption.