life in the garden of eden.

Aya was up late last night with a cough and a terribly sore throat (still!).  She was crying because she couldn’t even swallow.  Roleplay was truncated and I missed the last half of Dr. Who, but with much cuddling (and ice chips, honey, and Motrin), she finally fell asleep, so it was worth it.  [...]

At Tomato Casual, Vanessa Richins recently offered some answers to a reader’s question: What makes a tomato mushy?

The variety of tomato.
The environment the tomato was grown in.
Storing picked tomatoes in the fridge.

I was initially surprised by that last one.  Anyone who’s seen tomatoes swell and ripen quickly over a period of one or two [...]

Drought.  “Red flag weather.”  Dry lightning, careless motorists, and downed power lines.
All of these contributed to the fires ringing the valley I live in - which is now essentially a big bowl of smoke.  Every surface outside is dusted with ash, and the reek of burnt grass is unavoidable. The light has a strange, dim [...]

It was 105 degrees when we left. Too hot.

Half a tank of gas. . . $4.48 / gallon. We got 40 mpg on the trip.

Smuggling weapons in the cargo hold…

GPS/satellite navigation ROCKS.

Last night, Brian and I took Aya to an ice cream social at her kindergarten teacher’s house. It was a short drive to a very nice part of town, where most of the driveways hold a Mercedes or two and most of the houses are worth close to a million dollars. As we got [...]