And of course, what's a birthday without ...

Mmmm ...

(Note: This picture was taken a few days ago. I believe everything left of the letter 'e' has been ... enjoyed, by now)

Sweet treats in the house

Despite my suspicions about one particular British dessert, I love all the sweets I've had in the UK. That's why it was so cool to discover these individual-portion sticky toffee puddings at a local supermarket:


They come in a little plastic cup, and you microwave it for a minute, let it sit for a minute, then pop it out of its cup, upside down.


It's like a little cake with lots of warm brown-sugar-and-pecans syrup that gets poured on top ... it's sooo good ...

There's a ginger sticky toffee pudding version, too, which is great if you love ginger. Which I do. Mmm ...

This should last me at least a couple weeks

One of my birthday presents was a restocking of one of my top nutritional staples.


The pink is lovely, don't you think? There's also a gigantic, ruffly pink bow on the inside lid, too, which you can just barely see.

And those are the jumbo-sized jars, not the small ones that you normally find in supermarkets. Definitely not messing around here.

There are only two jars in the picture, but there were three. The third jar has already made it to my desk at work, where it has already been opened and sampled.


I took off the pink bow before bringing it to work, though.

It's a pretty view, anyway

This past weekend, we went to Florida for Tom's niece's wedding. This is the view out the hotel room window.


Nice! I'd never stayed in a hotel that was that close to the ocean.

The thing was, it was really hot and humid out, about 100F every day. I thought being right by the water would help, but the breeze off the water was ... well, just more hot humid air.

But of course, a dip in the ocean should cool us off, right? I mean, it's the ocean. Granted, it was the Gulf of Mexico and not Gloucester Bay but, you know -- the water should be cool and refreshing.

Well ... the thing was ...

The water was actually really warm. Uncomfortably warm. Disconcertingly warm. Like, warmer-than-body-temperature warm.

So not only did swimming in the gulf not cool us off, it actually felt a bit ... icky.

Definitely unexpected and ... interesting. But most of the time we were there, we were indoors in the AC anyway.

It was a really nice view, though.

Well, we wouldn't want it to get stale, would we?

Two days,
one movie rental,
and three episodes of Battlestar Galactica later ...

... the monster bag of kettle corn is half gone.

Or maybe a little more than half.

Frack that stuff's good.

River Fest!

I'd completely forgotten it was today, and I only noticed it because I was lying on the grass reading in a nearby park and happened to roll over on my side and go, "Hey, what are all those white tents over there?"

We've had a lot of grey, rainy days recently, but today was perfect.




The bigger tents were sound stages for different music groups. At least one of them had dancing. It was all noisy happy fun. Lots of the other tents had interesting hand-made jewelry and clothing from all over the world. Very colorful.

And of course any kind of outdoor festival has food. So I had no choice but to come away with one of these.


I got lots of what I'm sure were admiring stares as I walked around with this bag, let me tell you.
Mmm ...

Day trip

Tom's family has a cool little house on a lake in Maine.


It's a peaceful place, usually pretty quiet (unless there are Jet Skiers tearing around the lake, though they usually come later in the season when it's warmer).

The house is just a few steps away from the shore.


The water really wasn't warm enough for swimming yet, but it was a really nice day and we had a good walk around the area. We found ponds. Some of the ponds had critters.

"Hey, what're YOU lookin' at?"

Aren't they cute??

Any day that involves a lake and frogs definitely has a lot going for it!