just the highlights

I haven't felt much like posting for the past few days, so I'm just going to wrap things up with some quick notes.

• We got a new DVD player yesterday. We thought we had had a run of bad DVDs that skipped terribly, and after the 3rd or 4th we realized that it might be the player. They're so cheap now! It only took us 45 minutes to set up the new one. Including vacuuming behind the TV stand. It's amazing how much dust can collect back there. The new DVD player works fine, I'm watching a movie right now. I'm just bummed that I sent back Pittsburgh half-finished because I thought the disc was bad. Oh well, I put it back in my queue.

• Georg took a picture of me taking a picture at Plants Delight.

• Yesterday I came to the horrible realization that I have meeting clothes for cold weather, and for hot weather, but absolutely nothing for the current weather. Then a cold front comes in and whew, now I have something to wear for tomorrow's meeting.

• Mosquito season has finally started. I hope it won't be so bad this year now that we've gotten rid of the old shed and the old buckets inside it that used to collect water. I need to walk around the yard and look for other sources of standing water.

• We tried cooking ramps tonight. I'd never had them before. I thought from the look that they were a green, but it turns out they taste like a garlicky shallot. We sauteed the white part until soft and brown, and diced a few of the leaves into our salad. I read that's really hard to grow ramps. Too bad, they're so expensive in the grocery. When you can even get them.

• I thought Alberto Gonzales couldn't sink any lower, but he's done the impossible: made me sympathize with John Ashcroft. For that alone he should be fired!