Berkeley Farm Girl

Especially for feorag, who is celebrating a numerically important birthday, there is this delightful item from Portland, courtesy coffeeinhell. We non-Stumptowners cannot vote, but there is schwag.

Still monitoring Hurricane Ike. It's odd for me to have had NOAA on my bookmarks (I have my work laptop at the moment so personal bookmarks are at a minimum) before USGS "Did you feel that?". Part of my sleepnessness this week was, I am sure, excerbated by the fact that since Ike looked like it might be headed for Miami at one point, I googled up Hurricane Andrew, and got sucked into the details of the epic '04 and '05 seasons. Scary.

The heat seems to have broken, which is a relief. I was miserable in the house yesterday and only got relief when I did the "wet shirt" trick (just before I went to bed - not sure why I didn't think of it earlier). Need to get a screen for the kitchen window so I can use it for air circulation without having to fish a scaredy Lucy-cat (kicking and screaming) out of the basement. So far so good this round. I was sitting out in the sun after church (not my idea, I was staffing a table) and had a lot of water and a nice nap with an extremely affectionate tortie. (Who is now "making bread" on my middle. Ow.)

We've had our pre-summer heat wave the last couple of days.

I have spent a fair amount of it napping (I tend to want to do this on hot days) and Lucy spent most of Monday and Tuesday under the bed. She went under there when cat_herder came over, but decided that dark was ok.

It has been cooling down over the last couple of days. I was happy yesterday when I was comfortable in a linen blouse and slacks that would have been too warm on Monday. And today was even cooler, though still pleasant; I needed to cover up for my nap, and I woke to find both cats curled up next to me.

I had been considering going out for ice cream this afternoon, but the wind is up, so tomorrow will probably be back to Foggy Bottom.

The Berkeley cottage gardens, with their jasmine, rose, and other flowers, are just wonderful, and the heat has brought out the smells. Ahhhhh. On Monday I could smell the honeysuckle on the back fence from the porch, and that's not a short distance.