Church bells

I managed to time the drive home to be outside a church at 6, when the bells began to toll. It's a lovely sound. Wind blowing through windows, music in the air. I like it.

Pineapples

I had a late meeting today and ended up walking back to my car from a direction I don't usually come from. As I headed past a gated parking lot, I noticed that the fence posts were topped with pineapples.

Psych always has pineapples, too.

Often, it's the little things.

From scratch

I came home one day last week to a new oven, which is enough to put a smile on anyone's face in and of itself. I had company, and we inaugurated it with brownies-from-a-box. Which were good. But for some reason, I was feeling slightly more ambitious today.

I'm going out of town (again) and have been trying to eliminate some of the perishable things from the fridge before they, you know, perish. So I had one egg left in a dozen. Since I've also avoided going to the store to add more things to the list of items I must consume, I ran out of junk food to pack in my lunch. Baking chocolate chip cookies, then, was the perfect solution to both of those problems.

This certainly isn't the first time I've made cookies from scratch, but it has been a while. And they turned out well, if I may say so. If you see me in the next week, ask for one -- they're chocolate chip-pecan, and most delectable.

Better than a mullet

I was distracted from the Indians game I went to tonight (we lost) by the man who sat down in front of me late in the game.

He was in his late 50s or 60s with glasses and a grey mustache -- unremarkable. But his hair... oh, his hair. It was solid grey, bordering on white. It was buzzed to the crown of his head and on the sides. But from the top of his head to the nape of his neck, there were long, flowing grey locks. It was scraggly and ended midway down his back. And it was the most bizarre haircut I have ever seen.

I was at the game with my grandfather, and had to point it out. He was also confounded.

Funny story

My parents are vacationing in the Seattle area (at least that's where they started out) and called to ask for help finding a hotel in.... Forks, Washington.

Sadly, the significance of the location was not lost on me. Although I don't think they'll be making use of any of the themed tours. God, I hope not.

Movies under the stars

Atlanta has this event, Screen on the Green, that I looked forward to every summer. It's just as it sounds -- a giant movie screen on Piedmont Park, a picnic dinner with your friends and thousands of people screaming, "Don't open that door!"

Tonight, I went to a Cleveland event called Wade Oval Wednesdays (both of these happen multiple times throughout the summer) -- and despite the amount of fun I always had at Screen on the Green, I think WOW has Atlanta beat.

From 6 to 9 p.m., there was an Irish band. There were falafel, pizza, popcorn, gyros, fresh-sliced watermelon and odd-flavored (but tasty) ice-cream sandwiches to eat. They sold beer and other beverages, alcoholic and non- (and my blueberry beer had a handful of blueberries tossed into the glass!). There were local vendors selling jewelry and t-shirts. The sky was a gorgeous shade of purple. The air was warm.

Then, right as it was getting dark, The Goonies. Everybody laughed in all the right spots, booed in all the right spots. But it wasn't as crowded (we're losing population, after all!) and the city provided chairs. Less to lug and better traffic when you left.

I didn't like The Goonies the first time I saw it (before you start throwing things at me, appalled, remember that this was just two or three years ago -- I didn't grow up with it as a child), but it was lovely under the stars.

Free money

Technically, I earned it. But the check was still unexpected.

Every once in a while, money falls from the sky. It's nice when that happens.

If only they weren't gelatinous

My brother, walking into the room with a bag of them: "Marshmallows always make me feel happy when I'm feeling bad."

Job well done

I'm pretty psyched because now I can say I'm an award-winning journalist. I won several awards -- jointly, individually and as part of my paper's staff -- for coverage of a big story on my beat last year. And since I took over in the middle and was still learning the ropes, it's all very cool. Not that it wouldn't be cool if I'd been doing it a while.

But I was also excited because the awards -- and the subsequent story the paper wrote about them -- garnered me a few e-mails and one note of congratulations. The notice is nice, of course, but what was even cooler was the sentiment expressed. The CEO of a company I write about sent me a letter that said, "It's nice to know (my company) is being covered by someone with your talent." Pretty rocking.

Also, I'm really pleased with some digging I did on a story this week. It's been a little while since I got to break news.

Huzzah!

Shout outs

To awesome friends. One helped me break into my house last night (my climbing through a window in a skirt is a very elegant sight, let me tell you) and another is giving me his keys so I have a place to stay on this trip, even though he's out of town.

That's some pretty good friend-moves for 24 hours. Thanks, dudes, (and all the rest of you, too) for rocking my world!

Away, away

Just a quick note to say that computer annoyances and travels will be making me scarce. Hope to add grins when I have the chance, but I can tell you in the meantime that despite what anyone may tell you, any town that has a dedicated golf cart parking lot at a place of employment, an ice cream truck on the real streets and a lemonade stand set up on the golf cart trails is officially adorable. Even if it does make some residents feel like they're in a scene out of A Wrinkle in Time (pretend I put links in appropriate places).

It was good to see those of you I saw on the last trip and I'm looking forward to the ones to come!

The oh so most joyful!

Seeing Rel, even if for less than 24 hours.
Oh, and flavour tripping.... with Rel, none the less!
AAAND golf-carting with Rel!

Tasty

I picked strawberries this weekend, and woke up early Saturday to go to the farmers' market. Only the brie I ate for dinner (and the olive oil I cooked some veggies in) came from the grocery store. And that was a pretty exciting thing.

Relatedly, I also had my first cooking foray into exotic mushrooms. I've eaten some before, but never by my own hand. And my goodness, were they delicious (brown oyster mushrooms on toast, sauteed with olive oil and garlic scapes). Plus, the mushroom man at the market said they were a good "starter" 'shroom. So y'all should feel free to experiment with brown oyster mushrooms. The dude says it's cool, and I say it's delectable.

Text messages

This falls under the saved-for-posting category.

My friends, awesome as they are, sometimes send me pretty wonderful text messages detailing their own amusements (or, I'm just amused by their insanity). I'll recount a few of them for you below. (And you may well recognize yourself here. That's right -- I saved it. Though now that I'm saving them here, I can probably free up some much-needed cell phone memory and delete.)

Oh, and I left the punctuation/capitalization/etc. alone:

There is a ton of dirt on the Dooley statue and a sign that says "Wash me! --Wash U"

Coolest Halloween costume ever: Sylvia Plath. Wear a bathrobe and carry an Easy Bake Oven

Can you steal an amish child and keep it as a pet? Or is that only permissible with midgets?

OMG the m&ms I'm eating are so good I needed to tell someone!

I just saw an ice cream truck! I think it was playing, sewanee river. I don't know how to spell that. The truck itself was unadorned which was sad

I just saw a shirt that said 'i was raised on the street' and it had a picture of the sesame street characters.

There was a possum just sitting on the sidewalk as i just walked past your house. It sat there and swiveled its head and looked at me. Crazy!

Keep 'em coming!

More wheeled fun

We're back to two-wheeled bicycles for the moment because I saw a couple with baskets, and they were snazzy. One was like a grocer's basket at the front of the bike -- oversized, black mesh, nothing fancy. The other was a white wicker one with flowers that looked like it had been pulled off a kid's bike and made to fit an adult's. Both were way cool.

Then there was a police Segway (or some reasonable variation of a Segway) and that was purely amusing.

Unicycle

Walking out of work this afternoon, I was passed by someone on a bike, which is not an odd occurrence. Until I realized that the bike had only one wheel.

And to make matters even better than just the fact that there was a dude unicycling down the street (I say dude, though I'm not sure if it was a guy or a girl -- I only saw from behind, and the hair didn't help), there's this: said dude had a plastic grocery bag in his/her right hand. And that bag contained a frozen pizza.

He/she totally unicycled to the corner store to get dinner. Which rocks.

Reach for the stars!

As I was driving home this afternoon, the guy in the car next to me had his moon roof open. And his right arm was sticking out the top, like if he had been resting his left arm on the windowsill (is that the proper phrasing for the car window's edge?), but in the sky.

It looked pretty funny, the disembodied hand in the air. And I started laughing because I drive like that, too. And I'd never seen anyone else do it before. A little disconcerting, as a bystander.

Also, I won concert tickets from the radio for recognizing the theme to Mad Men, which is a super-awesome show. This is the second time that's happened in a year! Hooray free concert tickets.

Lastly, I've been at my job a year now. It doesn't feel like that long at all. And that's pretty cool. So happy work-iversary to me.

Chrome

My sister got a new messengers bag for her birthday, and its kind of amazing!

(note the seatbelt buckle!!)

Yay city

Between the Cleveland speller and the Cavs' victory (just two more!) I think my city will be a very happy place tomorrow.

OK, I'm perhaps the only one who cares about the speller. But let's not parse the reasons for the celebration!

The most wonderful time of the year

Those of you in Cleveland are likely sick of it before it starts, but... today is spelling bee day! And spelling bee day is a time for celebration (but not of the Rex Manning variety).

So, if you're looking for something to do tonight, I highly encourage the watching of said bee. It's monumentally entertaining, as last year's winner demonstrates.

And you can read more on Wednesday's preliminary developments here and see what's happening Thursday here, if I did this right. Yay spelling bees!

Edit: Cleveland speller in the finals! Cleveland speller in the finals!