Catching Up

Once upon a time, a blog-worthy day is a good day. Now, a sure sign of aging is when posting becomes an afterthought and a chore. Or, more likely, life becomes boring and uninteresting.

Anyway, since I'm old, I think I'm justified in doing a lame recap post.

August highlight:

Consolation for getting older - late summer beauties from co-workers

September highlights:

J-town folk festival, homemade tiramisu (with homemade ladyfingers)

October highlight:

Pittsburgh 250 - Downtown fireworks

Recently:

Before and After: New scarf from soft baby alpaca wool

Today, I discovered the joy of Banh Mi (Vietnamese hoagies). And Mexican jumping beans.

A coworker and I took a field trip late morning for a client visit and decided to swing by the Strip for lunch. While we were there, he wanted to run a few errands, so I tagged along. The first stop was a Mexican grocery store - the mission was tortillas. As he shopped around, I noticed a row of little clear plastic cases at the counter, making clicking noises... there were tiny brown pods knocking each other spontaneously. There was a writeup on bright pink paper next to them - no gimmicks, no trickery, they're... Mexican jumping beans! I scanned the cases for a particularly jumpy group and bought one. There are five beans. I'm going to name them Spunky, Funky, Chunky, Hunky, and Punky. They've been 'jumping' in the box relentlessly all day - when it's quiet, all you hear is the rattling. Makes you think of Miyazaki's kodama (those little tree people) or Geiger counters; sometimes I'd want to tell hubs to stop fidgeting, then I'll realize it's those creepy beans. We'll see how long it takes to drive us batty.

And Vietnamese hoagies are awesome. That's all I've to say about that.