And the rain continues to fall...

... but it's not really rain in the traditional sense. It's a mist. And it had me wondering yesterday evening how long I would have to be out in it until it got me wet.

I had a little adventure with my alarm clock yesterday morning. Some kind soul on the East coast dialed my number at 8:11 AM. I'm usually up by then. I'm assuming what happened was that after pressing "send" on their phone, they had this moment of recognition that I'm on the West coast, and probably fast asleep. As I was. But unfortunately, their call went through, enough to ring for about two seconds and to wake me up. It was a 770 number. If it was yours, fess up. I'm not mad.

I looked at the clock... "6:12"... hmmm, might as well get up. And so I did.

As I was about to leave the house, the friendly announcer on NPR said, "it's 5:55". Huh? Apparently I set my clock an hour ahead the night before. At that point, I gave up and went to work, with the happy promise of being able to leave extra early.

In the evening, I met Julie near her office building and we rode the bus to the Columbia City Farmers Market. We made a beeline to what she told me are her favorite farmers. They sell apples and eggs. Jim, the Mister Farmer, gave us tiny slices of apples served with a deep history of each kind. We tasted and apple whose variety dates back to the early 1800s and learned that the Gala variety was invented (do you invent apple varieties?) in the very recent past by a man he met in New Zealand, and who he told us had sadly recently passed away.

After making a circle of the stands of beautiful organic fruits, vegetables, eggs, and other edibles, we started making our purchases. Our last Stop was to pick up a carving pumpkin for each of us. Organic, of course. After a delicious dinner of sauteed vegetables and risotto cakes, we slowly and carefully scooped out a bowl full of seeds and transformed our pumpkins into their new persona, mine: Scar Julie's: BigGrin.