Flowers in the House

Roses
(from the front yard)


My godmother, Priscilla, gave us the vases in both photos.

Sami's mother, Anneli, wove the table runner in the second.




Peonies
(from the back yard)

Coolness factor

Summer is here. I know I've always wanted to have a sauna, but converting a bedroom into one wasn't my plan... yet it happened.

The bedroom window is facing west, conveniently capturing sunlight throughout the hottest part of the day. The result: when I come home from work, it's at a toasty temperature 90-95F (+32C to +35C). The best part - the room doesn't significantly cool down by bedtime. Have you ever tried sleeping in a sauna? Have you tried doing it for 8h?

Today, all too prepared to have another happy night in a furnace, I was entirely surprised by the view from the bedroom door:

Isn't that beautiful!!! It turns out that our resident superhero (Sara) had installed a window AC into the bedroom!! I have no idea how she managed to carry that 80lbs thing upstairs, but I have no complaints.

Coolness factor? The room is down to 74F (+23C). Purrfect

Polls are Fun, Right?

Viviparous Mutant Tomato

It was a regular morning. I (Sami) was tired, hungry, and the coffee was still dripping. It wasn't until I had already finished my breakfast sandwich (with tomato slices on it) when I realized there was something seriously wrong about this particular tomato... It was still alive!!

Why?

Apparently store-bought tomatoes do this sometimes. I did some research on google before posting this photo. Often a mutant gene causes the seeds to start growing inside fruit. Sometimes it happens because the tomato was harvested and taken off the vine and then kept in cold storage for a long time before being purchased and eaten.

So, there you have it. And look at the number of those sprouts! I could grow a whole tomato garden with those....

In Search of Hidden Parks

Since we haven't been geocaching much lately, I've been thinking that perhaps we should hide some of our own. This afternoon I strapped the GPSr to the handlebars of my bike and went out scouting little-known parks for future caches. I had so much fun, I ended up riding 12.6 miles.

Halfway through my trip, I stopped in the grocery store to refill my water bottle and buy a snack. I hadn't been in the Haggen before, so I decided to look around. They had an amazing selection of bulk foods and bulk candy. I noticed there were a fair amount of black candies - almost as many as you'd find in Finland. I figured I should buy some for Sami. So, I stepped closer... and saw penguin candy. Perfect for Sami.

After shopping, I continued on into some new neighborhoods. Neighborhoods full of big hills. Actually there's a hill called Sexton Mountain (not labeled on the map) that is smaller than some of the other hills I rode on. I don't quite understand how that works... anyway I had to actually get off the bike and push it up some of them.

Near Beacon Hill I found a nice pond with a family of Mallards. I sat there for a while watching the baby ducks when two families of Canadian Geese marched in. The geese are pretty brave and they swam right to the end of the pond where I was sitting. They dove and pecked and ate a few bugs or whatever it is that geese eat and climbed out of the pond. The parents marched the baby geese up a hill and across the street. Baby #10 (not shown in the street picture) had a hard time climbing the hill and his dad honked loudly at him for a while, but eventually they all made it.

I'll definitely have to take Sami back to this pond for a picnic sometime soon to watch the birds. Maybe we can also hide a small geocache near the road so other people can find this cool spot too.