They look worried.

Happy 4th of July, people.

So anyway, I plan to do more things this summer. Here is a list I made of upcoming activities:

Hiking
Tennis
Blackberry picking
Listening to live music
Canoeing/kayaking
Picnics
Caves?
Something involving a fire on a beach and hot dogs
Going on a boat
Wine tasting
Art galleries
Daytrips (Gualala/Mammoth Lake)

A couple of weekends ago, I got with the summer program and went wine tasting with Kyle, Marcia, and Robin. Since Robin works at a winery, he picked the places for us to visit, and as usual, they did not disappoint. We went to: Deloach Vineyards, Balletto Vineyards, Hartford Family Winery, and Dutton Estate Winery.

Hartford Family Winery is a particularly beautiful winery

Inside of a winery with Marcia, me, and Kyle reflected in the mirror

Marcia being sassy while Robin looks on

Wine tasting is serious business involving pens and note taking.

Afterwards we came back to our house and grilled steaks (there always has to be food somewhere) and watched a movie. All and all, a good day.

Go sailing off the coast in late summer and you might not notice a Pacific leatherback turtle when one swims past you, even though it is the largest turtle in the world—it can grow up to 1,500 pounds. A solitary creature, it glides smoothly through the water, its mottled blue-gray back blending in with its surroundings and obscuring its huge bulk. From beneath, it is covered with white spots, which help it blend in against the sun-dappled ocean surface.

More here.

In last week’s Pacific Sun, I wrote an article on the newest wedding trend: green weddings. Some people are trying to make their weddings more environmentally friendly. Take a look at the article here.

I recently went through my RSS feed and deleted all the blogs that bore me–gossip blogs, artsy blogs, blogs I feel I should read because I know the people who update them, etc. When I was finished, my RSS feed was about a quarter the size it had been before, but when I next ran it, I was actually interested in the updates. When I go on vacation, I don’t think to read blogs. Apparently when I have outside stimulus, the whole blogging world could fall into the ocean and I wouldn’t care. This suggests to me that I don’t have a deep connection to blogging and much of it is about boredom/procrastination/writerly angst.

Is it obnoxious to write about how you are tired of blogging on your blog? Still, I am. And also, don’t blogs seem a little hyped these days? People seem to take it all so very seriously. I thought this was just a fun thing we were all doing on our computers, but no, it turns out it’s big business. Money, money, money! It’s like Twitter: to me, this seems like a fun (and kind of dorky) thing people do in their spare time, but apparently it is something people want to invest in and fawn over and throw money at. Which is swell and all, but kind of ridiculous at base.

All that to say, I plan to blog on here more and not as much elsewhere. So stay tuned. When I get my camera back from where I left it, I will post about wine tasting, my anniversary, and giant squash. Hurrah!

Tomorrow is my six year wedding anniversary. I enjoy being married. I can’t relate to those people who say marriage is work. Really, what is Deanna on the comic strip For Better Or Worse talking about here? Marriage is a blast. I like love!

We’re not sure what we’re doing tomorrow, but we’re thinking day trip, watching the sunset, and eating fancy food at the local fancy food gettin’ place. Hooray romance!

a. The sequences about fashion seem like commercial breaks. You have to sit through boring fashion shows or Carrie trying on fancy-pants wedding dresses before you get back to the story. I couldn’t care less about fashion so this was extremely tedious.

b. Jennifer Hudson, why are you in this movie? You cannot act at all. And this is all the more disappointing because the writing for your part is funny. So you can’t act AND you are screwing up a funny part.

c. Spoiler, sort of (if you have read anything about this movie, it is not a spoiler): The part where Big leaves Carrie at the alter is goooood. Also the part where she is sad afterwards is good. Good and juicy! Great acting going on there.

d. The chick who plays Miranda has gotten weird. What happened to her? It’s not just that she has aged, it’s that her anger toward men in the movie seems very… shall we say … authentic.

e. According to this movie, love is depressing. When you get older, love is as hard to deal with as ever, and on top of that, you have given up hope that it will ever work out. So you are just lonely and unloved and approaching death. Unless you are Charlotte, who seems to be in the movie to give us hope that some people are not miserable.

f. Samantha is a bad person. She just is. I have never liked that character, and this movie made me hate her. However, the actress who plays her looks amazing.

g. We find out that these women originally came to New York to find love. Well, no wonder they are having so much trouble! Who does that? There is no love to be had there. Haven’t they seen Taxi Driver?

h. In the end, the movie suggests that the shallow consumerist values it puts forth by pimping Vogue and handbags and shoes is not what is important in life. What is important in life is friends, making up your own rules, and that illusive love word. However, this moral message contradicts everything we have seen before and comes off as false.

i. That said, this movie isn’t bad at all. It is entertaining, stays true to the original show, and has some darn good writing in places. Also, it’s nice to see a movie about older women. It’s like an exotic adventure for Hollywood to make a movie about them. Scary untapped territory.

Just when you start to feel that you’re getting a handle on all the environmental hazards around you, another one pops up like a toxic bubble.

In fact, a group of young women from Marin worries that hazard might actually be a toxic tube of lipstick. Those girls want everyone to be aware of the possible dangers of cosmetics, and they aren’t stopping until teenagers nationwide join their cause.

Teens for Safe Cosmetics started in 2005 as a division of Search for the Cause, a nonprofit agency devoted to understanding Marin’s high breast-cancer rates. As Teens for Safe Cosmetics approaches its third anniversary, it’s showing no sign of slowing down—it now boasts hundreds of members, a fledgling branch in New York and its own product line to be distributed by Whole Foods this fall.

Read the rest here.

I also have a piece of satire coming out in the upcoming issue of the Wittenburg Door. Keep an eye out for it.

This year, I’m keeping track of the yield from my garden, not counting herbs. It’s pretty fun to see how many things I’ve grown (and to see if it is worth it to grow them again next year). Here is the list so far:

Radishes: 47 (I will sow again in fall and break 100, I hope)
Mushrooms: 15
Green onions: 1 (this was an experiment to see if the root of a green onion bought in the store will yield another green onion. It does.)
Baby Spinach: 22 (my spinach bolted, sadly.)
Carrots: 11 (I have at least that many still out there waiting to be harvested)
Strawberries: 35 (I lost 5 others to the birds. Still, not bad considering it’s the first year)
Peas: 34
Zucchini: 3
Beets: 9 (These I will try again in the fall as well)

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

A few other thoughts:

1. Someone needs to tell Las Vegas that it is not a world-class city like New York or Paris and therefore shouldn’t charge prices like it is. Pricing I ran into: $3 coffee, $2.50 soda, $30-$50 entrees, $15 cocktails, $30 per person cover charges for clubs. I admit I don’t know how to work the Vegas system, so I guess I’m one of the suckers who support all the people who do know how to work the system. Yes, I am bitter about this.

2. We ate food. The best meal we had was at Table 10 in the Palazzo. I had a lamb dish that was surprisingly good.

3. I ate the lamb dish while sitting on the restaurant’s “terrace.” Which was in a mall. The view:

4. Waiters in Las Vegas are pushy. They want you to know your drink order right away. If you don’t know, they pressure you to know. And if you still don’t know, they go away for 30 seconds and come back and expect you to know. Then they want you to leave as soon as you are done with your meal. I think that when you are paying between $30-$50 for an entrée, you should be able to sit there for as long as you want.

5. I wanted to go on a gondola ride, but when I realized it was right off the strip and everyone stares at you while you do it, I decided to take a (blurry) picture instead:

6. This trip forced me to finally get a cell phone. For some of my friends, this should be exciting news. Now when people take out their cell phones and start fiddling them in the middle of a conversation, I can do the same thing.

7. Casinos are fun to walk through. When I wasn’t eating, that’s generally what I was doing: walking through casinos and taking pictures of people. My camera did surprisingly well in low light.

8. Here is a picture of a strip seen through some bushes:

9. The trip home was delayed for an hour because there was fog in San Francisco. I don’t even know what to say about that.

10. Sorry this post is so negative. It’s what Las Vegas does to me. Here is what it does to other people:

(Taken at the gate in the Las Vegas airport.)