Not too much has changed since my last post, except for the view to the North from our home here in SoCal:

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No, that’s not a cloud. We don’t live in the best part of town for optimal smoke viewing, but that immense body of suspended particulate is the smoke plume from the “Day” Wild Fire, a 120,000 acre blaze doing its best to burn up all the condors left in the world, and threatening a few towns and causing some rather severe highway closures. Here in safe Camarillo, though, all we really have to worry about is the smoke and ash stopping up our lungs and making our pretty cars all dirty.

In Baby news, Mollie has recently passed the 14 weeks milestone, which means our baby actually looks like a little tiny baby, weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 oz. More on that as it develops.

Look! We’re not dead. We’re very much alive and have been busy, which has led to our lack of posting recently… First off, you should all know that I found a beer that was clearly made for me.

Black Toad is a dark, “chestnut” colored beer with a nut-y flavor, which is further more named for me, a man who appreciates a good dark beer.

One of the things we’ve been busy with is a fun trip to San Diego last weekend, to visit our friends Jubal and Suzanne Marlatt, and The Dinwiddie Family. On our way down, we found an interesting Vietnamese restaurant in Oceanside…

First off, when did “OK” become a noun? And, what really is an OK? Whatever it may be, it has another sign that claims that “We Carry: Dine In & Take Out; Special Order; Party & Birthday Group; Gift Certificate Available; Catering.” Last time I checked a “Gift Certificate Available” was a complete sentence. How do you carry a sentence? Go go Engrish!

Sunday in San Diego we spent the afternoon in Balboa Park. We went to the Natural History museum and the Air and Space museum, which were both very fun. We also saw a big pipe organ, and a tree with some mighty impressive roots, which are pictured for you below. I wish I had a person in the tree picture for scale, but those roots are probably a good 50 feet long.

This week, we’re off to a business trip in glorious Stockton, CA, which I’m hoping will go smoothly. More on that later.