July 26, 1998

Sun Burnt

Simple day today. Hot and sunny and after the day before, I was sore. We did church, got to see some people, then took Fezzik to the off leash area, where he swam and swam and swam and played and swam some more. Smart dog. It was in the 90's outside. Hot as heck, and John and I even ducked into the shade to watch him play with all the other dogs. I almost wished I could be in the water, too. But it was very muddy and doggy smelling.

John and I then saw Lethal Weapon 4. Jet Li was astonishing in it. Graceful, awesomely fast, and a really, really scary villain. I wished he could have been introduced as a good guy to U.S. audiences, but he did make a chillingly marvelous villain. Ah well.

It was cool in the theater. That was nice. I let down my hair in the lobby, from it's baseball cap and actually heard someone gasp, "Look at that, it's *blue*." from behind me. I didn't want to embarrass 'em by looking back, but it amused me.

Coming out of the air conditioning, though, was a soft blow to the body. The heat was palpable, covering the body and enfolding it. Ooof.

Eagle for bathroom stuff, Trader Joe's for random other things. Then home to make root beer again. The last batch failed, likely due to either not enough yeast, not enough heat (as the weeks after we bottled, it was pretty cool), and so not enough carbonation. This time we just used regular baking yeast (which is darned hardy), plain tap water (instead of trying to heat cold water to the right temperature and overshooting a bit), and the forecast for the next week was in the high 80's if not 90's. So we thought at least two days of 90 degree weather should start the yeast off really well.

So we'll see how that works out. It was surprisingly little work, just dumping them out, rinsing the bottles, disinfecting them by putting a solution into 'em, then mixing up the soda with the yeast, and putting it back into the bottles, recapping 'em and then wiping them down and putting them away. This time we're putting them in the kitchen because we know that the kitchen's pretty hot during the day.

We had burgers for dinner, grilled outside rather than cooking anything inside. Trader Joe's had some extra lean ground beef, and the burgers were very lean but not dry. Nice.

We also watched an episode of the Iron Chef after eating, and it was good that it was after we ate. Wow. They did insane things with a local version of sea bass. Skin so crisp it melted in the mouth, liver dipping sauce for sashimi of the same fish, lovely stews cooked so thoroughly that the flesh melted from the bones, and the flavor of the fish itself inherent in everything they'd made.

A cool bath while John walked Fezzik and I was well burnt from being outside in a tank top while riding around in the Stoat. The coolness of the bath got my skin to calm down, and I had aloe in the water. Body and Bath has some bubblebath gels with aloe vera in it, to help get the skin to feel better. It felt very nice indeed and cooled my body off really well.

However, the night was hot enough that it was hard to sleep.

[ Previous | Next | Index | Mail ]