Local Color

Here in southern California, things are a lot more colorful than they are in Chicago. I've had a hard time resisting taking pictures of all these riotous reds, yellows, greens, blues and oranges. Especially at the farmer's market.Flowers here are blooming a lot more than they are in the windy city.
But root vegetables are still the big sellers. I guess winter is going to hang on as long as it possibly can, even in L.A.

Tournament Trauma

I am currently in last place in my family's NCAA Basketball Tournament pool. I am a pathetic 19 points behind my dad, who is now in first. (Just this afternoon, he overtook my mom, who made her picks based on personal associations with the schools playing in the tournament. For instance, if she had visited the school or knew someone who attended the school, she picked that team to win.)

Meanwhile, one of my final four teams lost in the first round (Georgia Tech). Yesterday, I watched Xavier, who I had going all the way to the championship game, blow a 9-point lead and lose in overtime. Of course, my method for picking my teams was no more scientific than my mom's, but every year I naively convince myself that even the most rabid college basketball fans won't be able to predict the future, and I have just as much of a chance of winning as anyone else. And every year I end up in dead last.

Fortunately, the picture above was taken at a Bulls game I attended last week. I couldn't really care less about the NBA so mostly I just took in the spectacle that is a professional sporting event and tried to concentrate on not passing out from vertigo since our seats were so high up that I was convinced if I tripped or stumbled, I would end up plummeting to my death. It was a good time.

Babies and Bread

Wow, I have really left all you faithful readers hanging here. That was not my intention, but that's what happened. Since I'm in the middle of paper-writing, of course, time is of the essence and I've decided I can definitely squeeze in a post, my first post in way too long. So here we go.

I made bread this past weekend and wrote about it on Drive Thru. I'm not sure how much other members of my household liked it, but I thought it was thoroughly decent for the minimal amount of effort that went in to making it. I also baby-sat for the first time in probably 6 or 7 years. It was so easy! Yes, the baby was asleep before we got there and made only the tiniest of peeps the entire four hours that we stayed, but still. Why does everyone claim this baby-raising is so hard? I could do it with my eyes closed. (In fact, I did for a little while Saturday night...)