Monday - Monday

I heard this story on NPR while driving to work this morning. I love the quote at the end:

An Australian mining town has a shortage of available women, so the mayor offered a solution: recruit ugly women to live there. He told a newspaper the city should attract "beauty-disadvantaged women." The mayor says his comments were "twisted" after women responded furiously. One local woman says local men are more numerous, but not so great. "We've got a saying," she said, "that the odds are good, but the goods are odd."

Jay stayed home from work today. Yes, that's right, the big tough guy who bitches if anyone takes a sick day...is home with a sty in his eye. Not "my whole eye is swelled up and I can't see properly" sty, but a slight inflammation below his left eye. I think he really wants to stay home and put up more blackberry jelly. There's currently 26 pints of the stuff sitting on the counter with another 4 large ziplock bags in the fridge to go through. The berries grow all around us (weeds) and the last few days of warm weather has plumped out the berries and made them really sweet. Bear loves to 'help' pic berries, meaning he's quite skilled and getting his snout into the vines and mooching of a berry with out getting stuck by a thorn. He been eyeing the apple tree intensely waiting for the fruit to drag the tree limbs low enough so he can score an apple. My little chow hound.

I took my Mom out to lunch yesterday for her (69th) birthday. We went to Geraldine's in Columbia City (local neighborhood in Seattle) Heads up locals - this part of town is really re-gentrifying and has some great restaurants as well as the farmers market on Tuesdays. I gave up trying to pick out birthday gifts for Mom years ago. She's one of those people who has everything she wants and or needs, (she's become a professional shopper since retiring) I can't pick out clothes for her and anything else I could think of to get her is just more clutter. Anyway - we browsed quite a few of galleries after lunch and she saw several things she'd like, I kept telling her to pick something out but she wouldn't bite. I'll have to work out Plan 'B'

Cousin Alice flies in tonight. I was hoping to take some time off work to spend the days with her but due to every ones vacation schedules that's not going to work out. My Mom is excited to sub for me and take her round town.

We've had electrical storms the past few nights. Saturday night/Sunday morning was the best. We typically just get flash lightning where the whole sky lights up but on Saturday/Sunday Bear woke me up as he hates storms and clued me into what was going on outside. I got up and watched as lightning bolts dance around the sky. Awesome. There was a bit last night and were suppose to get more today. The clouds are rolling in from the ocean so we'll wait and see.

Hope your Mondays going good.