heat ice lightning pies

We had a long weekend that seemed framed by pies and weather.

X and the boys went camping on Sunday afternoon and pitched their tent into the eye of a strong summer thunderstorm. I, through sanity of choice, was sitting comfortably at home watching a movie when the blusterin’ commenced. It wasn’t long before my telegraph started clicking and I was cabled the news that they were heading home, post-haste. In the midst of the event I thought the reported broken tent post (full stop) had occurred because of Everestonion gales; ends up X just got a little too bossy and snapped it like a twig. They did manage to grill some burgers before evacuating the campground. Does that count as any type of success? It was a good enough blow that our electricity was out most of the evening and into the early morning. We ended up around the table playing poker by candlelight. As an aside, I ended up with a short stack of chips, battling X at the end, because her stack was huge – she had NO problem using her motherly wiles while slaughtering her childrens’ banks of chips. I’m much more restrained…just hoping to educate. She’s a killer.

The pies were a lemon-lime tart on Thursday night and a strawberry-rhubarb yesterday.

Yesterday we headed into the city to drop-off office fixings at X’s office at 16th and K St. She was in dire need of plants (for air) and a desk lamp (for light?) so we toted those in along with a suit (for emergency suit situations), and her tea needs / equipment. The new building they’ve squatted in is a little over-the-top; white marble that leads me to think Greek, mingled with lots of ‘art’ that makes me think what the hell? I half expected some Caesar-like senior partner to wander through wearing an olive-leaf wreath and toga accompanied by some modern rave soundtrack or Jackson Pollock. The design is a strange bedfellow with itself (can that be?). I had a quick tour of the roof ‘garden’ which just might have saved the entire package from a real punitive commentary. Her name is neatly affixed to the smoky glass parallel to her office door and duly impressed me. To summarize… nice roof party patio, good lettering. Not much for hundreds of millions of dollars of expense. Then again, I don’t much care for modern art or buildings constructed using the plastic ice blocks from my 1970s version of “Don’t Break the Ice!” (see above graphic…)

Did you read that 94 of 100 U.S. Senators didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq prior to the 2002 vote for war? Some read a five-page summary, but that’s a horrible excuse for not reading a 94-page report before raising your hand and volunteering us for war. The NIE was wrong in many of its assessments but that isn’t the issue; if you didn’t read it, you didn’t know.

It’s hot. We bought a new window AC on Saturday. All’s well…

T.