Fight On!

I love college football! The USC-Ohio State game tonight was absolute perfection. Have you ever ridden a roller coaster and found yourself laughing hysterically and totally exhilarated? That's how I felt after tonight's game. Led by our true freshman quarterback, Matt Barkley, we're going to have quite a season.
Great job kid!

Fried Pickles?

When I was in Junior High and High School, our family did weekly theme dinners, like "taco night" (which we still occasionally do) and "fry"day, which ironically we had on Thursday. Keep in mind this was quite awhile ago and folks weren't as health conscious. Our family had a deep fat fryer (just sounds unhealthy, doesn't it?) and my mom would cook up a tasty assortment of sizzling treats: fish sticks, tater tots, vegetables. As an adult, I'm not a huge fan of fried foods, but I do enjoy hearing about the latest crunchy offerings that they come up with each year at the county fairs. We took the family to a fair this summer and one of my sons was delighted with the deep fried pickles, which were actually better than they sound. I recently heard about one of the most disgusting sounding treats ever: Deep fried BUTTER! I wish I were kidding.

Firestorm!

I'm a big supporter of lifelong learning. I try to take a college course every semester on a topic of interest. I'm also not afraid to admit that I don't know something. If I can't answer a question, I turn to the internet (much as I turned to encyclopedias when I was young.). This week I was confronted by something that I'd never seen or heard of before (see photo above). I learned about clouds when I was a kid: stratus, cumulus, nimbus; but somehow, I'd missed out on learning about pyrocumulus clouds. They're formed when a rapidly moving fire sucks all the moisture out of the atmosphere and burning brush. The most amazing example of nature taking care of itself is that the clouds can turn to rain and extinguish the fire! In an ironic twist on the workings of Mother Nature, the clouds can also produce lightening which can start another fire.