Hello lovelies.

I’m a bit late this week, finishing this up from a hotel room outside Yosemite. I’m up here for a few days with my brother and his wife, so I can watch my nephew while they’re at a wedding. I’m considering extending my stay out the rest of the week, as work is slow and I’ve got no reason to go back home until I need to get Z from school on Friday. Expect photos of the park in next week’s review.

1. Fire Weather. Ash has been falling steadily the past two days from the Country Fire. The sky is yellow and hazy, although it’s not as bad as it was with the fires in Napa and Sonoma last year. Yet. There was a brush fire in town a few days ago that shut down the highway. They’d just trimmed most of the brush in that area a week before; if that hadn’t happened the whole neighborhood might have gone up. It’s one of the inevitables of living in California, much like earthquakes are, and has made me keenly aware of the need to rebuild the emergency kit and set up grab bags for myself and Z.

2. Made for Walking. After about 5 years, I walked the soles off my Fakenstocks. I’m not surprised they’re dead; I’m surprised it took so long. I’m also pleasantly surprised that the new pair I got, from Green Mountain Shoes, have been comfortable right off the bat. I’d forgotten how good it felt to have some cushion in the sole.

3. Take me home. Z’s aunt set up a “Dino adoption center” at her son’s 5th birthday party in lieu of goody bags, and it was a brilliant idea. Z is in love with her dino (whose name I can neither remember nor pronounce) and I’m in love with not having to deal with the inevitable mess of plastic trinkets and candy.

4. Commune Update. We’ve been beating the heat by putting the wading pool out for the kids and, in true California style, using the water from the pool to water the plants and the trees when the kids are done. The chickens arrived this week, and the kids are in love. Z likes to stand on a chair in the bathroom and watch them while I brush her hair, and of course saying good morning and good night is essential.

5. Party like it’s 1969. I worked a gig with Aurora Catering this week, and the event manager showed up in this amazing VW Bus. With the interior totally stripped out, it’s perfect for hauling around the crates and crates of supplies needed for a catering job. If I had any mechanical skills at all, I’d want to get one, throw a mattress and a writing space inside, and hit the road.

Links and Things

Fruit trees small enough to fit in the living room? Yes, please!

These interactive charts from Bloomberg on the WSJ on marriage and the gender pay gap are a few years old but still fascinating.

Mary Robinnette Kowal’s novelette The Lady Astronaut of Mars is available to read online, and it is one heck of a story.

A fascinating long read on one man’s descent into madness and the obsession with meteorites that fueled it: How one man went from hunting meteorites to being hunted by the law