Observations

We've just noticed that a friend of ours from Nashville appears in the new series of Milwaukee's Best Light beer commercials. He's in all the commercials in the series, but he's easiest to pick out in the one where he makes goo-goo noises at a small fluffy dog and then gets squashed by a giant beer can. In the other ones he mostly stands around with a blank look on his face. He's a good guy--raise a can of beer to him.

In other news, growing a garden really puts you in touch with the weather. Like, for example, I've noticed that it HASN'T RAINED ONCE since the day Katrina passed to the west of us. Not once. And there's no rain in the 10-day forecast, either. I guess I'll keep on watering those baby plants every morning. It's weird to think that my new crop of radishes could actually reach maturity without ever once experiencing natural rainfall.

Football season has begun, and with it it brings a mixture of emotions. Part of me knows football means autumn, no matter what the weather is doing, and anticipates the bittersweet change of seasons. The other part of me is really glad I don't work at a bar downtown anymore, because right now Athens bartenders are dealing with three home game weekends in a row, and you couldn't pay me enough to serve beers to all those jerky frat boys. Anyhow, fall is in the air, and I've even started cooking fall foods. Yesterday it was aloo gobhi, parathas, and roasted sweet potatoes with cashews. Today it was braised pork chops and baked beans, with a dessert of muscadine-apple cobbler. It feels right somehow.

This evening I noticed my heels were dry and cracked, so I put some Hawaiian Tropic oil on them. Now the coconut smell has us both jonesing for a trip to the beach.