Speaking of Hot

Do you see that large number, there?  The one saying it's one hundred and eleven degrees outside?!  Goodness gracious, it's toasty out there.  I'm still used to summers on the West Coast, where it cools down in the evenings.  Last night at 11pm, our heat index was 94 degrees.  I'm incredibly miserly with running our air conditioning, but there's no beating temperatures like that.  I won't even begin to tell you what it feels like to go for a run when it's nearly 100% humid and 80 degrees.

Instead, I'll leave you with the formula to calculate the heat index.  It's way more complicated than I thought it would be!



Fine Print: I'm mostly blaming the weather here in Hot-lanta for my blogging absence.  I wish I could say that I've been on fun trips and reading some amazing books while I've been awol, but alas, no.  My brain pretty much shut down and left me with zero inspiration and creativity.  Here's to hoping I come up with something enlightening by the time it cools back off... in October.


Crazy mathematical formula courtesy of NOAA.gov.

Cooking with Bo: Apache Hot Sauce

This time around, Bo made the recipe.  And grew the peppers.  And took the photos.  Basically, I'm just acting as his cute secretary, minus the pencil skirt and 4" heels.

Apache Hot Sauce on From Blah to Ta-Daa

This hot sauce turned out delicious!  And I'm so proud that Bo made the product from start to finish.  We're new to the world of gardening and harvesting, and these little peppers are such a boost of inspiration and sense of accomplishment.  Bo will probably dig up more hot sauce recipes as more peppers pop up on the plants.  I'll be sure to get that recipe from him as well!

Weekend Scrapbook 2

Can you believe I took that picture with my cell phone?  Can you believe I had been carrying my phone in a ziploc, squished into the front of my sports bra, while running and getting completely soaked by sweat and humidity?  Sorry, that's a little gross.  But I strive to be open and honest, and hey, I'm certainly not perfume and roses even half the time.  Anyway, Rory and I ran twice this weekend on the Greenway - a set of forested paths about a mile from our house.

The paths mostly follow a creek and are paved except for the footbridges that cross over marsh and wetlands.  What you're staring at is a forest cloaked in 97% humidity.  Oh, yes.  That air out there was heavy.  My clothes were completely drenched, and it should be noted that running in humidity like that is exhausting.  It just saps all endurance and wears you out in no time flat.  Running a slow three miles in that feels like a fast five miles in cooler and dryer weather.  Which probably explains why we saw almost no one either day.  But I'm not complaining; it's really nice to have forested paths all to ourselves.  One of my favorite sounds is the hushed rhythm of footfalls in nature.



Rory gets tuckered out in the oppressive humidity too, so I stopped to let her take a mid-run swim break.  Actually, I had planned to stop to let her get a quick drink, but she ran and jumped right in and then swam around. 

Flowers?  Lovely.  Wet dog?  Not so much.

Bo has been dutifully tending to our back yard and patio garden, and these Zinnias are just one of the blooms thriving out there.  I haven't lifted a finger with anything regarding our backyard except to get inordinantly excited over picking out seed packets.  Which he then planted and grew for me.  Such a spoiled life I lead.

Of course, I then oblige when he asks me to make cookies. Cookies with more chocolate than usual.  Cookies made with my fancy-dancy Sarandipity melting chocolates.

I may or may not have eaten cookies for dinner last night, and nothing else.  Whoops.