So flipping muggy this morning. Not hot, but I'm a sweaty mess (sorry lisah!) after my walk to market.

Mysterious 'ready for Hillary' lanyard appeared on neighbors deck yesterday afternoon. She assumed it was mine, put it on my rail, I assumed it was hers when my cats started playing with it & hung it on her door. Don't know whether it was kids or birds. It's brand new, even.

Gardening question! I have a pot with two plants in it, one flowers (but no flowers on it -- sad) and one pepper. The flower plant is, I think, growing too big and crowding out the pepper plant. Can I just dump it all out and put the flower plant somewhere else, or will that hurt them?

I've started watching the show "Leftovers", whose premise is that 2% of the population goes missing across the board.

2% is a really small percentage, although a pretty big number. Aside from the freakout caused by any mass disappearance, I can't help wonder what that would do to the infrastructure. Pretty little, huh? It would be about the personal losses sustained and the coping reaction and lacks thereof.

I am missing multiple art books. Perhaps that's why I can't draw anymore.

I think I saw a snippet of an interview with Lindelof or someone talking about the 2% number, though I didn't watch the whole interview so I don't know what he said exactly. One of those HBO interstitials I think.

Protip: leaving the successfully frozen popsicles out on the kitchen counter for a few hours renders them a lot less successful. Sigh. At least it's not super hot today so I am not lamenting my lack of popsicles as much as I might.

I don't know for sure, Jesse, but I think your plan is probably okay.

Ita, I've been watching it, and that was my thought, as well. Assuming a relatively random distribution, I don't think it would have a significant impact on the infrastructure, this far out, apart from the psycho-social fallout. It would be a mess in the short term, but, at this point?

And I suddenly realized I should take further discussion to Premium.

So I had forgotten how little time appraisers take. 15 minutes and done. But I'm glad I made an effort to pick up the house a bit, since he did take photos inside...

It's been overcast and a little bit rainy here (YAY!) and the fig tree is going bonkers so I made 9 more pints of balsamic fig jam. This round is much jellier and really amazingly good. Way more balsamic, but not in taste (boiling vingear for 45 minutes produces some odor). Unlike the original Thomas Keller recipe, I added pectin and processed it a little less. Still delicious.

Over a gallon of balsamic fig jam. My mind reels.

The smoke alarm won't stop beeping. I've changed the battery, pressed the test button, removed and replaced the battery, tested the battery, turned the circuit breaker off and on again, and done it all again. It's still beeping. The last time I had this problem, I had to replace the smoke alarm itself, but this one is less than five years old; they're supposed to last ten years. Anyone have any ideas?

Timelies all!

Went to Fort McHenry with my folks. Neither I nor my parents had been there, and Gary had been there a long time ago. My mom wasn't up to much walking, so we found a bench in a shaded area where she could sit while the rest of us walked around the fort.

Later we're meeting Gary's dad and stepmom for dinner.