See that look on Beany's face? She does everything with that intensity. The quasi-self-portrait is because my friend Mo has tagged me for a seven habits/quirks/facts meme. She predicted I wouldn't do it, which I'm sure was just a clever bit of reverse psychology. So here we go.

1. I always have a strong desire to hold my metaphorical cards close to my chest. When I start thinking about a project (of any sort), I like to plan it out -- if not complete most of the work -- before I spill the beans. Earlier this year, I was contemplating getting a master's and not telling anybody about it until I graduated.

2. I'm really bad about buying presents when I'm meant to (birthdays, Christmas, etc), but I like to give people gifts when I just happen to find something I think they'd like. For some reason, this can make people uncomfortable. Personally, I feel much more uncomfortable sat in front of a pile of presents that I have to open and react to all in one go.

3. There are currently no television programs I watch. I'll probably tune into House and Bones when they start back up, but I'm feeling a bit apathetic about even those. I do, however, rewatch my favourite programs on DVD quite a lot. S and I are currently working through Doctor Who and Spaced, and I've been YouTube-ing the newer episodes of QI.

4. I always thought I liked cats and dogs equally, but I've recently decided I like cats more.

5. I didn't get my driver's license until last year, and up until then I always felt very indifferent towards driving/being in a car. It turns out that I really actually enjoy driving. Fast Safely.

6. I have a great memory when it comes to things I've observed/overheard/seen, but I'm absolutely rubbish at remembering to do tasks. I also have a really difficult time remembering names, which I think is because:

7. I tend to think in images rather than words. When I see somebody, I'm not thinking about what they're called. In fact, it sometimes strikes me as really strange when I think about the names of the people I'm closest to. I'm used to having an image or concept of them in my mind; a name seems so insignificant.

And so there's seven things that you might not have known. Unless I mentioned them before. But there you are.

Do you ever buy a grapefruit, thinking how nice it will be to wake up the next morning and have it for your breakfast? And then that next morning rolls around, you look at the fruit and sigh. 'If only,' you think to yourself, 'this grapefruit were more loaf-shaped and tasted of cake.'

There, that's better. I made this for afternoon tea, not for breakfast, though. Cake for breakfast! Imagine! I would never.

I tweaked Nigella's recipe for Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake, and I would probably continue tweaking if I were to make it again. Too much butter/margarine.

Grapefruit Loaf Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter or margarine
110 g sugar (a little over 1/2 cup -- I used 70g granulated and 40g brown)
2 eggs
zest of half a pink grapefruit
1/2 tsp vanilla
410 g all purpose flour (a little over a cup)
1 tsp baking soda
a pinch each of cinnamon, ginger, and salt
1/4 cup grapefruit juice

Beat together the butter and sugar, add the eggs, zest, and vanilla. Mix in the dry ingredients and continue mixing while you add the grapefruit juice, until well combined.
Spoon the batter into a greased loaf ban and bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (I think I actually baked for only 35 minutes).

I'm not planning on drenching my cake with syrup (which you could make with 1/4 cup grapefruit juice and a 1/2 cup of powdered sugar), but I probably will make a simple icing to drizzle over once the cake has cooled.

Saturday Evening: Leaving the Arise! Bookstore after a much-needed burst of rain.

That was after the rain had ended, but the storm rolled on, and we saw amazing displays of lightning in the southern sky. We've now had a few storms in the last week, and the forecast is showing a bit more rain coming up and (to my relief) a break in the high temperatures. Just in time to wet down all the dead grass and plants!

Sunday Morning: Breakfast at home.

The tomatoes from my garden are ridiculously good. Tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Lots of vitamin C, lots of. . . lycopene? Sure! I bought vegan cream cheese to make non-dairy frosting for a carrot cake, and the leftover (cream cheese, not frosting) was spread on this toast -- and then the left over leftovers were licked by Booty and subsequently thrown in the bin. But still, two thumbs up.

Later on Sunday, S (Ooh, a new character! Who could he be?) and I drove up to his aunt's cabin for a tiny mini holiday. These are some things you can see 'up north': lakes, trees, cows with long horns, horses, stars (ALL the stars, I think), meteor showers (wow!), very few people, and random statues of Paul Bunyan. And that brings us to Monday Midday:

Sitting in a cafe (the ONLY cafe in town), drinking coffee and writing postcards. With glittery stickers. Reading a paper from Duluth (Hard hitting news! Provocative letters to the editor!). As far as holidays go, it was a bit too brief and more tiring than refreshing, but it still gets top marks. Let's hear it for cabins!

Thursday Morning: Breakfast at French Meadow.

A walk around Lake Harriet and its rose garden:

Summer has been good to me. Photos taken with the new Olympus, by the way.

Phew, real life can sure take it out of a person, no? I thought time went by quickly even when I wasn't up to much, but it's a whole new level of warp when I've actually got things to do. To help document it all (in theory), I've got a new camera. It takes pictures like so:

No, not to replace my Nikon SLR -- not even close. It's a little Olympus (FE-230) point-and-shoot, exactly as big as my cell phone, but with more megapixels than the D70. How do they fit them all in? It's been so long since I've used a point-and-shoot that I find it exceedingly frustrating. I mean, it's my belief that you can coax out a good photo from any camera, but there are definitely levels of difficulty. Being able to tell the D70 exactly what you want goes a long way to making photography easy; the Olympus seems to have a mind of its own, and there's no telling it what you want it to do. Now I know what it's like to live with myself! Har.

I've accepted the fact that I have to let the cameras do what they're best at. I got this point-and-shoot in order to have a portable camera that I can carry with me at all times. And I think it'll do just fine with that sort of thing -- outdoor shots, etc, etc. The D70 is best at home, where I expect a bit more, and where lugging around an SLR doesn't pose a problem.

But for the moment, I'm most excited about the Olympus' super-macro setting:

It'll focus up to about an inch and a half in front of its nose, and provided all the other stars align (since you can't set its shutter speed or aperture or manually focus), it takes a nice picture. Of fuzzy cat paws and slices of tomato. (I'll have to get back to you with the variety of tomato I've got in my garden. It's an heirloom, and it's amazing. Almost no seeds -- just perfect tomato flesh through and through.)

Just a quick post to say that I'm safe, and that it doesn't seem like anybody I know was on the 35W bridge. Many thanks to everybody around the world who has checked in to make sure I'm okay -- I'm feeling very loved!