Does anyone have an answer to this question for me?

Why would you intentionally purchase olives with the pits still inside them? I find them difficult to eat, so I rarely serve them (I bought a jar on accident once - a year ago - and I'm still making my way through it), and sometimes I myself am not up for the hassle they provide. However, they're in grocery stores, so I imagine people buy them regularly. They don't cost less than other olives (at least not to any worth-while degree)...So why do people buy them?

Elk Meadows

This weekend, we went mountain biking with Russ and Tonya here:



We set up camp outside Stanley Friday night and hit the trail Saturday around noon. There were some scary parts, but over all it was a lot of fun. The worst part for me was a downhill rocky part that went for probably a mile and a half. I don't really like doing things that may kill me and I definitely thought that that part could kill me. So I got off my bike and walked it, which was no big deal because none of us were in a hurry. It was nice to be on my first mountain biking trip with people who were so supportive and helpful and patient - and who were all at my relative level of experience.



One of my favorite parts of the trip was going through the meadow.



The Sawtooths surrounded us on one side and trees surrounded us on the other, while hundreds of grasshoppers jumped across the path in front of us. Another favorite part was seeing how high up we were; we had parked down next to Stanley Lake, but we were looking down at it from the top of the mountain! It definitely gave me a sense of accomplishment.



After five hours on the trail (which included a lunch stop, water breaks, walking from time to time and plenty of pauses for pictures), we were finally back at the parking lot. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a parking lot before in my life! We loaded up our gear and headed down to Stanley Lake to cool off. It was a cold swim, but it felt really good after a full day sweating in the sun and getting covered in dust from the trail.



All in all, it was a great, although exhausting, day. I don't know that mountain biking is the sport for me, but I would like to try more in the future - just perhaps without the patches of scary, downhill rocks.

School Days

This morning, I helped out with school registration. Which means it's really happening: summer is ending. There's a part of me that's looking forward to getting back on a grown-up schedule with a time to get up and a time to eat and a time to go to bed, but there's also a part of me that really enjoys all the alone time, fluidity of time, and silence. I was able to see some of my old students today, which was fun, and to reconnect with some of my teacher friends from last year, but it was definitely nice afterward to come back home to my empty house and not think about it for a while. I know it's inevitable, but I really would like one, maybe two more weeks of vacation. I'm pretty sure the kids wouldn't mind if we asked them to delay some.

Radley's Obsession

Friday, a woman Kelly works with brought some zucchini in to the office to share because she had received an abundance from her garden. When Kelly came home, he sat them on the coffee table.

Friday evening, we were enjoying each other's company in the comfort of our living room when Radley started acting strangely. We can set any number of things on the coffee table - within easy reach of our pups' noses - steak, sausage, hotdogs, and other things that encourage lesser pups to disobediently snag said items from the table. Friday evening, Radley was trying to do just that - only without the temptation of smelly, meaty foods. All that was up there was said zucchini.

Kelly picked up one of the large, green vegetables and held it toward Radley's face so he could smell it and see how silly and confused he was acting - disobediently trying to climb onto the table and all. Rather than sniffing it and walking away dejected as anticipated, however, Radley lunged at the zucchini, aiming to make it his snack.

We were surprised at this, to say the least. We laughed and decided to cut a piece off for our crazed pup...which drove him mad. He couldn't wait to get a piece of that zucchini in his mouth! He was dancing all over, doing every trick he knows, trying to impress us into giving him more and more zucchini! We thought he was just hungry, so after feeding him (and Lucy, who, usually our fruit-and-vegetable-lover, was only mildly impressed) a couple of zucchini rounds, so we gave each pup a fresh cup of dog food. Nay! said the ravenous Radley. He only wanted zucchini. We had to put both the zucchini up on the kitchen counter and distract him from pacing the kitchen floor. I honestly think he was depressed we wouldn't just give him the whole thing.

The next day I tried tempting him with the succulent squash once again, thinking that perhaps Friday night was just a fluke. Nope. He did the same song-and-dance numer again on Saturday, almost more excited than Friday at the possibility of having more delicious zucchini. I've never seen him like this before, even for aforementioned smelly meats and definitely never for vegetables. Now that he has the taste for zucchini, I think I should warn all my neighbors to carefully guard their gardens and to put up electrical fencing around their zucchini patches, lest my dog devour all unprotected zucchini under the cloak of night.

More Germany Photos...Because You Asked For Them

This is the castle in Ludwigsburg. It was built to look like the palace at Versailles. We learned in Germany that a lot of castles were built to look like the palace at Versailles. Evidently, it's the coolest palace ever.

This is me and Ethan going down the stairs in the Ulmer Munster. It was a little dizzy-making to walk in that tight spiral for so long. I couldn't help but think of the centuries worth of germs I was picking up by holding on to that center post. Ugh.

This is the entire American family in Germany. Here we are in front of the oldest house in Ulm - dating from somewhere in the 1400s, I think.

Here's me and Kelly on the other side of the Danube River with the Ulmer Munster sticking up behind us.

These bears were all over Ulm. Except I don't think they were bears. Large jungle cats of some kind, maybe? I don't remember. Pumas? I just thought they looked like oddly posed, skinny bears. They're part of a city project that raises money for the Munster.