It's Labor Day weekend & most of my coworkers are in the Black Rock Desert watching a plywood man burn. It's Burning Man, (http://www.burningman.com), the annual festival of ... well, I don't have a sound bite for it. I've never been to the festival, just heard about it. This year, they had 24k people come together in the middle of the desert in Nevada. No spectators allowed....everyone has to participate in some way.

The yard is coming together well. I planted broccoli, onions & romaine lettuce. I also planted some nastursium (sp?) flowers which are turning out to be all orange. I don't want orange flowers so I'm looking for a home to give them to. The first cherry tomatoes are ripe. The Romas are also just starting to come on. I suspect I'll have many, many many more tomatoes than I know what to do with.

I finished with the neckband & button bands on a black & white sweater (Norweigan snowflake pattern - took me about a year to do) and discovered that I'd forgotten about shoulders. The sleeves are in the wrong place which means I have no shoulders. The neckband is right at the top of the sleeves which leaves no room for shoulders. This is a problem. However, I think I can fix it without extensive reknitting.

The other big house news is the stove. The stove that's in the kitchen today scares me. Every so often I imagine I smell gas near it. I dunno if I really smell gas or I'm making it up. The oven doesn't have a pilot light & needs to be lit with a large match. This scares me. It scares me enough that I broke down & bought a new stove. Well, I ordered it. It's a Thermador, 36" range with 4 burners (high BTU, part of their professional series) & a griddle between the two burners. Of course, it won't be here for a month but until then, I can look at the pictures.

I'm having continuing troubles with getting the Sunday paper delivered. In June, I started Sunday-only delivery of the SF Examiner. It doesn't appear. In order to get the newspaper delivered, I have to call, tell them it hasn't arrived and then they send one out & leave a note for the route supervisor to not forget me the next week. This is getting really old. I can't figure out why it's so difficult to deliver a newspaper. They can find my house (well marked & they have no problem delivering the replacement newspapers) they just don't seem to want to deliver the paper without a phone call to prompt them. After repeated phone calls & change, I wrote a couple letters to the newspaper delivery service & the Examiner. My subscription is supposed to be done Sept 11. I can't see why I would want to renew at this point. I pay money. The newspaper doesn't get delivered. This doesn't seem like a good deal to me.

Stacey