A cool "app"

I think one of the reasons for the continuing popularity of Powerpoint over web-based apps for presentations is the ease with which Powerpoint does charts and diagrams. Well, have I got a solution for you! Gliffy is one of those great little free Web 2.0 apps that allows you to do cool stuff online and share it with other people: in this case make diagrams. I thought of it immediately for teaching (you know, when you want to do those complicated medieval hierarchy diagrams, or Oedipus' family tree, or whatever...), but they have so many helpful little built in templates, like furniture for doing room layouts, and network symbols and so on, that I started thinking of all kinds of things I could do with it myself. Not to mention that big plan to get the family tree in some kind of order...

Summer Food

On the subject of Canada Day, tomorrow I'm going to have hot-dogs and ice-cream for lunch to celebrate. And maybe steak and corn-on-the-cob for supper... Or I might save that for Sunday, and have an omelette for supper instead. But hot-dogs for lunch, for sure.

When I tell people I can't eat chocolate, they're always really sorry for me; but I don't really _like_ chocolate. Will you think I'm very peculiar if I tell you that I'm not really all that mad about ice-cream either? But I do eat it occasionally. Not so much as a special treat; just to go with things on a hot day. I like floats, particularly. You know, when you plop a blob of ice cream into a glass of ginger ale or coca cola? That, I think is delicious.

Today, I made a very yummy salad dressing to go with some shrimp and crisp lettuce and cucumber. I just went into the garden and picked some chives and some sorrel and some fennel and some peppery cressy thing I have growing in with my lettuces and whizzed it all up with a spoonful of sour cream and a spoonful of mayonnaise and some buttermilk. The result was a lovely smooth cool green mixture perfect for a summer salad.