A Friendly Request: To Stave off Going Private

I really don't like private blogs. I'm sorry if you're one of my dear friends who has one, but it's the truth. As a fan of Google Reader, I like to have a one-stop place where I can keep up to date with all my friends's goings on. All the manually going to the site and typing in a username and password, not to mention the account expiration issues, is a little bit of a pain. That being said, I still do it because I respect your need for privacy. And because I really love you.

I'm a little bit of a private person myself. As you notice, I blog with first names only. I don't give out my address or say when I'm planning on going out of town. I even try to avoid addressing exact birthdays. Yes, I'm that kind of private.

So I have a small request to make of you, my friends, my readers. Many of you have graciously included my blog on your blogrolls. This is especially kind of you since I don't even maintain one myself. But for many of you, the blogroll link includes both my first and last name, and some include Kevin's as well. I am wondering if you could possibly remove the last name from your list? If you would do that for me, I would very much appreciate it. You can even use the actual name of my blog, which would make me feel like a pro.

I find this to be a good alternative to taking my blog into the realm of annoying private blogs, requiring you to log in just to see if by chance I got around to posting anything. I know many of you are fully comfortable blogging with the full names of your family and friends, and you probably think I'm unnecessarily cautious. I probably am! However, Kevin and I both have simultaneous academic and professional careers, and I would prefer that when clients, students, university administrators, or potential employers do a Google search for either of us (something that is now standard practice) that this blog doesn't appear (and also that your blog doesn't appear associated with our names - only because I don't control your content). If you could also try to be careful to use only first names in your posts about us, I'd appreciate that as well.

One of the faults of this blog is that I don't post anything super substantial. You wouldn't really guess that I love philosophical conversation from reading this blog, would you? Instead, there are pix of my cats here, my garden there. However, I just rather be boring and safe than edgy and sorry.

OK, enough of a tour through my early morning hopes and fears. My sincere thanks to all for tuning in. Now back to my regularly-scheduled blogging.

June Pie Month Survived

Flickr photo credit: thepriapisticpress

As my regular readers know, I have a little issue with pie. I really like pie. A lot. In fact, I lied. I flat-out love pie.

So, it's no small feat that Kevin and I have survived this Marie Calendar's pie month by eating only two pies: razzleberry and lemon cream cheese.

Of course, we've had strawberry shortcake, strawberry crepes, and I bought a million of these cute little Haagen Dazs containers of strawberry ice cream. Because they were on sale. Yes, just because of a sale. Hmmm. Strawberries sound good right now... on something. Like strawberry ice cream.

Maybe I should make a post label for pie. That's definitely more common, on my blog anyway, than the Blogger suggested "scooters, vacation, fall." Scooters don't have nothin' on pie here at Bristlecone Pine.

Recipe for a Nearly Perfect (Rainy) Evening

• Being with my #1 guy
• Up!
• A full rainbow from Big Cottonwood Canyon to Corner Canyon
• Tomato soup with basil and ciabatta with basalmic vinigar and extra virgin olive oil
• Topping it off with a couple of episodes of The Critic

Buffy brought me the best five minutes of my day

Caprese

Every summer, I become absolutely convinced I could eat this salad every day for dinner.

Flickr photo credit: StormySleep

• Tomatoes
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt
• Freshly-ground pepper
• Mozzarella cheese

And were're going to have a lot of tomatoes, both traditional and heirloom, this year. Thank you, rainy June, for making them grow like crazy.

A little xeric gardening

Kevin and I have his and hers flowerbeds. I don't know how it worked out the way it did, but one of us would come up with a plan for a particular spot in the yard, and the other one would be OK with that.

This is Kevin's water-wise and native plant bed, chosen around our lamppost where he ripped out the lawn because the sprinklers never hit there. Beautiful, if you ask me. And I didn't even pull up any weedy-looking early penstemons or poppies this year.

Embarrassing Personal Confession

Jessica does Embarrassing Personal Confession features on her blog, which are always fun to get the juicy tidbits of her life (gray hair!). I'm not saying I would make this a repeat feature on my blog, but seriously, I've got something embarrassing to confess. But it's probably not very juicy.

It's not enough that in our marriage we've had two hamsters, two cats, a frog (that came into the marriage from my sophomore year in college), and a beta fish. The fact is, I love pets. And I love to look at all the pets on Craigslist. If it doesn't have a picture, I won't look at it. Also, I won't look at it if it's not a local listing - even though I don't really want another pet!

I just think animals are so cute. Look at this baby chinchilla, now available for adoption here in Utah:

I bet it's even cuter when it spins around in a tub of ashes to clean itself off. Early in their marriage, Jessica and Mark used to have a chinchilla, and an ash bath was one of the funniest things I ever saw. *Sigh.*