On the importance of washing your fruit

Jenna plucked some ripe raspberries from our back yard bushes last night and instructed me to clean them. I ran some water on 'em and started tossing berries down my pie hole. After gorging myself for a few seconds, something got stuck back in the corner of my mouth. I tried tongueing it out, but whatever it was wouldn't budge, and it started to hurt. I stuck my finger into my throat and scraped out a little bee! I gave the rest of the raspberries a thorough rinsing after that.

Speaking of bees, remember when cars used to look awesome? (Photo is of a '71 Dodge Superbee, lest you question my transitional prowess.) Over 11,000 cars were registered in last weekend's Back to the 50's show, and one of them belonged to my father-in-law. He drives into the Cities every year, and he left home at 2:00 AM on Saturday to be among the first in line on Snelling Ave.

He always manages to get the same tree-shaded spot, so we like to sit with him for a few hours and grill burgers and drink beer. Sometimes we walk around the Fairgrounds to see what is going on. One of the vendors at this year's show was a working pinstriper by the name of Coop. And I thought, surely not THE Coop from LA, with the drawings of naked ladies (warning: naked ladies!). I knew he liked hot rods, but I didn't think he did striping. Sure enough, this Coop turned out to be Greg "Coop" Cooper from Lancaster, Ohio--but that didn't make it any less interesting to watch.