One of Kris' quirks, one that I absolutely love, is that he will ask an unusual question, usually one relevant to the situation at hand, in order to spark an off-the-wall conversation. After a few years of this, I started writing the questions down, mostly because they're so entertaining. I wish I had kept notes about the conversations that followed, too.

"Water splats. It doesn't roll."

It was raining outside, and the drops were really loud on the roof of the house. I commented to Kris that I was surprised at how big the drops were. He pointed out that, no, it wasn't raining: it was hailing.

"It's not about the size of the pie, it's about the size of the piece."

We were talking about something, I don't recall what, but I had made some comment about people's greed in a dying industry. It might have been something comparable to the horsewhip industry in the beginning of the car era, but applied more to a more recent technology, not sure.

The observation seems right on, though. Many times, people are more interested in keeping what they have, in the areas they know, instead of looking around and seeing other opportunities. I know I'm guilty of this.

"It's easier to keep up than catch up."

This should probably be a letter, but Kris said it, so here it is.

He made this comment offhandedly after I skipped a workout. I don't recall if I was injured or not, given the last fews years, I probably was.

Fitness is definitely one of those qualities that takes constant maintenance, and keeping up with it is way easier than trying to catch back up with it. It's not like you can workout for ten hours on one day and be as fit as you would be after working out for an hour a day for ten days. Darn it.

"Large car. Small space. Do you think you have any recourse if you're in an accident?"

We were in the parking lot off Cowper and University in Palo Alto, when Kris asked this question. The lot has many spaces labelled "CAR SMALL" (or "SMALL CAR" if you read it close to far away). These spaces are, as expected, smaller than most spaces, and should be filled by, you guessed it, small cars.

However, the lack of parking spaces in the downtown Palo Alto area often causes the retarded drivers of large SUVs to park in these spaces. And yes, I'm deliberately calling them "retarded," because there is something fundamentally wrong with drivers who park in spots that are clearly too small for their vehicle, a vehicle sized far bigger than the driver truly needs in the first place, and thinks the parking is a good idea.

Clearly wrong.

As we drove by a particularly big SUV, might have been an Cadillac Escalade, in a CAR SMALL spot, Kris pondered what recourse a driver of a small car parked in a small space would have if the large vehicle damaged the car, or blocked the small car in with its size. The small-car driver would, of course, have whatever legal recourse for damage to his vehicle by the large vehicle.

For inconvenience of being unable to leave the spot because of the larger vehicle's size, however, the issue is murky. The larger car isn't supposed to be parked in the spot, but we didn't know of any parking law in Palo Alto that legally prevented its parking. I recall a law was proposed, but I'm pretty sure the political arm of MWSUV (Mothers with SUVs) defeated it in the elections.

We concluded the small car driver would have no recourse, but we didn't reach this conclusion until the end of the drive home.

Which made the question a great one for conversation, and achieved Kris' hidden agenda of asking thought provoking questions to ponder.

I went to Kris' blog today to see if had posted recently. When I didn't see any posts on the front page, I logged in to see the posts.

And couldn't find any.

When I asked him about it, he told me that he had deleted them. He felt blogging wasn't for him, and so removed all of the posts.

I was surprised, and, honestly, remarkably bummed (disappointed, shocked, hurt) about it. He had told some stories, some of which were really cute and quite humourous.

I can respect he doesn't want the content back up, but I could have kept the posts and taken down the site.

I'm just really sad the posts are all gone.

Here only a week, Mom left this morning. I dropped her off at the airport, then went to work. Unlike most people I know, I have a great relationship with my mom. Her leaving is sad, but her visiting is always fantastic.

She had originally come to visit to help me work on the house. We managed to get exactly nothing done while she was here.

Exactly nothing.

We were supposed to work on the garage, clean it out and give away most of the crap in there in the launch of reReuse. Yeah, that didn't happen.

Each time Mom wanted to be motivated, I distracted her. Each time I wanted to be motivated, Mom distracted me.

We're good for each other that way.

So, yeah. Maybe next time we'll be productive. This time, this time was girl time.

Fantastic girl time.

Mom's heading home tomorrow, so she asked if she could take me out to dinner on her last night here. We've been cooking most meals, and managed to eat all the leftovers, so heading out was a good idea.

After dinner, we were readying to leave the restaurant, but, never missing the opportunity, we went to use the toliets. As luck would have it, the women's was occupied, but the men's wasn't.

Yes, I went into the men's restroom. Both of them are single rooms, not stalls, so closing and locking the door meant no one would be shocked at a woman in the men's room. Just as I was closing the door, I thought, hey, maybe Mom doesn't want to stand outside there, wondering, cripes, is my kid going to get in trouble for this, so I invited her in.

Women. We can do this and not be embarrassed.

As I was sitting on the toliet, Mom looked at the urinal on the opposite wall, complete with a bright red liner that screamed, "TARGET! AIM HERE!"

"Hmmmm, I guess they put that in there to prevent backsplash."

"The red thing? I guess so," I responded.

"Wouldn't that be a pisser? You're wearing tan pants and you splash on yourself when you pee? At knee height, no less," she continued, marvelling at the urinal.

"Uh, pun intended? A pisser pissing?"

"Pun intended!"

A minute later, I was washing my hands and Mom was using the toliet.

"You know what would be a worse pisser, Mom?"

"No. What?"

"If I left right now."

"Yeah. Not sure how'd I'd explain that to the guy trying the door right now."

"There's someone outside the door right now?"

"Yep."

"Oh. I'll just wait then."

"You do that."

Tomorrow's Master Gardener class is actually a tour of various Master Gardener projects. We're to head out some time this week to see the different projects and report back in small groups next week.

I'm heading out tomorrow with my mentor group, and Mom is going with me. I'm not sure we're going to spend the whole day touring projects, but we'll tour at least in the morning.

The group is doing a potluck lunch. I've been dying to make some of Shirley's peanut butter cookies, which she had made for me like six months ago after I helped her move a couch. Since I'd lost my sense of smell, most peanut butter cookies taste like cardboard. These, now these I could taste.

And I wanted some.

So, I told Mom we were going to make some tonight. We had dinner and watched the most recent episode of Heroes before starting on the cookies at 9:00 at night.

Only to realize the recipe calls for the dough to chill for 2 hours in the middle.

2 hours.

TWO hours.

Yeah, I'm not staying awake that long, I thought, we'll just chill them in the freezer for a few minutes, they'll still turn out.

Ten minutes of chilling, one minute of dropping balls of dough onto the baking sheets and twelve minutes of cooking later, I pulled the two dozen cookies out of the oven.

Now, for the record, they taste wonderful. Mom ate three lickety-split, and she doesn't eat cookies very often. I downed two before accidently dropping one on the floor and dodging out of the way of the doggie feeding frenzy.

So, they taste good.

They just look like little piles of doggie puke:

Maybe I won't take them to the potluck tomorrow.