Sunday Potterings

We had a mellow day today following yesterday’s jaunt up to Shasta County. There was not a cloud in the sky and it’s gotten very warm — it reached 90 today — so we decided it was time for the solar cooker. This is a contraption that we got from Solar Cookers International where you place a black-painted aluminum cooking pot inside a oven roasting bag, and rest this outside in the sun on top of an aluminized cardboard half-box. A picture of the setup is at right. We cooked beans and rice today, ready by the time we got home after an excursion into town on our bikes this afternoon.

I also went through my bike basket, in the spirit of Pica’s archeology of the car. Items therein:

• 1 clear plastic bag


• 1 bike lock


• a scrunched up paper napkin


• a paper on the economic geography of talent, author Richard Florida


• the roster and program for the UC Davis vs. Cal State San Bernardino baseball game on Picnic Day


• the Picnic Day program from the Cal Aggie paper


• a clothes label saying “I am reversible”


• a printout from March 8 of books on loan from the Davis Public Library, namely The Boy’s Crusade, by Paul Fussell, Monsoon Diary, by Shoba Narayan, The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Worms, by Amy Stewart, The Book of Wi-Fi, by John Ross, and Voices from the Pagan Census, by Helen Berger


• a couple of printouts of local geocaches


• 5 pencils in various states of unsharpenedness


• 1 Pilot pen


• 1 empty fountain pen ink cartridge


• and a type specimen sheet for the typeface Gentium