Finding patterns

Whether they be in heartbeats or Shakespearean plays....
I found this Globe article about testing a new computer program designed to find patterns in 'regular' heartbeats by having it analyze the works of Shakespeare (including some that may or may not be the Bard's work) rather fascinating.

It's not the heat, it's...

Another day of extreme humidity and intermittent downpours, and that's what the weather report says for the foreseeable future, too. I know, it's August, so it could be worse: it could be 95 degrees and humid, instead of 80 and humid. This level of humidity, though, is pretty extreme. It's not the pre-breathed level, but has gone beyond that to the pre-exertion level (Feel as if you've had a full workout before stepping out of the house!). Ugh. I didn't discover that I can deal with the heat if it's dry heat until I went to Israel; until then I hadn't been anywhere that didn't have them both. This week has been higher levels of humidity than I remember having before; even at the lower temperatures, it's hard to move without some AC or breeze drying the air out.

And then there's this rain. I like rain, I enjoy thunderstorms, and lightning is pretty cool. Five distinct downpours yesterday (at least) without giving any relief from the humidity, though, was less than optimal. How can there be that much water around? I suppose it's more interesting than just having the humidity by itself (and leads to much more interesting cloudscapes as it becomes briefly sunny, then overcast again), but I keep assuming that it will be cooler and dryer after a storm, which is not true, around here, anyway.

Feh.

Farm share week 9

Another very full box this week:

• a pint of cherry tomatoes
  
• an heirboom tomato
  
• two 'modern' tomatoes
  
• a bunch of red radishes with greens
  
• a bunch of cilantro
  
• a bunch of arugula
  
• a bunch of mizuna
  
• one pound of carrots
  
• a cucumber
  
• a small cantaloupe
  
• a head of green leaf lettuce
  
• a bunch of regular (green) Swiss chard
  
• two summer squash, one of them pattypan

(Yes, this all fit into one box.)
The pick-your-own this week is dill, flowers, and some varieties of basil (purple, Thai, cinnamon, and lemon).

I found myself slightly squicked at the supermarket afterward: Stonyfield Farm now lists insulin as an ingredient in all the yogurts I looked at. And that was before seeing all the strangely colored and flavored pistachios (garlic-lemon, etc.).