Strawberries

If you have strawberries in your house take a look at the box. There's a better than even chance it will say Watsonville and most of the rest will say Salinas. You'd think that the Monteray Bay Strawberry Festival would be awesome given that we're the strawberry capital of the world.

Well, it was L4M3. Coming but a week after the Gilroy Garlic Festival, the Strawberry Festival was just a typical county fair at which there were also lots of strawberries for sale. They were cheap at least, so I got 4 lbs of them. When I got them home, I was disappointed to discover that they look nice, but once you pull off the leaves there's a big white patch under them, and they're not red all the way through inside. These are the same crappy berries they ship out to the rest of the country. Don't get me wrong, these berries are by no means bad, but they're nothing great either. I'd expected something better given that these berries were picked here, but it looks like I lose. These are a far cry from the ones I'd bought at the farmer's market, which is where I'll be making all future purchases of this sort.

On the trek out there, however, I did discover some wild blackberry bushes.

Shatner on the History Channel?

WTF? There's a bit on the History Channel now called "How William Shatner Changed the World". It's really on how Star Trek inspired modern technological developments, and it's narrated by Shatner. There are interviews with scientists at SETI and JPL and such. It's worth watcing, and I'm sure it will be on again sometime since by the time anyone reads this it will be over.