Did some cooking, did some homework, paid some bills. That's it, my day.

One thing, though. I should remember next time not to plan to make all-day soup in the crock pot on a weekend. The first thing I had to do as soon as I got out of bed this morning (at 10:30 am) was chop celery. Before I was even fully awake, I had a sharp knife in my hand. Maybe I'll leave the soup-making for weekdays, when I get up earlier and can wait a couple of hours before the chopping has to begin.

This turned out to be a surprisingly good soup day, though. The weather started hot and cooled off late, so that by the time my seven or eight hours of slow cooking was complete, soup was just the ticket. My sinuses have been so bothersome in this weather that a little steam (especially aromatic steam coming off the hot broth) helped me breathe for the rest of the night.

This might have been the first day of spring, but it comes at the end of three solid weeks of summery weather. Today was actually more like our real summer than what we've been seeing, because the fog started rolling in late this afternoon. In a true Northern California summer, two or three days of heat are followed by a day or two of soothing coolness. Today we had all summer in one day.

I made a note on my soup recipe for next time: More liquid, more salt, not as many beans. I tinker with it every time, and it wasn't quite as good this time as the last time (which was the first time). It was plenty good enough to eat, though. Good enough to eat two bowls of it, in fact. And there's a lot left over.

A big check came in the mail today, so I spent the afternoon paying company bills instead of working in the yard or reading my novel. I'm fine with that. It needed to be done, and I followed through to the end instead of flaking out halfway through and leaving more work for tomorrow. (There's more work for tomorrow anyway, but at least it's different work.)