What a whirlwind. Oh no, sorry, that was just a monsoon. Ava had a whale in her pool the other day and Amylynn saw a rattlesnake with a snorkel. Kelli’s on the other side of the river and we’re relegated to smoke signals. Don’t get us wrong, we love the rain. What we’re not crazy about is the hot, searing wind. That’s just too much. Why bother with makeup when your twenty-five dollar Clinique foundation is just going to melt off your face?  Still, we have standards. It’s a good thing we don’t have such high ones when it comes to funny, huh? Here are five things we loved this week.

1. A Song of Ice and Fire. We love this series of books by George R. R. Martin on

Jon Snow with his dire wolf

two separate fronts. The books are filled with thrilling battles and love and betrayal and huge wolves and- holy crap – dragons. This is epic story telling in the vein of Tolkien. Who wouldn’t be sold?  Martin constantly keeps you on your toes by killing off main characters. Amylynn has been a fan since before the HBO show and now there is a whole new set of fans for her to gush with.  You want to know why the HBO show is so good? It’s because, despite the necessity of editing the inches thick books, the series follows Mr Martin’s work very closely. The casting is superior and the sets are awe inspiring. Do yourself a favor and get the first book – you’ll want to read more. Then tune in to the series. Start at the beginning. Peter Dinkle is Tyrion personified and Amylynn has a real soft spot for The Hound. We discovered that Mr. Martin lives very close to Albuquerque and now we’re looking into the restraining order laws in the state of New Mexico. Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Martin.

Clearly they didn’t use Woolite for delicates back then

We just have a few questions. We’re very nice. Ask Ted Nugent.

2. Antique underwear. You know how you can tell we’re girls? Besides the love of cupcakes and shoes, there is a fascination with pretty underwear. We can’t explain why some women have this affinity, but it’s there. Do you really think women shop at Victoria’s Secret for some guy’s benefit? Yeah, nope. Underwear has a long and storied history, and it just got longer and more storied. Archeologists just found 600 year old bras in a castle in Austria. The scientists who surely  turned into 12-year-old boys when they found the linen undergarments, said, “Heh, heh, you said bra” and then probably talked about the boobies that had  been in them last.

3. The stolen Hoffs. You all remember David Hasselhof don’t you? You can pretend that you don’t all you want, thinking that will make you better than us or something, but we’re never going to believe you don’t know all about Bay Watch. We’ll even bet you have a bootleg copy of his album somewhere in your closet of shame. Don’t be mistaken that The Hoff is no longer relevant. Apparently, there is a crime spree centered around him involving life-sized cutouts and iced coffee. There were 570 of the things distributed at various convenience stores across the country and 550 of them have been stolen. Hoff is so thrilled, he’s even encouraging people to run out and fetch themselves one – along with a cup of the coffee he’s shilling. We couldn’t find one in our city and are willing to pay $20.00 or so to anyone who will send him to us – the cut out, not David.  We’d pay $40.00 for David . . . with iced coffee.

4.   Purple carrots. This is so real. If you were like us and under the mistaken impression that carrots only came in the options of orange and orange, you’d be mistaken. We found some mysterious purple items on our plate in Albuquerque last week. We poked at them with our forks and stared at them and tasted them first with the tips of our tongues. Were they beets? Some sort of alien vegetable? After all, we were in New Mexico and everyone knows they’re hiding aliens over in Roswell. They looked like purple carrots, we thought, but that’s ridiculous. Turns out, no. There are indeed purple carrots. We’re not talking about some limpid lavender here, we’re talking purple. PURPLE. Now all we can think about is purple carrot cake.

5. Holding a real newspaper. We’re not ignorant about the plight of the daily newspaper. We know that they are in serious jeopardy with the ease and speed of online access, but we really still love holding the newspaper in our hands. We love reading it together and discussing our take on the stories. Amylynn reads the articles in different voices and sometimes with an accent. We find it quite entertaining. Not everyone finds as much enjoyment in the news as we do (probably because they aren’t reading it right) and to  that end, the newspapers themselves are making drastic cuts. One of the ones we find the most distressing is the size of the actual paper. Have you ever noticed that, when reading most of them wide open, they’re no wider than a magazine anymore? It’s tragic. That’s one of the many reasons we love the wide, old-fashioned Wall Street Journal. That and we look smart when we buy it.