Note from the Rainforest

Weather forecast for today: Hazy, hot, and very humid. Air Quality Index: Moderate, so while the "air" is good for swimming, at least the pollution's not so bad you could cut it with a knife. Pollen count: Moderate, with predominant pollens being grass and plantain(!).

So, being in a room without air conditioning and having a low tolerance for 3-H weather, I probably won't get any more cleaning done than I did yesterday. I did accomplish a few things yesterday, though:

• Did one load of laundry.
  
• Bought four rolls of toilet paper.
  
• Created a syndicated account for sashacastel since unwilly will now be posting his political articles on Sasha's blog.

I'm not a vegetable yet! (Well, not quite yet.) Go me!

Now, many of you folks have been posting lists of your top 10 (or top 100, or top 197) commenters. I wasn't going to do this myself, but unwilly wants to know, so I got the data from a web version here. Though I won't post the whole thing, here's the top few:

1. hummingwolf: 1744 comments, 41.97% of total
   
2. daisydumont: 395 comments, 9.51% of total
   
3. unwilly: 227 comments, 5.46% of total
   
4. skygypsy: 203 comments, 4.89% of total
   
5. hai_kah_uhk: 169 comments, 4.07% of total
   
6. sophy: 89 comments, 2.14% of total
   
7. lisalemonjello: 81 comments, 1.95% of total
   
8. madralaoi: 80 comments, 1.93% of total
   
9. ziege: 77 comments, 1.85% of total
   
10. eipooz: 76 comments, 1.83% of total

The top 5 is exactly as I expected it to be and there are no big surprises in the rest of the list. What I do find interesting is the number of names I don't recognize which showed up in the rankings down below 50 or so. Will have to look at some journals today and remind myself who those people are! Also noticed that comments from a user whose comments were all deleted (by that user) were still counted. Interesting.

(no subject)

Because a few of us have been discussing (and experiencing) potassium deficiency recently, here's a list of some foods and their potassium content, taken from the book Prevention's Food & Nutrition, 1993.

Food	Portion	Potassium (mg.)
Avocado	1	1,204
Raisins	1 cup	1,089
Acorn squash, baked	1 cup	891
Potato, baked	1	844
Spinach, cooked	1 cup	838
Cauliflower florets, raw	1 cup	795
Navy beans, cooked	1 cup	719
Apricots, fresh	1 cup	628
Plain nonfat yogurt	1 cup	579
Asparagus, cooked	1 cup	558
Mushrooms, fresh	1 cup	555
Orange juice	1 cup	496
Cantaloupe	1 cup cubes	494
Apricots, dried	10 halves	482
Lima beans	1/2 cup	478
Banana	1	451
Skim milk	1 cup	447
Chicken breast, broiler/fryer	1	440
Sockeye salmon, fresh, cooked	3 oz.	319
Flounder, cooked	3 oz.	292
Ground beef, extra-lean	3 oz.	266
Turkey white meat	3 oz.	259
Turkey dark meat	3 oz.	247
Chicken breast, roasted	3 oz.	220

This month, I have craved every food on this list. Well, everything except raisins, which I'm still convinced are demon spawn disguised as dried fruit.

Finally!

A day with storms worth getting excited about! We've had scattered showers in the area, brief little things with some flash and sizzle, but nothing substantial. Today, I knew it would be different. Cloud cover took time to build, the breeze picked up and scattered leaves about. Then we had the kind of downpour where the force of the rain alone can knock a few branches out of the trees. Cloud-to-ground lightning in spiky purple added a dangerous beauty. Love thunderstorms. Love them. Sitting by my bedroom window, I could feel currents of hot and cool air swirling around me.

Went walking while thunder still rumbled so I could look at the waterfalls across the alley. Even temporary waterfalls three feet high deserve some love. The woman who drove past me as I watched the splashing seemed to wonder what the heck I was looking at.