Back to real life...

Which is, of course, not a bad thing, especially now that the weather has returned to normal daytime temperatures (70's instead of the 80's and 90's we had last week.)

But I went to meetings and Pilates, managing not to yawn too much anywhere. Jet lag takes about a week to go away completely.

It was eerie to listen to the news of the Air France crash and to be able to picture so vividly the interior of the Airbus 330 - it's exactly the same plane AF uses on the Seattle-Paris flight.

The heat wave broke with a rush of wind through the house on Thursday night. Sparky, who had spent most of the week stretched out as flat as possible, in any cool or dark space she could find, suddenly came to life, dashing around like a kitten.

Because everyone was free for the weekend, we went to Vashon Saturday morning, for a fix of island peace and quiet. Though our usual pattern is to do all meals at the cabin, this time we went out to dinner, at La Boucherie, a small (the deck is bigger than the seating area inside) meat shop/restaurant that is an extension of a thriving organic farm. Leah is cooking and baking there on weekends, and she alerted us to a special event scheduled for Saturday night - a true carnivore's dinner.

We're up for trying just about anything - just as well, since the many small dishes presented included both pork heart (delicious) and pig's - ahem - testicles (interesting to try - once.) My mother, the daughter of an English butcher, served organ meats of all kinds when we were growing up, but I had not eaten so many different parts of an animal since attending a wedding feast in Transylvania a few years ago.

Just to keep things in balance, there were vegetables, a palate-cleansing green salad, as well as a very interesting tiny glass of grapefruit juice infused with basil.

The point of the restaurant is to make a feast from food grown on the island, and the variety of tastes was fascinating. Even the wine was semi-local -- produced on the island, from grapes grown in drier and sunnier places.

A hundred years ago, Vashon was the site of several large fruit-growing and canning operations, and jams and jellies were among the first new local products to emerge in the 70's and 80's. Now at the busy Saturday farmer's market, you can find island fruits, vegetables, fish and meat - and these lovely chocolates!