Pies of Julian

Opa & Oma were visiting us last week so we took them on a grand tour of the area. One day we headed up for the mountains to the town of Julian, briefly a gold rush town, but now the local economy seems to depend on pies.

The main street is the central lure in town with its old wooden buildings housing gift shops, pie parlors and restaurants (with their own speciality pies). The elevation allows Julian to harvest a plentiful crop in apples which are the main ingredient in the town's pies. Though I didn't see it advertised, there must be a heated Apple Pie competition each year with probably all sorts of scandals involved from bribed judges, stolen recipes and sabotaged apples.

We sampled a couple - as one must. The Boysenberry-Apple (flaky not crumbly) from Mom's Pies got the family vote.

Outside the town's limits we saw some of the first signs of singed earth and scorched trees from the Fall's brush fires.

Skype IS the future

While way too many technologies overhype themselves and how they will make our lives 'easier, better, cheaper, faster...etc', Skype really really does.

I had one of those 'the future really is here' moments yesterday as we had a live video/audio call on the computer between our house and Peanut's grandparents in Florida. It was like we were living the commercial where the grandparents coo at the grandbaby miles and miles away.

We started using Skype back in Finland to keep in touch with family in the Netherlands and the US. The audio quality was always amazing - crisp and sometimes even clearer than on our real phones.

Now, they have rolled out the beta version of the video call. Both parties just need a simple $25 webcam on their ends and you're ready to roll. To get the grandparents set up, peanut's papa sent them a short email with instructions on how to download the latest version. They didn't run into any problems and using the program is so intuitive, we were looking at each other in our nightgowns and morning hair in no time :-)

It is just like they've been promising! Peanut's grandparents just loved it. Instead of keeping the webcam static on us sitting here, I let Peanut loose and followed her around the room with the cam that way they can see what all she's up to. I suspect we'll soon have to set up a regular broadcast schedule and some sort of Peanut show :-) I'll have to figure out if Skype supports conference video calls.

Oh! the cost of all of this -- $0! Skype is free!!