Three things.

Item #1) So on Saturday, we went on a bike ride up to the bullfrogs (a reedy drainpipe terminus up near the bike path's own end, where duelling frog choruses can be heard at dusk). Riding through a neighborhood about halfway there, before we'd hit the actual path, we suddenly smelled smoke. Like burning wood, or toast, almost, but certainly not an innocent type of smoke. The kind where your weird hidden instincts sound an alarm and your whole body pricks up, instantly alert. Pulling our bikes over to the sidewalk, we saw the roof, the roof- the roof was on fucking fire. Okay, well maybe it wasn't really on fire, but there was a ton of smoke curling off of it into the air. We saw a lady nearby on a cellphone, and thought perhaps she was calling it in, but she seemed way too unconcerned. Nat took the initiative and went to the front door of the bungalow in question, where a couple sat on a bench on the front porch, relaxing and drinking beers.
"There's smoke!" Nat pointed.
The man got up and, sort of turning, said, "oh! Thank you!" and hustled inside.
Meanwhile, the woman sat there, flip-flop dangling from her foot, swirling her beer and downing the last sip.
i was sort of goggle-eyed and confused, and when the man reappeared Nat nervously offered up, "we didn't know if we should call the fire department, or...?"
"No, no- we just burned some toast!" he assured us.

Wow. That was just toast? i think the setting sun was making the smoke look more ferocious than it really was, maybe, and apparently the toaster was directly underneath an open skylight, so the smoke was sort of being funneled right out and up. Well, phew!
The guys goes, "thanks, guys! What would we do without you?"
Well, eat severely carbonized foodstuffs, i imagine..

Item #2) Later that evening, on our trip back home after watching a lovely sunset (featuring a persimmon-hued solar body, a shining gunmetal-grey ocean, low-hanging bruised clouds, and a higher strata of gauzy, periwinkle feathery ones), we saw a police car in the alley right near the same Burned-Toast Abode! Nat wondered why the whole scene looked familiar.
Turning the corner, we saw that a whole block of Turquoise St. had been taped off by police, with many cruisers in attendance, not to mention the SWAT van and patiently waiting ambulance. Small clusters of onlooker stood nearby, hypothesizing with what scant information they had. One nice lady approached us and said, "Did they get him out yet?" to which i responded "i don't know- what's going on?!"
The story was that a man had severely beaten his girlfriend with a hammer the night before (she managed to escape and was taken to a hospital; is expected to recover, with a mere 100 stitches!), and was holed up in his house refusing to come out. Reports since have differed on this, one says that when he came out trying to surrender, the police shot him with rubber bullets. So you never know. But basically, they had shot so much tear gas into the place, that they were amazed he was still going strong. Finally, an attack dog was sent in and he surrendered. I have a question. Why didn't they just send the attack dog in before wasting all of the (presumably expensive and definitely horrible) tear gas? Hm.

Item #3) The Scripps National Spelling Bee was great fun to watch on Friday night. I was really excited about it before i turned it on, because i've always been an avid word-lover and i find etymology endlessly fascinating. Plus, have any of you ever seen the movie (documentary) Spellbound? That is some good cinema, right there. We saw it in the theater, and i swear people in the audience were holding their breaths at times. You begins to become quite charmed by the kids involved, and it is almost hard to root for any one particular child- you want them all to win. And in my mind, of course, they do. Making that far is incredible. On Friday night, the first kid i saw that was eliminated was actually twirling a piece of his hair the entire time. Even when he walked off the stage, hunched over in defeat. Too cute! One of the best moments came during a high-tension-filled run in the 11th round, with (i think) 6 contestants remaining. They had all just had a superb run, and no one had been eliminated. This was rare. People are sort of waiting for the next to fall. The judge gives Sameer Mishra his next word: "numnah".

You should probably just watch it for yourself, as i couldn't describe it well.

What a cutie. Sameer ended up winning the whole shebang, and good for him.

(When i first met Nat he had a tiny news caption, presumably from underneath a photograph in the paper, taped to his fridge:

'Vivisepulture' Wins Spelling Bee

Wendy Guey, 12, of West Pal Beach, Fla., was hugged by her sister Lynne and her mother, Susan, after winning the 69th annual National Spelling Bee yesterday in Washington, D.C. The seventh-grader won the $5,000 prize by spelling 'vivisepulture' (to be buried alive).

I knew then, without a doubt, that he was the one for me.
(By the by, the cash award for the winner of the Bee these days? Thirty-five thousand. Yep.)