We're all having electrical issues, sounds like. I have the little wall-mounted push-button pop-out switches in the kitchen and bathrooms, and in the kitchen (like Dorothy discovered with her oven and her kiln) if I have the toaster oven going I can't also turn on the electric kettle or they'll pop that little wall breaker. But there are also a couple of 15 amp GFCI breakers actually in the circuit box that's on the outside wall in the backyard. The place where the master breaker and the various room breakers live. When you have a GFCI breaker and a GFCI switch, it's really easy for one or the other to pop to the off position.

I love your story about the "smoking newspaper" - you must have asbestos fingers to handle those pots (I'm assuming you use tools and mitts, etc.)

I did my volunteer work today but when I headed out after to go to the gym the alarming clouds and the wailing weather sirens dissuaded me from my usual workout. I got home and parked in the garage just before it hit to the north of us. So far we've just had rain but there was golf-ball-sized hail in the warning that has just now expired.

Today I heard about 20 minutes of an hour discussion about memory - types of - and how to improve it. It's on a local NPR talk show that has gone national to I don't know how many stations, so others could have heard it. It will replay again this evening here locally and anyone can listen to the podcast. Think: The mysteries of memory and how to improve it. I've linked both the program and the book they discuss.

Memory is key to who we are and, yet forgetting is so common. Boston University School of Medicine neurology professor Andrew E. Budson joins host Krys Boyd to discuss his work studying memory, how to control what you remember and how diet plays into this ability. His book, with co-author Elizabeth A. Kensinger, is Why We Forget and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory.