Today is the anniversary of the day that Skynet would have become self-aware and begun the war between man and machine. So everyone shout out a thanks to Sarah Connor for squashing Arnold Schwarzenegger's metal skeleton in a mechanical press and then blowing up a tech company, thus adverting the apocalypse. I hear those are a bummer.

Of course that was in 1997, or the 1984 version of a 1997 that didn't happen.

All of which is a long and complicated way of saying the future has arrived, the world hasn't ended, and somehow we're still not cruising around in flying cars.

"We're pretty good team," is what goes through my head. Weird thought to occur at 2 a.m. while you and your husband are managing a vomiting child, but perhaps every thought is weird at 2 a.m.

I hadn't been sleeping well that night. Neither of us had, I think, though there were no obvious outward signs of trouble brewing in the next room. I got up to use the bathroom and came back to find the light on in the kiddo's room. I altered course and found my husband speaking soothing words and holding a bowl for a puking child.

Rarely a dull moment around here.

The last few weeks have taken me on many adventures, traveling some of my favorite veins of California's water system. I've been camping in the woods along the Big Sur river, swimming with family in Lewis Creek, and drifting on lazy parts of the Merced River in Yosemite. A couple of the state's greatest hits, really.

Yesterday was Star Wars Day. We celebrated with bursts of Yoda-speak. Luke and I made wookie cookies while listening to the score of "A New Hope" and in the evening we all watched a little of "Empire Strikes Back", which, of course, is the best of the three. (Thus speaks Swingbug.)

What makes them wookie cookies, you ask?

Well, they're chewy.

We hope you enjoyed this most auspicious of holidays as well. May the force be with you always.