Killing a bit of time this afternoon before the kids have play dates, so I’ll edit and post a few photos indicating the basic contours of the past week or so. First, Kate’s Con or Bust charity had its annual auction, which meant she made a batch of chocolate chip cookies to mail to some lucky bidder. The kids saw these, though, so another batch was made to keep and eat in Chateau Steelypips, with the assistance of The Pip:

Also, SteelyKid is playing softball again this year, and they had their first game this weekend, on a field that squelched audibly when you walked on the grass. Here’s an action shot from the outfield– SteelyKid is playing second base, just left of the center, in blue-and-pink pants, starting to run after a well-hit ball:

In terms of photography, the other notable event of the last week or two was that the “7 in 7 Challenge” Facebook group I’m in started up again, with participants choosing one photo a day for seven days on a particular theme. This round was lines in black and white; here’s a composite of my seven images:

Three of these were taken in Canada, as I made a trip to Waterloo to give a public lecture at the Quantum Nano Centre there, on “Quantum Physics and Literature.” I also stopped at Niagara Falls on the way back, which is a big damn waterfall:

(The best method for making a panorama continues to be “upload a bunch of files to Google Photos and hope that their algorithm recognizes that they should be stitched together”…)

And that’s your photos-of-the-week activity for the moment.