"We should fear the coming reign of the Idaho Global Domination."

Today is the Vestalia, a festival to honor Vesta/Hestia, goddess of the hearth. On this day the Vestal Virgins drew water from a sacred spring and made sure the water did not touch the ground, which would contaminate it; to do this, they had a special narrow-bottomed vessel. They would take salt specially made from brine brought in a salt pan and ground up, then baked in a jar and cut with an iron saw. Ears of grain gathered on the 7th, 9th, and 11th days of May were used for flour, and that, the salt, and the water were used to make the mola salsa, the holy cake, which was used in the celebrations.

Women would then make offerings to Vesta in her temple with simple food sacrifices, and would enter the temple barefoot. Men weren't allowed to enter Vesta's temple, save the Pontifex Maximus.

The day was also holy for bakers and millers, and they would adorn their millstones and the animals that turned them with garlands of violets and small loaves of bread.

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I went to visit Ryter today. Since the bumper incident he needed to go get a rental car, so I took him over to the Enterprise place, where they gave him a shiny Nissan Altima, complete with optional stick shift and an ignition that only requires the key to be inside the car somewhere, it doesn't need it to be in the ignition itself.

The part I was jealous of was the CD player (my car doesn't have one), but his old car had that too.

It took him a while to get used to the Car of the Future, partially because it took a call to his dad yo figure out that the stick was optional, so at first we were wondering what kind of crazy rental place gives a person a standard without checking to make sure they could drive one first. But it worked out, and his rental is very nice, and I trust he'll fight the urge to wreck it just because it's a rental.

We tested it by going and getting the crickets to feed Ryter's bearded dragon, which he's getting Sunday. We also went to IHOP, since I asserted that I hadn't been there in forever, and I tried every kind of syrup, even Boysenberry. Mmm... syrup...

Nonaestima, who is Loquelo's housemate and a friend, came over and we went out for ice cream, then watched Futurama for a while. It was a fun day.