Important things I have learned so far this week:

• Pine nuts should never be used as a primary ingredient for pie.
  
• More importantly, pine nuts should never be used in pie, period.
  
• No dinner is worth driving 40 minutes down extremely windy roads for.
  
• Additionally, no dinner is worth traveling 40 minutes afterwards up windy mountain roads. Especially when the dinner involved the previously mentioned pie.
  
• August is a very bad time to visit Yosemite if you prefer seeing the world's 5th largest waterfall, as opposed to the world's fifth largest anemic trickle of water down impressive faces of rock.
  
• Wasps prefer biscuits and gravy to people.
  
• Children will whine about anything anyway. See earlier point for clarification.
  
• Mother Nature and allergy medication are a match made in heaven.
  
• One should never assume that the room number displayed on the phone is the actual room number one is in when one is setting up a wakeup call.
  
• It is possible to take part in a three day value analysis workshop on only 3 hours of sleep per night (due to waking promptly at 3am each morning for no reason whatsoever), but it is not advisable.
  
• One of the cutest things ever is a herd (pack? gaggle?) of fuzzy squirrels all taking dust baths together.
  
• Cuter yet is when one of them comes over to inspect your shoes.
  
• Even though it was probably just looking for food and would have cheerfully gnawed off one of your limbs if it thought it smelled tasty enough.
  
• Mars can still be seen even through really big trees (if you are tired enough).
  
• Everyone should be ignored by wildlife now and then.