Life can be so good in these parts sometimes. Last night was an example. I barbecued some outrageously good barracuda(!) and cracked open a superb, impossibly cheap bottle of Spanish rosé. I also grilled a little Alaskan sockeye salmon, which our four-year-old loved. "This fish is like heaven with sugar on it," she said.

And she was right.

Then the sky turned a brilliant orange-pink, and a rainbow appeared off in the southeast, when it hadn't even rained. In the middle of the night there was lots of thunder, and a little lightning, and a couple of little spits.

And by the next afternoon, it was just another perfect, mostly sunny summer day in Portland, Oregon, America, Earth.