The magic number is: 18

Honey, ready to roll

My wife is pretty smart. Just ask her.

With less than three weeks to go, she's decided we should start prepping the cats to drive from Chicago to Asheville. Because what's more fun than driving 650 miles with two sensitive dogs and three completely insane cats?

Nothing.

To help ease everyone into it, Barb pulled out the cat transportation modules (CTMs) and put cat beds in them. Honey's been all over it.

Sugar (foreground) likes to sleep in another carrier that faces this one, but in this shot, she's content to just hang near her sister.

Prediction

I think the drive - all two days of it - will go perftectltly.

Of course, it can always turn into cat hell in an instant, but that's when we're going to really count on the dogs to settle things down.

Beer/Cow Fart City, USA

Yeasty the cow

I don't even live there yet, but every day I fall more and more in love with Asheville.

Yeast + stuff = beer

Where else but Beer City, USA would a former biochemist be inspired to make brownies with spent brewer's yeast?

Here's the gist. No matter how eco-friendly they intend to be, locally breweries ultimately create waste. In fact, Highland Brewing Co. already creates 200 tons of spent yeast per year, but when New Belgium's brewery is up and running, it will add 2,000 annually, according to the citizen-times.

You can't just dump all that yeast down the drain. And if you feed it to cows - like you can with brewer's grain - well, you could blow up the world.

Yeast + cows = gas

As the aforementioned biochemist, Robert "Rusty" Bryant say, "Yeast is 80 percent alive and creates gas in cows."

Can't have that. Seriously.

Then comes one of the best statements I've read in print for quite some time:

"An environmentally friendly brewery trying to dispose of its byproducts isn't interested in having cows rip a hole in the ozone layer with methane emissions as a result."

Can you believe that? God, I love Asheville. I'm reading online, but that's the local newspaper talking about cow farts ripping holes in the ozone layers y'all!

I can't wait to get to Asheville.

Seriously.

Weather

Asheville weather bump!

Wow. Take a look at that!

The disparity the week before was even more dramatic, as the weather was extremely shitty in Chicago. Single-digit-temperature shitty.

But that's living in the past.

Looking forward, Cricket and Lula (our dogs) are very excited to ditch their winter booties and run around in a back yard that doesn't have any:

• Salt
• Slush
• Taste of frozen death upon it