I just pick the ones that have any trace of pink in them and put them inside in a paper bag to ripen up. I don't know if the bag hastens ripening or anything, but it does prevent them from drying out or shrinking like they might just left out in the open. They won't be as tasty as vine-ripened but will still beat store-bought. All in all I'd have to say this was a fantastic tomato year. I started picking vine-ripened toms in late July, and I just picked the last of them and pulled out the last vines today.

One definitely siphoned - and it wasn't really boiling like the others when I took it out of the canner. Never sealed. I don't know if I had the canner quite centered on the burner (1" smaller in dia than base of PC) so that jar may not have been sitting on a burner but I assumed that once the pressure built, the pressure/temp would have been the same throughout the PC? The other 4 sealed but now that they've cooled and settled they really all have the same HS as the one I know siphoned. I did poke the bubble releaser around in all the jars, and the tomatoes were quite soft from blanching/peeling, I kind of squeezed most of them into the jars and pulled the peel off with the core, squished them down into their own juice. I started the burner on High but turned down to 8 when I put the weight on, bumped it up a little to 8.25 when it hit 10psi so I could get it up to 15 psi - it took a long time for the pressure to start climbing, maybe b/c I had been using that burner to blanch the fruit (though kept turning it off and back on so it wasn't running continuously )? It seemed like the burner wasn't really getting hot at first, but it did glow red steadily once I vented and for the whole process so it wasn't cycling. Gotta go back to colored water - I don't know why I'm getting siphoning - and if all the jars did it or just the one (on the far right)? Again, this was raw(ish) pack so maybe there's just more air even though I tried to release it?

I've got a lot of grasshoppers now, too. LOTS of different kinds that I've not seen before. I went out to my garden this afternoon, and caught two of them red-handed, munching on my tomatoes! I really don't want to spray for bugs if I can help it. It has been so hot here that the plants are nearly fried, even though I have a sun screen suspended over them. The screen does help some, but I have tons of brown, wilted leaves, and a little sunscald on the fruits. The ones that have ripened so far, though, are real yummy!!

A couple of other things. You put water on a piece of sanded wood and what happens? The wood gets rough again. People call it "raising the grain". So you sand and repeat. If you want a really fine finish, say for furniture, you keep lightly spraying or wiping with a damp rag and re-sanding and eventually you can get a piece of wood to be a smooth as marble. You used a water-based finish. And I am assuming, even though you didn't say, that it was an oak floor? IF so, that is a great example of a wood that really "pops" when wet. So you will have 2 issues. Partly, the grain raised because of the water-based finish. If you lightly screen and apply another coat or two, that problem can be minimized. Second, you inevitably have dust and debris in an open environment, especially if you have recently sanded floors in the house. Remember, this is not Intel and you are not talking about a "clean room", which would cost you several million dollars to produce. So some of that dust settles on the finish. That will wear off quickly as you walk on the floor. One reason that water finishes often take more coats is because the amount of solids suspended or dissolved in the liquid is sometimes lower than in other finishes. That is the stuff you want to stay on the floor, so to get the same protection you need another coat. It's roughly similar to using a cheap primer vs a good primer over a dark wall that you want to paint light, although in this case it does not imply that water finishes are "cheap" in any way. You don't note how experienced you are with this stuff, so what is acceptable to people who are familiar with floors may be surprising to people who don't know. Finally, and this may not be the case because the finisher sounds like he isn't too bad, it may be possible that the finisher didn't use a very fine grain on the last sanding. That will give a less than desirable finish. But it sounds like he knows his job, so I would ask him directly about the specific things that concern you, whether it is feel or look or whatever.