This weekend, while I was driving into the city to attend Maggie‘s birthday pumpkin carve-off extravaganza (at which I consumed a cupcake, 1.5 macarons (aka a “mouth full of heaven“), vegetable soup, carrot sticks, champagne, a mint milano, many cheeses, and a ginger snap), I had the most amazing American Beauty moment. I was coming into that hairy, construction-ridden stretch of freeway just past the Bay Bridge on the City side, when suddenly the freeway was swept with a flurry of packing peanuts (or, as a friend in college used to call them, “ghost farts”). And for the next quarter mile or so, they swirled and whooshed around all the cars on the road, quietly and merrily, like little leaves or big, big snow.