I took a look out the window of our stairway landing and saw that the clouds to the East seemed like they might be positioned well to reflect the impending sunset. It was around 4:15 PM and the brownies I had been baking weren’t quite finished yet, so I went to the kitchen to check the timer.

There were about six minutes left on the clock. “Perfect,” I thought. “I’ll go get my camera ready, check the battery, and make sure I haven’t forgotten the memory card.” Which I did.

I never made it back into the kitchen. I took the camera out to the car, said “see you in a bit” to the family members talking and playing in the street, hopped in the car and took off for Vasquez Canyon Road to snap some photos.

It wasn’t until I was back in the car on the way home that it hit me — I never took the brownies out of the oven. At this point, I thought, someone either heard the timer and took them out and all was well, or they came in late and smelled the mistake. Neither of those things turned out to be true.

When I pulled into the driveway, everyone was still outside and my brownies were still in the oven. Considering they were in the oven at least twice as long as they should have been, they tasted pretty darn good, even if they were rock hard. Perfect for ice cream. You’ll have to trust me on that point. And the sunset… well, you can judge that for yourself.