A New Neighbor. . .

is moving in/up next door to our patio.




This was expected, so it's no big deal, and the designer has put no windows facing us. That's good.

At the other end of the yard there is going to be one more built in a few months. It will be a big one, but after that, the subdivision will be complete. And, the neighborhood will be a lot more quiet.

Shhhhhhh...

(Click to enlarge)

Australia Has Talent!

You're going to love this:



Many thanks to "dogphobic." Don't ask me how she finds these things.

Boulder? Berkeley?

Seattle? San Francisco?



Just read it carefully, and then figure out which city posted it.

(Okay, maybe that was too easy. But, just think - with the change of just one word, the sign would fit into any one of the cities named above. (And a few more, I suspect.))

Conservation Conversation

Vice President Gore urges us to recycle paper products and conserve energy.

Oooops!

First, they lie on top of my keyboard. Then they go fishing in my aquarium!

Now, the fisher-cat has fallen in. Maybe that will teach him/her/it.

(HT: lucianne.com)

Worth Thinking About

"A ship is safe in harbor. But, a harbor is not what a ship is for."

I like that. HatTip to Mark Steyn

"Sitting On The Pumpkin . . .

Waiting For The Halloween."

756!

Controversy aside, this is a sweet moment.

If You Haven't Blogged For A While. . .

Just say that something crashed on your computer!

(H.T. dogphobic )

Couch Potato(e)s Rejoice!

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

(H.T. Times of London)

I'm Hungry!

Ahh, wait. Let me think about that.

Nanh, maybe later; I'll survive.

Nice Summer Picture

Friends and Lovers.

(H.T. ninacamic.blogspot.com/)

This Is A Photograph!

It is not a drawing or a dramatization.


In Malmo, Sweden, designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Simply because the computer permits us to design this, and allows us to construct this, do we welcome it? Is it good?

I think not.

If you really want to rent an apartment here:

http://www.bizzbook.com/map/turningtorsonews.html

Walking Is Good For You

This one is fun. It calculates how close you are to various helpful services:

http://walkscore.com/

HiltonHouse got a "17", although Betty & Rudy got a "37." Go figure.

Evolution Of The Flag

You must know that I'm a sucker for this stuff. Anyway, here's the history of the US Flag, with an additional guide to the state flags.

I like the Maryland state flag because it's a wonderful design. I like the Hawaii state flag because it looks somewhat British. I like the California state flag because it's so naive.

Ah, well. Go to:

http://www.usflag.org/history/historicflags.html

What A Difference . . .

36 Years Make!



Click on the image above (and scroll right) to get a preview of what you can see full-screen if you copy and paste the following:

http://pic.templetons.com/cgi-bin/imget?f=brad/pano/midpano/sf71.jpg

This is a panoramic photo from the tippy top of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in 1971, the year that our daughter was born.

Note:
All the freeways
No Sutro TV Tower
Embarcadero Center under construction
TransAmerica Pyramid 1/2 built

I find it fascinating!

Damp England

This is Tewkesbury, about an hour South of Bromsgrove, after the Great Floods of 2007.

Meanwhile, the BBC has mashed some of their current flooding information onto Google Maps. See:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=51.507033,-0.942078&spn=0.363271,0.925598&z=10&om=1&msid=110697284745114202648.000435deadb5810139523

(cut and paste)

Learning How To Drum

This is fun. (Speakers up high.)



See what I mean? Some proud father, apparently, started filming his son at age two (notice the lower left corner) and kept it up until age 11.

Fortunately, the kid had natural rhythm, great learning potential, and loved to make a lot of noise.

Cathedral of Christ The Light, Oakland

Listen up. ,This is important.




On the shores of Lake Merritt is arising the new Cathedral for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland.



The Bishop's new house has been designed by Craig Hartman, with structural engineering by Bill Baker, both of SOM - San Francisco. The structure is the architecture, and it all will be highlighted by the glass skin. It's a stunner!



Forget the funny-looking eccentric stainless-steel off-balance jokes currently being designed and built around the world. They are nothing.

This Cathedral may well be the first significant building of the 21st Century.

Read all about it at: http://www.som.com/content.cfm/into_the_light

(Click the images for larger views)

Now, We'll Look For A Bandmaster

(a short one, perhaps.)



And a small band for him to master.

Where The Grass Is Greener

I have no idea of what the significance of this unusual map is. I don't even know why otherwise intelligent adults would admit to spending their time compiling the necessary data.

But, here it is. . .a map of grass lawns in the United States.



Some say that we Americans have more acreage devoted to lawn than to corn. I doubt that.

Comments are invited.

God Bless America

This one is tough. Only in America?



A Hmong couple weeding the corn field in the Midwest...July 2007.

Think about it.

The Queen Mum

A bit overly dramatic, don't you think? With her right hand halfway inside her tunic, perhaps it would be more appropriate.

(An american photographer, no less.)

Camouflage!

Can you spot the large, long-eared, rodent?



(HT: http://ninacamic.blogspot.com/)

Domination Dominates!

UPDATE! Ichiro was selected MVP for the AllStar Game. A Hybrid Suburban is his!

Well, the All-Star game is over, and the American League beat the National League (think A's beat Giants) for the 10th time in the last 11 games! And the other game was a tie!



This one was 5-4, and the ninth inning was kind of suspenseful. That's baseball. It's sometimes beautiful.

One highlight was an inside-the-park home run by Ichiro Suzuki of that Mariner team from the soggy city North of here. First inside-the-park homer in All-Star history.

Here's the ball that Ichiro hit for his homer. I just bought it on EBay:


The National League is saying "Just wait 'til next year."

Heh

Next To My Wife -

I love the fog in San Francisco Bay:



It's about 10 p.m. Friday night. Last night it was 90F at this time. Tonight it's 61F.

Speaking of Famous Paintings. . .

Here's a version of Grant Wood's "American Gothic" that you may not have seen before.

At The Creation . . .

There was coffee?

(who knew?)

Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer

It's a beautiful, unusual, midweek vacation day in California today - cloudless skies, mild westerly breeze, mid-90's temperatures. The A's lost, but otherwise, not bad. Not bad at all.

On the other side of the pond, however, the Brits have been having a go. Here's London, for instance:



Is it Global Climate Disarrangement? Who knows? The elected-but-uninaugurated President, Mr. Gore, surely thinks so, and is holding global-excess concerts all over the world, jetting from one to the other leaving carbon in his wake. Back on Earth:



But Algore's son, Algore III, got picked up in a drug-filled PRIUS for going over 100 mph! Who knew a Prius could go 100 mph? Algore III got kicked out of St. Albans School for smoking pot a few years ago, I seem to recall.



That London Lady looks chilly. It's early July. I feel confused.

Happy 4th of July!

231st

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY AMERICA !

Does Granddaughter II Have An Attitude?

d'ya think?

APOD!

It's the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" and it's from NASA, daily, compiled from vast image collections of space from sources all around the globe. Really interesting, artistically-fascinating pictures. Pick one or two and download them to your computer wallpaper...it sure beats green hills and clouds!

Go to: http://apod.nasa.gov/ (Cut and paste)

West Meets East

This is kind of interesting. Photo is taken from Asia looking at Europe, or vice versa. The bridge connects the cultures and the continents.

Yeah, it's the Bosporus, or Bosphorus, whatever, or simply, the Istanbul Straits.

We live in a complicated, but always interesting, world.

Big Brown Eggs

On Hwy 4 heading East from Stockton, between Hwy 99 and Jack Tone Road, stands the Brown Egg stand, a typically 1950's Central Valley food outlet, prior to the advent of Farmers' Markets.

We like the Brown Egg place, because the proprietress goes to the barn, lifts the eggs from beneath the pullets, washes them (without candling, I noticed) and presents them to us. How fresh can you get?

There's also a bunch of in-season fruits and vegetables. If they're not from the owners' fields, then they're from the neighbors'.

Not a bed place to re-provision for a vacation, or for a weekend.

Good California living!

Memories

We enjoyed a sandwich just under the left-most arch pictured. Good food.

This is Cortona, the Hill Town.

(We met no Godfather there, more's the shame. Just a tour guide in a wi-fi-enabled Chrysler van who introduced us to his cousin, the wineseller, who shipped for us a case of chianti, marked (for duty purposes) as library books. We have a few left to read.)

MetroLafayette

Interesting, and needed, venue in Lafayette. The Metro Lafayette is a noisy, trendy, edgy, shopping-center celebrity.

The style is spare, the space is noisy, the service is slow, the only color is brown and black on the servers' outfits, the smiles are genuine, and the food is divine.

(I was in this building about a year ago, when it was a Mexican-Spanish dark doomy failure, with food that fitted that style.)

We dined on the patio, which was only half as noisy, and it was okay. Outdoor space heaters are scheduled for two weeks from now. This place has only been open for a week.

Oyster bar was tasty and very fresh, charcuterie was delicious, and Misoyaki codfish was to die for. These menu items are truly of San Francisco class. (And, the prices are almost so. Oh, well. No Bridge toll.)

I'll be back.

Neighbors

Our neighbors over the backyard lot line have started construction of their new house. Most of it will be behind the oak tree on the right in the view above. That's okay.

However, they've added a property line fence, which closes the patio side of our backyard. We're resigned to, and accepting of, the thing although it certainly changes things spatially. We're thinking either bougainvillea or rose trees to screen the fence.

Opinions are invited. (click to enlarge the photo)

Poignant

Today is Flag Day

British Idol? American Idol?

At least 50% of the populace at HiltonHouse are big fans of the "Idol" TV show. This is 4 minutes of great, classical fun. Please enjoy.

Paris Hilton Rules!

I have checked carefully, and, as far as I can see, her roots are not dark. So, that isn't the medical problem.

If You Want To Tell Someone. . .

that you're truly sorry, try looking like this:

It Seems Like Just Yesterday

But it was 40 years ago today that the world first heard "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Just go here:

http://www.thebeatles.com/sgtpepper/