Fireflies

You know how beautiful our garden is. There is a new and interesting flower or plant every few feet. It takes a lot of work to keep it looking good. Cindy got home from work early last night and corralled Eric to help with some of the weeding and mulch spreading activities. I was exhausted from a long day of sitting in an empty office, so I just cooked dinner.

Something Cindy and Eric did prompted the must beautiful display of fireflies that any of us have ever seen. I'm still excited to see a few at twilight. Last night, the entire front yard was full of little sparkling lights. The weeping cherry and the azalea shrubs looked like they had been strung with blinking white lights. Most of the flowers had a light or two on them.

Amazing.

Sorry I can't share a picture. I thought about it five minutes after we went inside. With a digital camera, you know if you've been successful immediately. What I didn't expect was that when I went back with my camera, all the lights would be stripped from the trees. We were back to a couple of guys winking around some of the flowers. I wish I had words (and pictures) to express how lucky I felt that we three should have seen this fleeting light show.

Amazing.

Scary Times

The reader reviews in Amazon of The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly talk about lack of character development and less than stellar plotting. Maybe. It's hard for me to tell because this book tells the story about one of my favorite characters - The Los Angeles Times. There is more going on about people in this book, but it is a love story for those of us who loved The Times.

The protagonist is laid off from The Times and is given two weeks to train his replacement on the police beat. Two weeks. In my experience people are given two hours to pack their stuff. I guess McEvoy and I are lucky, we got more time. From what I remember, everything he talks about is true, except for the shouting lady in the cafeteria who makes him clean up after himself. The cafeteria staff was never rude like that, but reporters often were, leaving a mess behind. Okay, not just reporters. I suppose some IT guys might have been a little messy.

The layout of the newsroom seems right; from Baja Metro to the Assistant Editor's desks to the PBX operators looking down from their perch (where they could spot reporters easily) to the area on the north side of the room where people seem to be hiding. The tech guys' role is loosely represented. You would never expect a newsroom staff member to really understand what other people do.

I'd love to hear what my old Times' friends have to say about the book. Not that any of my friends from that time are old.

Flowers

I've added pictures to my Picasa flower page. I forget to take pictures. In fact, I just remembered that I was either going to count or take a picture of the number of tomato plants we have in the way back garden.

I learned that this is a double lot. That's why it has so much garden space. The house across the street is for sale. It is on a single lot and is very small. Still, it costs $660K. We'll see if housing prices are depressed if it takes a long time to sell. Two bedrooms, a small office or large closet and a bath upstairs; little kitchen, dining room, living room and sun room on the ground floor; big rumpusy room and bath in the basement. No toilet at all on the ground level. That is so wrong on so many different levels. :) And just a little dog run size space behind the house. We have room for a garage and a vegetable garden behind the house. A veg garden with space for X number of tomato plants. Next time I will remember.

As everyone knows, Michael Jackson died this week. What some don't know is that Reg knew him. Reg's business partner's son was once a roadie for the Jackson 5. Reg went with him to the Jackson family's home in Encino and met them all. He got a picture of the family and Michael autographed it to Adrian. I showed Adrian when he was older. He didn't know who the guy was because, by then, Michael looked like a wholy different person. Sad man. Sad life.

Wrecks

What happened to my car is no longer an accident. It is a wreck. The jerky old dude who ran in to me is now saying that I used my Mario Andretti skills to swerve around him so I could smash his right rear brake light. Silly me. My insurance company doesn't believe him, his isn't sure. So now we have to go to arbitration. My insurance company, Mercury, is the slow-pokiest folks on record. Or rather, David, in the LA office, is overwhelmed/underbrained and can't keep up with the work. Glad I've got his number and can keep him on track.

I know this is a picture of a TV show. I guess Niall Ferguson did a show about The Ascent of Money before he wrote the book. OMG, so hard to read about how we have gone so terribly off track in our banking and financial institutions. This is another wreck. Instead of blaming one lying old man, I guess we have thousands of lying old men to blame. This was very hard to listen to, I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone with a weak stomach.

On the other hand A.S. Byatt's The Matisse Stories is a joy to listen to. Matisse's work appears in each story in a wide variety of ways. Ms. Byatt is an old feminist. Me too. I like her perspective and her weaving of the artist into these stories of women.

I've also been reading all of Eric's Robert Crais books. These are all pulp mysteries, easy to read and skim. That is hard to do when you listen. You usually have to listen to every word. I guess there is a place for everything.

One thing that is absolutely best to listen to is Chivalry by Neil Gaiman. He is one amusing writer. Audible offers free short stories to subscribers. Chivalry is about a fussy woman who buys the Grail at a second hand store. Adorable, charming, quirky, etc.

I worked last week for my favorite Senior VP, Gary. I have four days off and then go back next Monday for four days. July will be a busy month of work. Two weeks with a different VP, one week off and then one more week with Gary. Good to keep busy in an office building because this is hot and humid around here. Not as bad as it could be, but I prefer to avoid those two things as much as possible.

All Our Children

All our children have been very busy lately. Here are just three of them. Adrian, above with his mother who loves him dearly, just turned 34 last Monday. He is a whole continent away, so I had to pull out a stock photo. He celebrated this weekend by watching the Lakers win the NBA finals. Thanks Kobe and crew for a perfect gift for my son.

Julie is also on the other side of the country. She spent this weekend getting her BA diploma from the University of Oregon in Eugene. Her three boys (includes Adam) and the rest of us who love her dearly could not be prouder. She took time off from getting that degree to produce and nurture Palmer and Torin. It was their turn to support and cheer her on. Guess they all did a good job.

Finally, Kate and Nate are back from their whirlwind tour of the South to visit his family before he goes off to train for Iraq or Afghanistan. With luck, he will just get to spend a year in Hawaii training and then everyone will see the light and realize that Afghanistan is unhelpable with military. Maybe if we just all stop buying cocaine for a while, things would slow down there. But on a lighter note, it's nice to see these two looking so happy, under the watchful eye of the two dour ladies at the right of this picture.

My friend, Jackson, and I were talking about books and he could hear how much I like William Manchester. This was when I was reading the second of the Churchill books and bemoaning the fact that there would be no third. Jackson was born in December, 1931. The Glory and The Dream is about America from 1932 to 1972. Jackson calls it the story of his life. I enjoyed this book as much as the other Manchester books that I read. That is, until I got to the story of MY life.

I came of age in the late '60s. My first vote was for Hubert Humphrey. I protested against Dow Chemical. Actually, I didn't protest against it, I watched the demonstration while my friends, the organizers, protested. But the FBI took lots of pictures of me and tried to show that my room mate, Elaine was up at the front of the demonstration. They all sat back somewhere, some secret headquarters so the FBI couldn't take pictures of them. And one long haired blonde must have been pretty much like any other to the Fibbies. Exciting times. Which Manchester makes sound like inconsequential froofrah wrapped around sex, drugs and rock and roll. Yea, there was all that, but it was never inconsequential. There was a lot of things that needed changing. Most importantly was that stupid, inane war started for no very good reason that was never going to end. In those days, our friends were being drafted out of college. Today we are rotating National Guards folk into another inane war. I don't wonder, like Manchester seemed to, about why WE rebelled, I wonder why more people aren't doing it now.

Or did we, by electing Obama? That battle we fought seems to be moving in a somewhat positive direction. Racial and sexual equality are heading on the right path. Not there yet, but not all the old believers have died off yet. 'Course the new far right is just as creepy. Let's just say that if you were born before 1960, this is a good book to read. Whenever your life started in those 40 years, this book will bring back a lot of memories. And it's always good to learn about what happened before. One thing I found when reading this book was a lot of what happened before is happening again, so maybe it isn't bad to learn about what just happened and what could happen again soon.

If that makes sense.

We had dinner last night at the most fabulous place, Eventide. Natalie's parents know the people who, hum, own, cook at, bartend here? I'm not sure of what the people they know do, but I do know this: This is one fantastic place. Click on the link above to see the menu. K&P, K&N, ACN, we must eat here next time youse guys are in town. Cindy's birthday is next week and they will be in Kansas for a wedding. I wanted to celebrate before they left. This could be my new favorite place, but we have promised ourselves that we will try all the highly recommended places in the area before I leave. Now, that's a promise I can keep.

Done

New Hampshire was beautiful. I spent the first night at Portsmouth, cute little town on the mouth of the port. The next night I stayed in Concord, the capitol. In between, I went to Canterbury, a Shaker Village. The Shakers were like the Amish, but drank. Love that. They also made beautiful wooden baskets and furniture.

On the third day, I went to Vermont. There were no fire works that night. There should have been. This is the last state that I visited.

Vermont is known for maple syrup, the Green Mountain Boys in the Revolutionary war, and

Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Yes, they started here. This seems to be such a Vermont like institution. Their mission is three-pronged: good product, good community, good earth. Actually, that isn't exactly it, but you get the idea. They work to be ecologically and socially beneficial. As for me, I haven't had ice cream in some time and I love the stuff. This was like going on a pilgrimage. I had to eat the stuff. One interesting thing I learned was the Vermont was the last state for Elton John as well. He had been to the other 49 and finally visited Vermont on his last tour. They made Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road for him. It's good to have this little connection to Sir Elton, even if he doesn't know it. AND the ice cream was very good as well.

Finding the Shaker Village and Ben and Jerry's was easy because Cindy lent me her TomTom. Me love TomTom. In fact, I'm going to buy one. Who knew that I would like having someone tell me what to do all the time. Cindy recommend the voice of Jane. She likes Saturday Night Live and calls the voice "Jane, you slut." I selected Tim for a while, but his British voice was too much like the British guy who was reading to me. Ain't technology grand? I was driving alone for 4 days and had Tim and Jane and that other British guy talking to me all the time.

Now I need to decide what the next goal is. Done the 50, what's next? One thing might be the $20 bus to NYNY to see a few plays. 50 of them.

Another One Bites The Dust

I have been driving all day today. After listening to the end of a book, I listened to music on my iPod. And there was Queen with Another One Bites the Dust. Love that song. More than that, it captured my day and recent events. The worst is that Clif and Lynda have been laid off from The Times. Horrible. Clif was the last man standing from our Helpdesk. He took care of all executives and their assistants as well as every Blackberry issue at The Times. Lynda worked 6 days a week to take care of IT Security. Gone. I'm not there to miss them, but it does make me sick.

The book I finished was Twenty Years After, a sequel to The Three Musketeers. Mr. Dumas sure knew how to write a gripping story. All four are back, older and none the wiser. Still strong and clever and impeccable French gentlemen. Their feelings about English people are hilarious. They are involved with everything, sort of like Zelig. Cromwell, Charles I and Louis XIV are all involved. Do you have to know the history of the age to appreciate the book? No. Same with knowing the geography. But it adds to my enjoyment. Really liked the book.

I am in my 49th state tonight; New Hampshire. Another one on that list has officially bitten the dust. However, I have a couple of days to explore what makes New Hampshire unique. So far, I have Shakers and Robert Frost on the list. We'll see what else I can find.