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.