Musings

Last evening and overnight we got real rain, enough to give some people a bad day. Not here, though. The Guru and I return from a quick morning walk just before eight, and the temp hadn’t yet reached seventy. So unusual—especially this year. Our rainfall deficit must have dropped dramatically.

It’s hard to take photos that convey the complex sky that signals a coming storm. This is a southwest view during the summer rainy season, in Oaxaca one afternoon, from up on El Mirador (well, near the overview).

Posted at 3:17 PM | 4 Comments »

Backlighting is a powerful visual effect.

Backlighting plus dew: a handful of trump cards!

Every once in a while a cosmic alignment occurs and the steep-angle light post-dawn makes the dew into strings of clear gems, here on an overgrown asparagus, also decorated with a few berries. Festooned with spider webs, the effect is magical.

Know that my feet were bare, drippy wet from the dew on the lawn, and cold, ’cause mornings are almost always cool in the UP, even in August.

Know that my arms were warmed by the sun.

After I took almost a hundred images, I went inside to be warmed by coffee and a laptop review of the images I’d just taken.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Archives again…

Okay, this rose is from the files. Our small digital still camera is in the shop, and I haven’t been lugging the big SLR-like one around, so no new pictures. This is the tenth digital still picture I took with my first camera, a Sony that’s long since been passed along down the inevitable food chain for electronics.

The Guru gave me the camera one afternoon, right after I defended (successfully) my dissertation. The rose was part of a lovely bouquet some of my buds sent me, delivered by the secretary after the stress was over.

I just realized that the fine woman who spearheaded the arrival of that bouquet, the lovely MM, is the one who received the hand-me-down camera.

Ah, the inverted twists and turns of life….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

The Guru brought back this photo of legendary SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen’s fine typewriter. I learned to type on a Royal—black not gray, and even older than this one—which still resides at the parental estate in MI. And still works.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Legendary & loyal

So, the Guru went to SF and all I got was this fine t-shirt. Text reads: Eat. Sleep. Code.

Geek humor.

I used to wear t-shirts all the time, and had two collections, one optimized for working (usually white or close to it), and one set of “nice” ones. Most had writin’ on ’em, and they noted and advertised a huge range of businesses and ideas, but mostly not musical groups.

I had a couple that I loved for winter wear beneath flannels that were from an ill-conceived promotion for horse-racing in VA—the horses were running the wrong way (if you were sitting in the stands). Or so I was told.

So, they were rejected for the promotion, and via some circuitous path, I ended up with a couple. Like I said, perfect!

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Since I’ve been traipsing down to Oaxaca (not that I’ve been there lately, sadly)—which would be since 1989—there’s been a revolution in the coffee available to local consumers. Back then, the best coffee we could find to brew at home was, well, mediocre, which seemed distinctly odd since plenty of coffee was grown and harvested just a couple of valleys away. I always figured they exported the good stuff.

One time, in the early 90s, we went for breakfast on a Sunday morning in Cholula (okay, that’s really in Puebla, but it’s about the same distance from the coffee-growing areas), and when we finally found a place that was open (probably not a good sign, but we were hungry!), the coffee was, well, the worst possible. The kindly owner-chef, after she sent her daughter around the corner to buy some eggs (she came back with them carefully carried in a pouch she made with her skirt hem—really!), brought us mugs of hot water and a jar of powdered or freeze-dried coffee. Now some of this stuff wasn’t too bad (e.g., Nestle’s espresso). But this particular jar had the special stuff—if you were Mexican: the sugar was already mixed in!

The look on my SIL’s face (a native Seattle-ite), who was desperate for some black drink: precious.

Now, they’ve got some fine coffees (right there next to the viscous mole negro starter paste, the all-time favorite of foodies visiting OAX), with lovely winsome lasses on the label, and we have some fresh from the southland, a thoughtful gift from considerate friends.

Posted at 5:49 PM | Comments Off on Café tipico

…and lunch, and dinner, and snacks.

An insect scourge of the Southern Gardener these days is the Japanese beetle, which has no sense of personal space. This cluster demolishes a rose….

Posted at 7:50 PM | Comments Off on Beetle breakfast

And “bread” for the French had extremely stringent and precise connotations, well crusted with an alveolated crumb, kneaded from white flour and made by a slow and arduous process of fermentation and baking.

Extra points for using “alveolated.”

Hand’s down, the best bread I’ve had was from Parisian bakeries, although I didn’t have any French sourdoughs.

This home recipe does just fine, though, especially in the Guru’s renditions, although I’m certain that use of a home bread machine is anathema to the French concept of bread. I was fortunate to get the Guru to make me a loaf before he left for Apple doin’s in SF.

Posted at 4:50 PM | Comments Off on “…alveolated crumb…”

Is this the year of the turtle somewhere? This is the second one I’ve seen in a month of not being in high-turtlehood places….

Weather update: more rain last night (I slept through it), and thunderboomers periodically this afternoon and even right now.

Posted at 7:22 PM | Comments Off on Box turtle!

Or maybe I should say (write): rainfall arrives on little cat feet*….

We got enough rain early this evening to soak in about half an inch where the soil wasn’t hard-packed. It was the first rain here at the house in I don’t know how long. The Guru’s dad had a sprinkle at his house in Buckhead on Friday, but none fell here.

I’m still saving sink water for the plants….

* Thank you, Carl Sandburg.

Posted at 7:24 PM | Comments Off on Rainfall arrives