Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Spending time in the desert, or a desert city, during a rainy spell (even if it lasts for your entire visit, pretty much) is special.
Here’s the view across San Diego‘s airport and bay, with Coronado in the background.
This is beyond the fabled marine layer, and truly socked in, unless socked in means the airport was closed. It wasn’t, and we left only a few minutes late.
Home, sweet home.
Monday, 20 December 2010
Ceiling lighting in the ballroom, which needed to be turned up a bit more, or a spotlight added. Something.
I found many good choices among today’s photographs. Location: a ballroom downtown. Why this one? Dunno.
So, yeah, graduation is over, and the speeches weren’t tedious except for a sentence or two.
In short, we had fun.
Okay, the food part. After: Extraordinary Desserts. And, oh-my-yes, they were extraordinary. To say the least.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
I’m living under the influence of a pineapple express. Rain, mist, and general cool spitty unpleasantness.
So we stayed in a watched a DVD movie and monitored the wifi for irregularities—slow-downs and short stoppages that the router did not cause.
Sedate Sundays can be The Best!
Saturday, 18 December 2010
New territory. New places.
This time we visited the Neighborhood.
Name doesn’t tell you much. Or me; I could envision several different motifs or aesthetic directions a biz could go with that name.
Here’s the direction the Neighborhood has gone in San Diego.
Never had fresh fennel slices cooked like onion rings. Interesting. I’d do it again; I enjoyed them more than raw fennel.
Plenty of original art on the walls, and the largest was Siggy, with the Neighborhood’s signature burger….
Looks happier than in most photos I’ve seen.
Also loved the sweet potato fries. Heck, fried anything is pretty tasty, let’s admit it.
Okay. Time to go.
Friday, 17 December 2010
When you’re looking for excitement, “uneventful” times may not make you happy. When you fly cross-country “uneventful” is usually most excellent.
In short, we’re here safe and sound.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
The Arum maculatum made it through the winter weather, when it spent a while utterly limp and nearly flattened. Last night we skated without skates trekking in and out of the driveway to enjoy a fantastic low country boil (with rich cookies for dessert) at F&D’s (thanks, again!), but by about 9 am the temps started rising and we de-iced.
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
This is a shrub in our front yard, name unknown to me. Of course these are blue (colored) berries, and not blueberries, yet still pretty.
Although our temps did get above freezing today, they’re dipping again, and it was never sunny-nice out.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
One of my seasonal traditions is to plant a few bulbs to spark up our deepest winter, short-light days. Visually and odorously.
Today, however tardily, is bulb-planting day, 2010.
Inspired by my friend, Dr. J, I got an amaryllis* this year (the huge bulb to the right), to enjoy along with my usual—paperwhites.
Keep your fingers crossed….
* This is interesting. I googled amaryllis to find out whatever WikiPee would tell me and found out that what I planted was NOT an amaryllis, botanically, although it is commonly called an amaryllis. Instead it’s a different genus, Hippeastrum in the same family (Amaryllidaceae), which sent me back to the packaging for the bulb I bought. Aha. Both words are used, but amaryllis is given prominence. Live and learn.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Our temps never reached the freeze point today, and we’re expecting lows in the low teens. So: Brrrr!
Wonder how the ABG fountains are faring—this was the other day when this bubbly specimen managed to escape the freezing fingers of Mother Nature….
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Snow decorating Arum maculatum, before aeolian processes flipped it away.
Our weather turned today, with wind (big wind—advisories across most of the state, with gusts over 30 mph), and even snow—although the meteorologists this morning said the latter wouldn’t get to this part of the city—hah!
I know there’s the post-solstice astronomical winter (which has not yet arrived), but there’s also winter (or other seasons) as defined by the weather—the poetic delineation, perhaps? And we’re now enmeshed in winter here in the Sunny South (only a very few glancing flirts with sunshine today), given the flurries, low temps, bitter winds, and the like (brr!).