Dog thoughts upon a house painting

We moved into our house some years ago.  February of 2002.
Teresa has chronicled the run-up to today quite well in her recent post which is about neither pea soup nor fuzzy unicorns.


I faced the weekend past with some trepidation.  It began well enough with a Friday off for me wherein a ran several errands, including a lovely coffee with a friend who I wish I saw more often--this despite the fact that she and I work two buildings away from one another.  
I also planned a visit to my favorite-est bike shop in all the world, Topanga Creek Bicycles where I dropped two of our four bikes off for work, had coffee with Chris the shop owner in my new handmade TBC mug.  


It had been a nice day and I offered to pick up supper on the way home Friday.  T and I discussed plans for the next day over said supper.  The plans were overly ambitious.  We were due at her parents' house at 12:30.  I wanted to leave early, have breakfast, stop and buy coffee beans at Klatch in Rancho Cucamonga, preview the antique auction in Redlands and still arrive by 12:30.  I should have remembered the old joke about passengers departing at Rancho Cucamonga.  That is that they should take care when getting off, as the train does not stop there.


So, as we got ready for bed, I felt sick.  Really sick.  And then I gave back the supper I had picked up.  


I did not make it to breakfast.  I passed on coffee.  No antiques were previewed.  And I was useless helping with the set-up for the party, as I was home on the couch, which is 75 miles away from anything needing set-up.


Sunday was to commence the three to (perhaps) four day house painting fandango.  Teresa's brother arrived to do the job.


Yesterday, I tried to help, but still felt pretty lousy, which didn't make scraping paint off the house very easy.  We did learn that, however unfortunate the current green color is, the previous color was pink and decidedly worse.


We also learned that having four dogs in exponentially more complicated than two.  


Everyone is getting along well, but I feel insufficient next to the force of canine will.  


One very recent incident illustrates the complexity.  I decided to go outside and play with the dogs because they looked very sad.  


My dogs took the opportunity of my presence to try to dominate Teresa's brother's dogs.  My dogs are of the 35-40 pound type (variants:  black and cocker-ish, earth tone and shephard-ish).  His dogs are of the great type (variant: dane) and pin type (variant: min).   


I then thought I should let them inside, but needed to check on the whereabouts of the cat (variant: small calico; afraid of dogs).  As I was doing so, the dane lifted himself up and placed his paws on my shoulders from behind, while the minpin tried to squirt between my legs.  After fending off the dual assault, I determined that the cat was in her cozy cup and as safe as she was going to get.  


I let the dogs in.  Mine both flopped on the ground as if shot.  The other two set out to exploring.  And did not stop.  Well, the dane stopped to dunk his whole head in the water bowl and flood the west end of the kitchen while doing so, but that was the only pause.  


I decided that the inside experiment wasn't working and invited everyone outside.  Three of four thought going out the sliding glass door a splendid idea.  


Minpin did not.  She thought going out the side door was fine, but then refused to go into the backyard with the rest.  


This set-up then allowed her prime barkpertunities at both passersby, and more vigorously at the UPS guy.


Let's photoblog that a little shall we?

Halo stayed in her cup.  Calico cats may be odd, but they're not stupid.

You can barely see it, but Biscuit has primer in her ear hair.

Scout is pretty sure he's got it going on, relative to the great dane.

Size comparo, black dog division.

Size comparo, visitor dog division:

The floodplain

No pictures of my daned back are available.

The medium and large dogs in the back and small dog on the side remained the status quo until Teresa's brother arrived home from the depot of homes.  Then the min pin squirted into the front yard to greet him and the dane rose over the fence to loom.

As I said, it's all going well.

Oh, except for the broken windows.  Not the theory of the broken windows (Wilson and Kelling) that argues:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars. Atlantic Monthly, 1982

We're not there yet.  But we do have two broken windows, one of which due to dog (variant: earth tone shepherd).  I'm not sure it signals the end of law and order at our house.  Order maybe.

I just took a break to try to curtail the attempted tunneling under the back side fence by one of the prisoners (variant: black cocker-ish).  Between prison escape and broken windows, I must say it feels like an intro to sociology class and I am not a social scientist. 

So the medium sized dogs are now inside with me.  Two more days to go.

I can say with certainty that I am intensely glad to be going back to work tomorrow.

What continuum am I on?

Recently at work I had to start a social media ad hoc committee.  People have behaved badly on social media this year.  Blogging mostly, but faceplace, too.  It was just at the end of the term and I asked a few folks to get together on the day of commencement (before the string of parties started) to talk.  During the conversation, I admitted (not in a confessional way, but I'm sure it was taken that way) that I had a blog and that it was anonymous.  Sort of.  Earlier this week, someone else mentioned my anonymous blog to me.  Clearly trying to get access.  No quarter was given.

People still blog.  I read them every day.  Every once in a while someone who doesn't blog much whose blog I read back when I played blogleague fantasy sports will blog.  That makes my day.  A little bit of sunshine, you know?

So I have this new job.  Start in a month.  I can't decide whether the "beyond this place there be dragons" is the right metaphor for the next phase in my professional life.

Or maybe I'm a little like Halo.  Will the box be all I want it to be?

Best case is that it's like the entrance to my favorite hotel.  It's on a little street in a little town in the desert.  You wonder if you've arrived at the right place.  You ring the bell.  Once you make it through the arch, though, you never want to leave.

I'm hoping the new job is somewhere between Halo's box and Desert Hot Springs.   

Recently, in my current job, I've been dealing with several unpleasant circumstances.  People causing drama, insisting on controlling the drama narrative.  Drama that requires after hours meetings.  Ad hoc committees on social media.  Me to steel myself against others' crying.  It's karma, I think.  For leaving.  For feeling bad about leaving. 

For being a more than a little afraid that the continuum is between the dragon and Halo's box.

The only way out may be through.  Halo figured that out.  Maybe I will, too.

Wish me luck. 

Documenting the Collection, um... Passion, um... Obsession

My mother is an avid shopper.  Deeply avid.  I know avid suggests that, but let's be clear that the woman shops.  And buys.

I have some of her tendencies in this area and own more shoes than I need.  I also own many many products of Apple.  Too many, probably.  I don't buy clothes much, though, for complicated reasons I'm not going to get into. 

I am impulsive when it comes to car purchases.  Of late, I've turned cars over every three years.  That's too often, really.  I like my current car a lot, though, so as I slide toward year three, I'm quite confident we'll make it to year five, at least.

Then, there's bikes. Towit:

• Cannondale F400.  Sold to get Gunnar (see below).
• Want road bike.  
• Trek 1200.  No, too harsh, too small.  Sold.
• Lemond Zurich.  Scared it would break. Sold.
• Ibex Classic.  Bought for parents house.  Too small, terrible riding.  Sold.
• Surly Cross-Check.  Too small.  Cross bike brakes don't work.  Sold.
• Gunnar Rockhound.  Yep, still in garage.
• Gary Fisher Kaitai.  Lives at my parents house.
• Soma Smoothie ES.  Sold.  Didn't ride.
• Kona Dew Deluxe.  Good, but harsh. Going to get Sold.
• Surly Karate Monkey.  Getting the Kona's parts as we speak.  Anyone need a Kona frame?

So, I've turned over (in the last seven years or so) ten bikes.  I still have three, one of which lives 3000 miles away in may parents' basement.

See what I mean? 

I used to collect, well, collectibles.  But, I stopped.  Seemed wasteful, really.  You run out of storage.  And then they're just plastic.  Or ceramic.  Or whatever.  I still watch antique/collecting shows on tv. 

Of recent years, I must confess to a bit of a bag collection.  Passion.  Obsession.

I built a little wire container system to hold them.  I take some comfort in knowing I'm not the only one. 

There's the Bag Collector Blog.

Yeppers.  He's inspired me to document.  Ready?  (Since no one actually reads this anymore much, go with it.) 

Or not. 

Let me note, before I begin, that bags have come in and gone out without making the current collection/cut.  I bought some, didn't like them, and let them go.  They were mostly Timbuk2, some Chrome.  One or two Crumpler.  Some bought cheap, others full retail.  I wish them well in their current lives. 

In college I used an LL Bean backpack.  I then have a memory hole until I bought a Hartmann leather bag at their outlet mall in Camarillo.

I used the Hartmann for a number of years.  It's a nice bag.  Heavy, but good quality and I like it.  My one criticism is that it doesn't have a top handle, which makes it hard to move around.

I wanted a lighter, sportier alternative.  And thus did my fascination with Timbuk2 begin. 

I ordered a custom messenger to "match" the Trek 1200 (see above). 

This bag was made of a less shiny nylon than most of their bags are.  I worried and worried over the color panels.  Ultimately, they ended up sort of meh.

So, I tried again with Timbuk2.  They were doing a spate of special fabrics.  As documented here I wanted the Eames fabric one.  I bought (can't tell you why, really) this one instead.

(You can embiggen these pictures of course, should you want more detail).

It didn't hold up well, the special fabric.  Tore a little, got dirty from regular use.

Then Timbuk2 went brushed canvas, in a line they call Single Speed.  Happy sigh.

That's the relay.  Love that bag.  Got it in bigger, too.

That one, Honey and I call the "PIF bag" as I used it to carry my very large, very unwieldy Personal Information File (or PIF) for my tenure and promotion decisions.

I still use the Relay (smaller one) sometimes.  It's well worn, with some ink stains inside it. 

I like the idea of Timbuk2 custom bags a lot, though I'm not sure I've ever gotten then color choices right.  I bought and used a Eula for a while.  It's their "girl" bag.  Somewhat purse-like, and small.

Dark green and silver.  What was I thinking?

Now, as I noted, I like me  some products du Apple.  And they need to be carried.  So, I tried out some Timbuk2 products designed to carry computers and an tablets and other things Cupertino.

Above you have The Blogger, a 333 line laptop bag, and the Freestyle.  That last one kind of broke me from Timbuk2.  They've moved a lot of their manufacturing overseas (the custom ones are still made in San Francisco).  I still like them, but the straps have gotten shorter and shorter (I like a LONG strap).  I used the Freestyle some, but, with the exception of the Relay, none of these bags do much for me anymore.  I tried to sell the 333.  My love affair with Timbuk2 is over.  I appreciate them, but don't heart them any more.  Basically, those last three bags are available to someone, if they'd promise to use them. 

The intersection of bike stuff and these bags is pretty clear.  They're all meant for carrying on your back while you ride a bike.  I realized from reading online that Chrome seemed to have a lot of credibility with bike folks.  So I tried a regular Chrome, with the seat belt buckle.  Did not like.  When they came out with their "lifestyle" bags, I haunted ebay and managed to get a Vega.

I've used it a fair amount and it's still in light circulation.

Honey bought me this Keen for Christmas in 09.  It's a great bag.  In medium circulation.

My disillusionment with Timbuk2 laptop bags led me on a search for an alternative.  Steepandcheap to the rescue!  (Don't know about steepandcheap?  It's like woot for outdoor gear, except for one item a day, it's one item after another.)

This is an Osprey Astro.  It's my go-to when I want good padding for the laptop or the iPad.

Bonus points for the Osprey: it's made of recycled plastic.  Nice long strap, too.  It's a little voluminous for non-electronic everyday use.  Plus, I'm much more likely to have the iPad than the laptop. 

Enter...

My current favorite bag company. 

By a lot. 

Rickshaw. 

They're (to me) what Timbuk2 was once.  San Francisco made.  Committed to sustainability.  When I was up in San Francisco in January, I stopped by their "store," which is the front part of their factory.  They gave me a tour.  Told me about what they do.  They have bike parking, a sofa to relax on, and seem a great company.  Their core bag is called the Zero messenger.  No fabric is wasted making it (thus the "zero" part, zero waste).  It's mailed to you (all their products do) in a "round trip shipper" (a canvas envelope) which you send back to them to use again.  Their prices are really reasonable.  I have an iPad sleeve and have managed (in a very short time) to acquire four Zero messengers.

My first one was a small.  Orange and brown.  Not a bad color selection (given that it was me doing the selecting).

When I went up there, I ordered a medium zero, made from a fabric made of old soda bottles.  They rushed the order and I picked it up on the way out of town.  (They made it for me with a longer strap!)

I love this bag so much that I have trouble keeping others in circulation.

It's brother (bought on ebay) hasn't even been out for a spin yet.

Not that I'm a champion anything.  (Those stripes indicate that the wearer is a world champion in some bicycle endeavour).

My latest Rickshaw is a purse.  The call it the Zero mini.  It's a purse.  I am actually occasionally using it as such.

My latest bag (in violation, I must admit of my agreement with Honey to take a "one-in, one-out" approach to bags was acquired with a birthday gift card.  It's already loaded to be next week's bag.  Seems a good size and I like the design.

Crumpler soupandsalad.  I like Crumplers, but they cost too much.  This one was on sale at REI.

There are lots of other makers out there I'm interested in.  Honey sighs as I write, though she doesn't know why.  Some of the more respected companies don't do much for me design-wise.  I know people really like REload and Baileyworks.  Maybe someone could tell me why.  The former seems too busy, the latter too plain.  A lot of the American made bags seem really spendy, too.  I'd say that was a function of what it costs to make stuff here, but then I remember how much Rickshaw charges.

Oh, and just to be completest.  My trusty Canon Rebel xsi, with which the above pictures were taken lives in a camera-specific bag, called the Crumpler 5 Million Dollar Home. 

Anyway, Crumpler aside, I'll go back to one-in, one-out now.  So, someone please please take one of the Timbuk2s so I can look for a new bag.  I'm thinking Seagull or Black Rose. 

Laryngitis, thoughts on having

So Honey doesn't want me to talk because I have no voice.  She's right, of course, but it's hard.

Thanksgiving, vegetarian

The Honey/animated dogs are back. Now with more talk of food!





Edited to add:

Quorn secured!

I must say I find the color a little disturbing.

I know, everyone's all up in it...

...But I kinda love Xtranormal.  So, here's my first try at it.  Honey and I before Trader Joe's today.



Oh, and I'm saying Vanana and she's saying Banilla.  It's a Trader Joe's yogurt flavor that combines, well, banana and vanilla.

I may have to do more of these.  Fair warning.  Just saying.  It's my blog after all and don't nobody blog no more.  Might as well animate the mundane.

Edit to add:

Ok, I did another one.  :)

The Middle Room

We moved into our house in 2002.  February of 2002.  We hired terrible movers (we didn't mean to) who put everything into the room we then and now call the "middle room."  By everything, I mean every box and every bag.  The furniture basically went where it was supposed to.

The exception to the "everything in the middle room" request was supposed to be the bags and boxes (there were four or five) on which we had written "PERISHABLE!  PLEASE PLACE IN KITCHEN."  The requested exception was not made.  An overfull two bedroom apartment's worth of stuff was, therefore, placed into a room that measures 10' by 10'.  In the middle of this, um, pile, was rotting spoiling stuff.

From that moment forward, the middle room was not treated with respect.  For months, perhaps years, it remained the repository of all things placeless.  Some of that, of course, is necessary.  You've got to put the gift wrap and Christmas stuff somewhere.  Some of it, though, was a function of fear.  Perhaps ennui.  Certainly a function of objects at rest tending to stay at rest.

Some years ago, I tried to transform it into a "den."  It had a love seat and a chair.  It was functional enough, I suppose, but there was still a lot of stuff.  Relaxing was hard in there.  Once, while reading the paper, I noticed flora, specifically vines.  In.  The.  Room.  They had grown in through the window.

It was a Grey Gardens moment if I've ever had one.

I have had spates of organizing the house.  (I was just going to post links to a previous post about it, but now realize that all my picture links from my wordpress days are broken since sporksforall.com has expired.  Ah well, trust me on it, won't you?  I've organized things.  The middle bathroom.  The utility closet.)

So, flash forward to a couple of weeks ago when I purchased a new chair and a work friend came over to my house to help me move the old one.  I showed her around the house and realized my horror at the state of the middle room.  There was stuff in there that had literally been moved in with the rotting spoiled perishables and had not been touched or seen the light of day since.  Eight plus years.

(Does it need to be said that the perishables were disposed or properly?  Perhaps.  They were.)

There's another factor at work that I should mention.

Honey has started graduate school.  She's in the super intense program wherein she takes seven classes a term.

I have a D of Ph and I took two classes a term mostly.  So, Seven.  Whew.

I want her to have as much freedom as she needs to move around the house.  Living room, office, dining room.  Most of the time, I am perfectly happy to be around when the graduate school peripateticity happens.  Sometimes, though, I might want somewhere to go.  Somewhere that isn't our bedroom where my choices are to lie on the bed, sit on the bed.   Or take a shower, I suppose.

Mostly, though, there was the whole business with showing someone that room and thinking, "um, time to get this sorted."  Past time, really.  Well past.

Yesterday morning I announced my intention to tackle two projects.  The first was a sock organizing project.  The second was the middle room.  It was a bit like saying, I think I'll read Fox in Socks and then see how I get on with Remembrance of Things Past.

The socks went fine.  Most are reunited with their mates.  They're now all in the same drawer and much more accessible.  I've got a bag of unwanted ones to leave for the folks that come around looking for recyclables on trash day.

After the sock success, we ran some errands and got some lunch.  At 4pm yesterday we got home and I got started on Proust.

Honey says I sometimes push past my limits.  I certainly did last night (and this morning).

Here is most of what was taken out of the room:

Let me take a side moment in praise of my car.  I've had it almost a year and it replaced a succession of two SUV type vehicles.  SUVs really.

It has accepted every single containment task I've asked of it.  The new living room chair?  Check.  A new office chair and our weekend luggage?  Check.

All the crap from the middle room?  Check.

America, listen up, you don't need SUVs.  You need hatchbacks.  They do what SUVs do.  And, if you're smart like me, you get one with good gas mileage and it's superveryfun to drive.  Thank you Wolfsburg. 

From another angle:

That, friends and neighbors, is a lot of crap.

Three hours of clean out lot of crap.

The result?

  

 

 

Look, a usable, crap free room!  Forgive the bright spider fleece throw.  A gift, don't you know.

I'm really pleased.  

There may be some tweaking

 

Imagine all that stuff in the car in the room and in this closet.  It was so shudder worthy that I couldn't even take a picture of it before or in process.

RIP old middle room.  2002-2010.

Welcome new middle room.  2010-

Now, if you'll excuse me the Sunday paper awaits me in the new space. 

A craigslist interlude in time

Late last week I came down with yet another cold. This makes about four (maybe five) this calendar year. I'm sick (ha!) of it if truth be told, but there's not much to be done about it other than suck on zinc tablets and stay home. I've given up on trying to power through it, especially during the summer. Things are quiet enough that I can stay home and watch the celebration of Norma Shearer on TCM and the world and university will not come to a screeching halt because I'm not there. Besides, if I stay home and actually watch old movies on tv, then I don't have to sit I my office mad at myself for not being productive and I can just try to get better. This strategy basically worked. Instead of being sick for ten days, I've managed to mostly feel better by the end of day five. I also haven't needed to take much OTC medicine, which I don't like doing in some weird throw back to puritanical ancestry. (That and my Dad has always resisted OTC medicine, so my reluctance could be linked to a more recent forebearer.)

I did decide yesterday after having a bad taste in my mouth and coughing up little chunks, which turned out to be called tonsil stones, that I needed to have my tonsils out.  I haven't backed up that conclusion with any member of the medical establishment other than mayoclinic.com.

I didn't want to go anywhere yesterday and we were expecting a handyman to come fix our faulty drainage tube for the HVAC.   (Should I take a potshot at Sears? I have not been happy with Sears vis a vis our HVAC installation.  Not even a little bit.  So there.)

This conspiracy of forces (HVAC, sickness, Norma Shearer) coincided with a little craigslist focus in our house.  Last weekend, I had a fit of pique wherein I decided my customary chair was no longer the least bit comfortable and that I wanted another one.  After going to some unholy number of furniture stores, I had come to the conclusion that the only chair that might do as a replacement was an Ekornes Stressless recliner.

The problem?  They're a little spendy.  The Ekornes recliners.

Then I had a thought; why not check craigslist?  Sure enough, there was one listed for 1/4 of retail in Bell.  In case you're not wildly familiar with Southern California, Bell isn't exactly a vacation destination.  Currently in the news for wildly inflated salaries of civic employees, it's down off the I-5 in an area near, well, Commerce.  And Downey.  Yep.  That's the LA everyone knows and loves.

Nevertheless, down to Bell we go last Sunday night and I procure the chair.  The ever versatile GTI accepted it willingly into the hatch and we headed home.

(Not that there weren't any subsequent moments of concern.  I did have a near panic attack the next day that it was a fake.  Also my bank was pretty sure someone had stolen my ATM card because I kept going to the ATM to try to get money, not knowing what my daily limit was).

The chair was duly installed in the place of its predecessor, which now lives on campus at the Women's Center.  As my friend and co-worker who helped me get it over to the Women's Center noted, "they won't know it's not comfortable any more.  For them, that's how comfortable it's always been."

So, this weekend, what with the cold and the handyman, we decided to list some stuff for sale on craigslist ourselves.

On offer:

1) Two of our six bicycles.  We don't need six.  We probably don't need four.  But we certainly don't need six.

(That's the one of mine we're selling).

2)  One of my Timbuk2 bags (I admit that the pile of them in the front closet seems to consitute a collection at miniumum and an obsession if honesty is in my heart).

I have two sort of like this, briefcasey with a laptop compartment and I like the other one better.

3) My Tony Little Gazelle Elite.

You remember Tony Little right?  Screaming guy on the informercials sliding his feet back and forth on this thing?  Circa 2003 or so.  I bought it off craigslist.  Now, when I work out at home, I ride one of my bicycles (not that blue one above henceforth, to be sure).  The gazelle has been folded up, next to the hutch in our already small dining room.  It needed to go away.

4)  What Honey calls my barbie motorcycle helmet.  That "calling" goes sort of like, "it's a barbie helmet, barbie, barbie helmet."

I bought it online and didn't think it would be so, um, well, barbie.

Nice, huh?


So, we pop these things up on craigslist.  (Or should I quote "Your Mama" The Real Estalker and say we "heaved" them up on craigslist)

Honey starts getting e-mails about her bike right away.  The ratio of annoying to not was about 2/1.

I get an e-mail about the gazelle.  Could he come tonight?  He has lots of questions.

Now, it's time to tell you how much I was asking for the gazelle.  $25.  Yep.  And he was offering $20.  Which I said was fine.  But still, he had lots of questions.  I answered and tried to be nice.  He said he'd call and come get it in the morning.

He did not.

So, I listed it in the free section.  Which prompted an hysterical e-mail from a woman asking that I hold it for her.  She also called it an elliptical.  Um, no, not an elliptical.  Something you stand on and swing your legs in the air on.

Anyway, I went out to check to see if it was still there, though I was not inclined to hold it for her.  That mf was so hard to move that my shins got bruised just looking at it.  It was gone.  Probably for scrap metal.

No e-mails whatever on my bike.  It's now on ebay.  We'll see.

The Timbuk2 bag has gone back with its friends in the closet.

The barbie helmet is bound for Goodwill next time Honey goes.  (That will be this week, I'm sure).

On the upside, she does have interest in her bike, and not just from the guy who didn't want to raid his daughter's "colleg" fund.  I think she'll sell it soon.

Here are some lesson I learned:

1) My panic aside, people don't counterfeit Norwegian chairs and then try to sell them one at a time from their living room in Bell;

2) No one feel responsible for following up on their e-mails.  Civility and the social contract don't really exist on craigslist;

3) No one much uses full sentences, proper grammar, or punctuation in e-mails.  They don't even make a pretense at doing so;

4) Modelling grammar, civility, etc. for people in your communication with them will not result in their reciprocating;

5)  People are way too willing to give out their cell phone numbers;

6)  Teresa has better "taste" in bicycles than I do;

7)  Gazelles are played;

8)  Everyone has better taste than I do/did in motorcycle helmets;

9)  Everyone wants a bargain.  Perceptions of bargains are not shared across brains.

I'm glad our time with craigslist is coming to a close.  I won't miss it.

I did like the generosity of the woman who offered the fat from cooking her cats' dinner to anyone who wanted it, but wasn't sure she'd have any takers.

I suppose I can glance through that window into modern American Internet humanity now and again.  There's certainly something to learn.  Perhaps a bargain to be found.

Still and all, why do I think it's safer over at Etsy?

Water and grapefruit

I've been thinking some lately about water and the desert.

I grew up in the east, where the humidity made you wish for a little less water and a little more seersucker.

That's what roads usually looked like as I stared out the window in the cars of my childhood.

I've lived in Southern California a long time now and am still amazed at how adaptable I am to the dry.  I say that in what, admittedly,  has been a very mild summer with lots of "June gloom."  That's the marine layer hanging around the morning and keeping the afternoon cool.  Thanks so much Pacific.

I've been doing a little writing (of the academic type) lately about the "real" desert here in SoCal.

(That my paper proposal was rejected for my annual professional conference did give me pause.  I've decided to interpret it as a failure on their part, not mine.  My annual membership renewal for said society languishes in the mail basket, perhaps to go unpaid.  Oh, yeah, deny them that $100 and THEN they'll see!)

Honey and I have been frequenting an inn in Desert Hot Springs for a couple of years.  And, yes, I do mean frequenting.  Eight times in two years counts as frequent.  :)

Sigh.  We've just been back a week and I'm ready to go back.  I think the GTI has a homing beacon now.

The innkeeper, a man of considerable charm, refers to his pool and hot tub as filled by water from a "fissure."  He means, of course, that Desert Hot Springs is sitting on a big old fault in the earth.  Those tricky faults that cause all the quaking also can cause the water of spring.

Desert Hot Springs has all the water it needs and can use.  It's good water, too.  It's good to drink.  Lovely to soak in.

Elsewhere in the region, there's less water.

Looks dry.

One of my current fascinations is water of a decidedly undesirable sort in the desert.

That's the Salton Sea.  Formed by inadvertent flooding from irrigation canals in the early part of the 20th century, it was once hailed as the new playground to the stars.  Now it's a salty mess, that kills fish, smells bad, attracts shorebirds, hosts some odd communities, and just generally sits ignored (as best as people can) in the middle of the Imperial Valley south of Indio.

The kingbird probably has a better idea than the sandpipers.  Don't get in the water.

I got to thinking about water closer to home this morning.  When we bought our house eight years ago, I planted a very small grapefruit tree.  And small it stayed.  Mostly because I didn't water it.

When we did landscaping a few years ago, we had a bubbler put on it.  I thought it rebounded quite well.  Then Honey's mother pointed out that the "rebound" was what she called a "sucker plant" and not the "tree" at all.  Today, I looked outside and commented to Honey that a sucker plant had once again attached itself to the little grapefruit that couldn't.

We agreed to plant something else.

A little later in the morning, I decided to feed the backyard birds, something I've gotten a bit out of the habit of recently (for monetary reasons, mostly).  Nyjer costs.  Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't.

Everyone wants "wild canaries," but I'm here to testify that if you want goldfinches at your feeder, you got to pay for nyjer seed.  (Current price about $2/lb.)

Anyway, as I filled the feeders, I glanced at the grapefruit tree and thought, "what the hell, I'll go ahead and shovel it out today."  I figured we could replace it in the fall sometime.

So, after I put away the seed implements (bird feeding is complicated, don't you know).  Visit a Wild Birds Unlimited near you to find out just how money you could be spending!  Don't forget the nyjer is obligatory if you want the little gold ones.

I walked over to the grapefruit "tree."  Let me give you a sense of scale.

That's it on the left.  The tree (no quotes) on the right is the tangerine.  It has had many fruit every year, water or no.  Bless its over productive heart.

There's no doubt that water helps these trees.  Here's the orange tree that didn't produce more than a dozen in the non-water years.

See all those fruit?  We'll be up to our elbows in oranges again this year.

Did I mention that they're navels?  Yum.

So I'm standing over the grapefruit and I glance down.

Yeppers, those are actual grapefruits.

Water.  I tell you what.  Eight years on and the little tree that couldn't has four grapefruit on it.  And lots and lots of new growth.  I'm giving it another chance.  Redemption comes when it does, I suppose.

Now, if only it would rain.