It was cloudy and chilly today at Mandalay Beach in Oxnard, California:
Nonetheless, I went in the water:
Here it comes!
Brrrr.
Aaaahhh.
The current Weekly Photo Challenge wants photos from an unusual perspective.)
On my recent walk across Oroville dam in northern California, clouds moved rapidly across the sun – all these photos were taken during just a few, rapidly evolving minutes – and created a spectacular scene that looked like star nebula photographed by the Hubble.
The current Weekly Photo Challenge wants photos from an unusual perspective.)
3 STARS
The staid and wild sides of a woman’s life collide when a body washes up on her newly purchased houseboat.
I loved the first half of this book – for a while it was so hard to put down, I feared that I had derailed my life by picking it up – but gradually interest waned. It remained fun to read but the story got more predictable, I never really liked the main character, and I got frustrated with the number of times that she made boneheaded decisions that put her in danger for the service of the plot. Curiously, for all the sex, the book was not very sensual. All in all, a fun read but nothing special. The locations are cool though: the main character lives on a houseboat she is in the process of fixing up.
This book was written during NaNoWriMo, a one month writing challenge. Frankly I wish the author had given it another few months.
I got this book for free in exchange for an honest review.
P.S. Here is a synopsis of the book with embellishments by the publisher.
Reflections and shadows make the world more intriguing. This is true in people as well as terrains, but I don’t have photos that demonstrate this for personalities.
August’s full moon was so bright that it cast shadows on my car and produced enough light for me to take this photo:
That bright dot is the full moon, reflected in my car hood.
An easy hike up Malibu Creek in southern California leads to duplicate images in this still and reflective pond.
Can you find the water line?
Look in the pond and see the sky!:
Pond’s-eye view of the sky.
A tree’s reflection in the pond:
Another pond’s-eye view
The current Weekly Photo Challenge wants photos from an unusual perspective.)
My “desert island” food is the blueberry. My “desert island” place is the ocean. Which proves convenient: I don’t have to bring my favorite place with me to the desert island, it will already surround me.
Desert island. Typing that phrase, I realize how comfortable I am using language when I don’t entirely know what it means. That must get me into trouble sometimes but apparently I don’t know when that happens.
Desert island. Somewhere remote and cut-off, I figure. Checking that infallible source of information, the internet, I learn that a desert island is an island that is not inhabited by humans.
(Sue’s first rule of blogging: start with a digression. Or four.)
Here’s the point: I love the ocean but I have only been to two of them. Mostly the Pacific. Occasionally the Atlantic. Surely I need to see the others, and visit them from more than one location. Which means I had better get busy and travel faster.
Here is what the Atlantic Ocean looked like during my visit to a Florida beach:
The Atlantic Ocean at sunset from a beach in central Florida.
At this beach it was not a good idea to walk while enjoying the view. There were dead jellyfish everywhere! I don’t know whether this was typical for this area. Perhaps I visited during a time of jellyfish affliction.
It was a beach of dead jellyfish land mines.
(In response to this Weekly Photo Challenge.)
There are some songs that are so captivating that whatever my mood, whatever else is going on, they grab and elevate. Below are three of my all-time top endorphinators. What are yours?
At their peak -which is saying something! – here are Sly and The Family Stone, “Dance to the Music”.
In the mid 1970s Ireland produced a splendid pop band called The Undertones. Apparently they are back together and touring and their Youtube performance videos are good but lack the magic of the original recording when they were babies. This is “Get Over You”.
If you are a Replacements fan, I don’t have to tell you how special this band was. Everybody else, you might get a chance to see them. Tommy and Paul – half of ’em – have reunited. I avoid most reunions because the old days can’t be resurrected, but there are exceptions (X shows are as good as ever!) and it sounds like the Mats will be one of those. Here is “Favorite Thing” from Riot Fest in Toronto. The sound is murky. It’s the Mats.
This fourth tune is fairly new so I don’t yet know whether it will remain potent over decades as the others have. It’s a Sara Watkins fiddle tune, here played with her brother Sean.
One of these people has won every round of Sequence. Want to hazard a guess which one it is?
The ocean is my place. It’s where I go to revive, invigorate, find peace. At the shore I feel connected to all that underlies our everyday lives.
I love the way the shorebirds run out as the surf recedes, run back as it returns. They are so in tune with the pattern of the waves and the movements of the other birds. And it often feels like they are playing as well as eating.
Ventura Beach, California, 2008
(In response to this Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Daily Prompt Instructions: Take the third line of the last song you heard, make it your post title, and write for a maximum of 15 minutes. GO!
I don’t know him but I’m worried about him. Crowded room buzzing with hubbub and attitude, he’s in that far corner, slouched tilted because his chair has a broken leg. He could have moved – there are empty chairs on either side of him – but there he tilts.
I don’t have kids. Watching him tweaks a maternal streak I didn’t know I possessed. His hair looks like it was wet when he went to sleep with a hat on. It frames an eternally baby face, with a nose that’s been broken more than once. His eyes are decades older than his face, and when there’s a motion into his corner, they dart like the eyes of an animal who’s lived all its life in a cage.
Some girl talks to him and waits for an answer. He stares at the air between them like her words are written there. He shakes his head in reply, about two seconds after the girl turns away with a huff of a shrug.
Maybe he’s high, but that explanation’s too simple. He’s checking out, he’s had enough, he’s done. I won’t see him again anyway but I fear no one will ever see him again, come tomorrow.
The song lyric of the title is from “No Name #1” by Elliott Smith. Click here to watch a cover version to which I am addicted.
Dear Family Cats (and also the dog),
Thanks for giving me an unforgettable experience. A night of induced insomnia and – okay – a couple laughs.
The perpetrators, Bop and Luna.
It all started about 130 am. The dog woke me up, walking in and out of my room, flopping down in the hallway, jumping up again to tick tick tick tick another circuit of my room. When she walks at a certain pace, her nails on the floor sound like the Sixty Minutes clock. At 130 pm, I find this charming.
After a moment of consciousness, I heard what had made the dog restless. Cat fight, a couple houses away. I recognized the voice of my beloved Luna, whom I had failed to lock inside. I keep the cats in at night (coyotes), but on hot summer nights Luna often evades capture.
Luna is 10 years old and I had never heard him fight before. He is a peaceable fellow who gets along with most other cats. The part of my brain that was awake decided it was a good idea to break up the fight. I filled a glass with water and headed down the street. No noise, no cats. Okay. I dumped the water and returned to bed.
Turn out my light, cue the fight, which resumed a few feet outside my window. Refill the water glass, take it outside, toss water at the cats. The other cat ran north. Luna headed west, stopped, stared at me, then sprinted after the other cat. Jerk.
The really!-I’m-mean-and-I’m-going-to-hurt-you! howling resumed in the backyard. By now I was too invested to shrug and lie in the dark listening to fake loud cat aggression. In the backyard, I decided to turn the hose on them. I turned the hose on full bore and I blasted them —
— with a dribble of water. Oh. The hose had kinked.
While I worked on unkinking the hose, from the house behind ours came brutal THUNK-thunk-THUNKs as the pit bull tried to slam his way outside through a closed dog door. He wanted in on the cat fight.
Suddenly I realized that what I needed was to be asleep. I left the hose and returned to bed. Where I lay, very very awake, for 3 hours. As many of you know, time expands at night and those 3 hours lasted for days.
I finally drifted off to sleep shortly before dawn. Not long afterwards, I jolted awake to shrill cat screeches. For the first time, our cat Bop had ambushed the kittens during the night, which is usually a time of truce. Perhaps Luna had inspired her.
There we were, stumbling into the hall, squinting at the lights we each turned on: my daughter and I, armed with water bottles, looking to spray Bop for messing with a kitten.
A peacekeeper.
Actually the “kittens” are now 11 months old and two of them are bigger than Bop, but she knows how to bully and they will always consider her enormous.
Recent runt kitten Leo stands outside window and watches his hero Luna snooze. Leo doesn’t realize he has grown up to be the biggest cat in the neighborhood.
Now the dog was energized. With two humans out of bed, it must be breakfast time.
Have you ever gone for a walk just after dawn? It is such a peaceful time of day.
P.S. As I write this, Bop has knocked the DSL modem to the floor. Twice. So we’ll see whether this exposé ever gets posted.
(This post responds to today’s Daily Prompt, “I’d Like to Thank My Cats”.)
Required Writing 