I took this cool picture of a tree.
ArchivePage 2 of 4
Many thanks to the good people of Sometowninpennsylvania for their enthusiastic willingness to change my flat tire.
Today I was talking with my friend Mary, and we were lamenting the fact that we did not make it out west this year on our Annual National Parks Tour. She suggested that next year we go to Yosemite, and then she sent me this awesome email:
fyi, this is what we would look like in yosemite. only older, wiser and hotter.
we should totally plan on going next year.
Here is what we might look like in some other places we’ve never been. Many thanks to Mary for her mad skills with the photoshop.
This summer I grew a cherry tomato plant on my balcony. It produced these three tomatos. Soon I will be able to give up my day job and just live off the land.
I feel bad. Yesterday I was looking at my balcony and noticed a small bird coming out of an open carton of tri-poly fortified sanded grout that I had stashed out there, left over from when I was tiling my bathroom. I went to investigate and found that the bird and his/her partner were building a nest. I didn’t do anything. This morning, I checked on things and was amazed by how much progress the birds had made. The nest was almost totally complete, perfect and round like a hollow ball made entirely of leaves and twigs and stuff, with a little hole for a door. It’s amazing that the two birds could construct such a perfect home, and with no arms to help them! At any rate, I was concerned. I didn’t mind the birds nesting on my porch, but I was worried that I would constantly be scaring them, and that they might lay eggs and then abandon them because I have to go water my plants, or something like that. So, tonight I destroyed the nest. I felt really bad, it only took me 2 minutes to dispose of something they took two days to build. I hope it was the right thing to do. I hope they can build another nest before the mother bird lays her eggs.
I just discovered that this adorable beaver-like mammal (BLM) lives right behind my building. I can see the door to his/her house from my balcony. We are neighbors! Here is a photo - he/she is right there in the middle.
I always thought that big pile of crap that the beaver is emerging from was just…well…
a big pile of crap that my neighbors for some reason kept in their yard. But now, I am thinking maybe it is a specially-constructed beaver house. I know they have a chicken in their yard, because it squawks and wakes me up every morning, so maybe they are animal lovers and thus are prone to doing things such as building beaver abodes.
Note: look at the word squawk, it’s like the weirdest word ever! What a strange combination of letters.
An Easter message from Paco, clockwise from top left:
1) Here I am eating some parsley. 2) Oh! I seem to have laid some eggs, how unusual. 3) If I try really hard, I can be shaped like an egg, too. 4) Laying eggs is tiring.
Today Walter took me flying in a teeny little airplane. Considering the fact that I hate planes and I hate flying, I think this serves as conclusive evidence that I will go *anywhere* I am invited. Anyhow, I survived, and here are some photos:
1. Shadow. The plane was small.
2. Charlottesville is so beautiful. With all the land out there, you’d think there would be a *few* affordable acres I could buy! Sigh.
3. This is what it looked like as we were landing. It was the scariest part.
My Christmas cactus has some timing issues, but I still love it.
For the past three weeks we have been playing Tuesday night trivia and we have won two times. I sure have a smart bunch of friends. Tonight, not only did we win the game, but we won the 25 cent shots round. None of us wanted shots, so we had 25 cent decaf coffees instead. Here is a cool picture that John drew of South America to help us answer a question about the Andes, as well as some computations I performed to figure out the square root of 2.
