Scenes from a carwash

An absolutely PERFECT June morning in the Greater Dryden Metroplex. Off to pick up mini-donuts, eggs, and the New York Times. Hey, it's early enough that the carwash shouldn't be too crowded, and Pablo Passat has a yellow hue due to all the pollen he has collected. Hey... I bet I can get some neat abstract shots while the car is being cleaned and waxed. WOW, some of these are really quite good...

Nothing much to report since yesterday's post - Ellie went to play with Mickey at the Ithaca Dog Park this morning, and Mickey got arrested (well, ok, his owner got a ticket.) There is some anti-dog Nazi lawyer named Arthur who apparently has nothing better to do with his weekends than scrutinize the park with binoculars and stridently point out Transgressors (there's a fine line between where the dogs are and aren't allowed to be off-leash, and it's not fenced) to the Park Police. In addition, apparently the lake is 'state land'. So if a dog is running around that's OK, but if he or she hops in the lake, he or she is In Violation.  It's not clear who hates Arthur more, the dog owners or the Park Police.  Gotta run, Tiger's teeing off...

A landscape transformed

Our colorful front doorway. Looks like it's time to paint the door again.

But if we do that, then the decking will demand to be painted.  And, eventually that leads to repainting the entire house. I don't want to go there right now.

Our colorful deck.

The other evening we actually caught a thunderstorm.  This miniature picture doesn't completely capture the eerie pre-storm light across the valley, but it's what I have. Unfortunately, the shots I took during the storm didn't come out. NOTE TO SELF: Read manual section about Night Shot Setting and Manual Exposure.

On Tuesday afternoon, the front of the house looked like this. That big rock is Borormir.

Rosemary's Master Plan continues its inexorable assault. On Wednesday afternoon, it looked like this. The landscapers showed up with two (small) trucks of plants and installed them.  It looks rather sparse now, but I am assured that all of this flora will grow rapidly and fill out the space. The big rock at the corner of the house is Faromir. Boromir & Faromir were brothers in The Lord of the Rings. I don't know why we named rocks in our garden after them but we did.

Now all we have to do is water the damned things. If only we had an outdoor water tap (doh!). For now, we're connecting the garden house to the washing machine input pipe. Fortunately, plumbers are cheap. (See why I don't want to get into the painting thing right now?)

Have you seen my swimming trunks?

Today was another Burn a Vacation Day before 6/30. Happily, US Open coverage started at 10:00 am, so Ellie and I spent most of the day on the couch watching Oakmont humble everyone except Paul Casey.  Looks like a course I would never want to play, if I was still playing. One thing I object to; no water on the course. I find courses without water hazards to be claustriphobic, and I get thirsty just watching people play them on TV.

Alright, I'm utterly rambling, just trying to fill up space. Time to go.

Another Green World

No new pictures today, it's so verdant here that every shot is coming out like a leaf-green color swatch. It has been consistently warm and sunny. I just saw Ellie shaking herself after coming out of the pond, and thunderstorms are threatened for tonight, so there may be some material there. Also, we are awaiting delivery of the next phase of Rosemary's garden project...





The weekend passed uneventfully; I spent a few hours catching up with my friends at Reunion, none of us was really able to explain to the others what we do, except for Gormley, who inherited a house in Ireland (and whatever NYC real estate his father kept). So, he mostly hangs out near Dublin, drinks Guiness and paints. See you again in five years, boys.





Watched the French Open finals. I must say, Justine Henin generates more power out of a 5'6" body than anyone I have ever seen. And that backhand. Nadal/Federer was rather a letdown - Federer looked smooth and tremendous, as always, but he hit way too many balls outside the lines. Some of that was Nadal's doing; I read in a recent NYT Science page article that, I forget if they used Borg or Sampras as an example, but your 'classic' pro player hit the ball with about 1000 rpm of spin. Federer generates 3500! rpm, yet Nadal clocks in at a ridiculous 5000 rpm. Yeah, some of that is surely due to today's racquets, but if you watch Rafa hit a forehand in slow motion, it's amost impossible to see why the ball doesn't just dive into the ground. It's a preposterous stroke.





The only other news, of course, is that The Sopranos came to a conclusion on Sunday night. There's been so much coverage of it that I doubt I can spoil the surprise for anyone, but I won't spill the beans unless asked. I will just say, I thought it was a mostly excellent episode (there's been a bit too much AJ of late, but whaddyagonnadoaboudit? - there aren't that many characters left) and the controversial final fivev minutes was perfect, in my judgement. Hope the cable-impaired don't have to wait too long for the DVD release.





What I am sure is a dog in need of serious towelling off is yipping at the door. I feel silly drying her off just so she can jump back in the pond in 20 minutes, but as I've said before, she doesn't like being on the opposite side of the door from her people. So, I'm obliged to let her in.