Tuesday, June 19, 2012

sweet little confused birdie


yesterday, we had a visitor: this lovely little rose-breasted grosbeak, who bonked his head on our window and became completely tame for over an hour. i'm actually wondering if he was someone's pet--i stuck my finger out and he hopped right on, which at first i thought meant he was hand-trained, but later i realized he was merely head-injured. his bump wasn't lethal, and he was very nice to have around--eventually he snapped out of it, jumped on my friend marge's head, then flew up to a high branch where he kept an eye on us for another hour. he was clearly feeling better.

sophie was absolutely distraught when he left--she planned on keeping him! after years with the cockatiels killer, fruit loop, and the others, and realizing how much better i could breathe without birds in my house, i just couldn't do it...




Monday, June 18, 2012

where the wild parrots are?


more from san francisco!  i looked and looked...but never found the damn parrots.  i did, however, very much love telegraph hill anyway, even though the climb up just about killed me.  what a gorgeous place!















Wednesday, June 13, 2012

all my friends know the low rider



low riders!  this is one of the things i really miss from new mexico.  we were thrilled to find these in san francisco--it was just good timing.  now go dig out your old war records and enjoy.









...and some details of the low riders:
beautiful color, but it'd be impossible to drive in anything other than a straight line (the steering wheel is touching the seat)

i didn't even notice the detailing inside the door as he was rolling by--i was entranced by the suicide doors instead

car seats in the back and tandem bicycle riders in the reflection.  sweet!

le swoon over this color, and i love that i caught rich carrying a ghirardelli's bag in the reflection

"three flavors" of chica: blonde, brunette and, i guess, raven.  sorry gingers.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

forget it babe--it's chinatown



last week rich and i were gifted a small window of time to ourselves, thanks to the american board of ophthalmology and our lovely neighbor, marge.  the ABO asked rich to give a portion of its oral boards in beautiful san francisco, and marge very generously offered to watch gus and sophie (and paco) while we went off for a long weekend.  this is officially the second trip we have taken, just the two of us, since gus was born...so we were thrilled!  we saw some old friends (brian n., mark a., dr. sutphin, jennifer s.) and ate some really good food.

i spent my days taking pictures, while rich tried not to make any new ophthalmologists cry during their test.  these are images i shot in and around chinatown.  enjoy!
































Saturday, June 2, 2012

how not to run a business

also from the now-defunct blog; also from a couple of years ago.  i think this one was my favorite post of all of them.  never went back there, by the way...and, we have a donutland now!

significant other moved us to a tiny little town in the middle of bumbledy-fuck-nowhere about a year and a half ago--something about a job and a better education for things 1 and 2...all that crap...i wasn't really paying attention. but, while significant other and things 1 and 2 are off betterin' their learning and workin' at that awesome mill, anti-respectively, i'm left to negotiate said tiny little town and some of its more-challenging-than-not denizens.

this morning was no exception.

despite living in a place with at least as many fat-assed hominems as any other, this town lacks a dunkin' donuts, donutland, krispy kreme (are they even in business anymore?) or any other purveyor of frittered goodness, save the local grocery store or the truckstop down the interstate. and those aren't options. so imagine my surprise when i learned of a bakery--a locally-owned small business, no less!--that made donuts on saturday mornings (only) to fill the void. i immediately mapquested that fucker and this morning set out to conquer.

i find it--it's tiny and it's in a HOUSE! squee for supporting the local economy!--so i park my comparatively ginormous SUV in a snowbank out back, and trudge through the drifts to get in. three tables! cute little handpainted signs! hmmm...surly grad student working the counter? $4 petit fours? $2 donuts? $3 muffins? oh well--it's LOCAL and SPECIAL so i'll do my civic duty and try them out anyway. the baker bitch pokes her head out from the kitchen and sneers at me after she heard me blithely order one of everything on the top row of the display (don't judge--it's my first time here and i have no idea what significant other or things 1 and 2 will eat when i get back). surly grad student huffs at me, grabs a ginormous box and starts folding it to fill with locally-produced goodies, only to glare at me and say, "you know, you should really call ahead if you're going to place an order this big."

i asked for a total of four items--that's how many were on the top shelf.

and now i'm having to apologize for buying their fucking food. apparently i am not treating these precious baked goods with the reverence they allegedly deserve. surly grad student must have misheard my order because she's putting two of everything in the box...whatever, that only makes eight, they're not that big, and i'm still on the i'm-doing-my-civic-duty-by-shopping-at-a-small-business buzz, so i don't correct her. i even throw in two more pain au chocolates that were on the counter. suck it, bitch!

so i go to check out and i'm suddenly worried they don't take credit cards. "um, do you take plastic?" "of course," respondeth little miss surly rolling her dead eyes at me. i hand her the card only to have her announce to the mostly empty room, "it is DECLINED. your card is NO GOOD." the couple sitting at one of the three tables in the room, crouching over their shared $4 petit four and $2 nonrefillable cups of coffee, tsk audibly. fortunately, i have a spare card, which works fine. baker bitch is now staring at me from the back to get the fuck out of her inestimable small business.

and the irony of this all this fuckery? the baked goods were mediocre at best--i could have whipped up the same exact thing here without the attitude (okay, that's a lie--i'd probably still have the attitude). i probably would have been in an equal position, gastronomically, had i supported the truckstop bakery.

i just love small town living.