This is another fun photo challenge. Thank you for hosting, XingfuMama!
Self spent last weekend in beautiful Mendocino. That place is so beautiful, it always revives her spirit.
She dropped by the Mendocino Coast Botanic Garden, where she saw this fabulous driftwood bench. She wishes she could get something similar for her garden!
Friends in New York City have been telling self about the sudden drop in temperature.
All clear here, on the northern California coast! Feeling lucky.
Posting for Hammad Rais’s Weekend Sky challenge.
Andy Hertzfeld on his boss, Steve Jobs:
Walter Isaacson:
The thing is, self loathes Trump but understands Jobs. Jobs gave her laptops that traveled with her to Dharamsala, Venice, Pasadena, New York, the Philippines etc It did belly flops on concrete (It was brand new, too! Self thought for sure she’d have to get a new one, but no), got beer spilled on it, got left behind (once) at Shannon Airport in Ireland, got left behind again in Don Salvador Benedicto (Negros Island, central Philippines). The product is not a grift; it delivers. In addition: she can walk into an Apple store anywhere in the world — Paris, London, Dublin — and the staff there will know how to get her the right product to interface with her MacBook so that she is more efficient. This is beautiful. It’s better than a cult.
Walter Isaacson:
To Steve Jobs, making laptops was an art. He didn’t apply to Stanford because, he said, “The students were not artistic.” He had “a passion for making a great product, not a profitable one.”
Stay tuned.
Yesterday, son and Jennie and Lucia went for an outing to Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park. Such beautiful gardens! Lucia particularly liked the water fountain. Self thinks this picture is perfect for Jez Braithwaite’s Water, Water Everywhere Challenge.
DCI Harry Nelson comes barging into Dr. Ruth Galloway’s little Italian idyll. In true Nelson fashion, he gets upset at Ruth, and boards a plane.
Ruth and Shona are at a sidewalk café in some picturesque Italian town when “a grey Fiat comes through the archway, going far too fast. For a moment it looks as if it’s going to plough through the tables outside the café, but then it comes to an abrupt halt by the church. Two men get out of the car . . . ‘Dad! shouts Kate.”
To add to the frisson of the moment, Nelson’s brought Cathbad along, and Cathbad is in full Druid mode, “wearing a purple cloak that gleams in the sunlight.”
YEEEEESSS! If you’re going to chase after your Baby Mama in Italy (leaving your pregnant wife at home while a deranged killer is on the loose), go whole hog and bring along a Druid.
Do not be feeling too bad for Michelle, Nelson’s wife, because no sooner has Nelson left for the airport than she gives her ten-years-younger lover a call and he drops everything and drives 100 miles, from Essex to King’s Lynn, and they have fun times in Nelson’s bed (Michelle is pregnant, but that apparently doesn’t get in the way at all), and afterwards she even lets Tim take a shower in Nelson’s bathroom.
Wonder what the neighbors think? Who cares what the neighbors think, it’s what self thinks that counts, and what she thinks is that Tim (who Nelson hired and invited to his house, which is how Tim met Michelle in the first place) is an absolute P.I.G.
But anyhoo. Back to Italy. Nelson offers to drive Ruth to Monte Cassino (which self thinks she will add to her bucket list).
“St. Benedict founded a hospital here,” says Ruth. “The oldest hospital in Europe. The oldest medical school in the world was nearby, in Salerno.”
Nelson does not seem interested in the Benedictine rule.
— The Dark Angel, p. 205
Fun times!
Stay tuned.
The Weekend Roundup Challenge is hosted by Tom, The Backroads Traveler.
There are three parts to this challenge:
Without further ado:
Tom’s Choice: Berry
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Self is so glad that she has Shards of Earth to keep her mind off the unspeakable tragedy that is Renegade SCOTUS. Anyhoo, it’s doing double-time duty this weekend, and self has just been barreling along.
She’s now in a Havaer section, and it is pretty much generic hard-boiled detective stuff. Though Havaer is far from her favorite character, the dialogue has a certain Raymond Chandler vibe. Havaer has been interviewing a witness, a lawyer named Thrennikos who’s been contacted by Idris sidekick Kit (a beautiful lawyer; self hates Kit for having had such wonderful adventures with Idris while poor Solace, Idris’s close friend, was stuck on an all-woman ship and put into cryogenic sleep for, off and on, 40 years).
Thrennikos: Officer, these are my new clients, representing the Broken Harvest Society. They share your interest in my earlier visitors. And in anyone asking questions about them.
Havaer: And the currency your new clients are paying you is . . . ?
Thrennikos: Not skinning me and wearing me like a cloak, yes.
Threnniko’s New Client: Government man, my name is Heremon, herald of The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook.
BWAH HA HAAAAA!
What follows is a torture scene. Dammit, Adrian Tchaikovsky, why do you have to make even the torture scenes so full of balletic blood splatter and beautifully articulated flayed organs?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
“Mmm-hmm,” Tracker said. “And nothing makes bullshit worse than someone with an accent like mine.”
“Your accent is fine,” Speaker said. “It’s not like you’re the only person in the galaxy with a thick accent.”
— The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, p. 20
While walking around Oxford yesterday evening — all the students are out with their families; restaurants and bars are sooooo crowded. Self is still wearing her mask but 90% of the people she sees aren’t — she saw this unusual iris! She’d never seen an iris this color before.
Posting for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Check out some gorgeous skies on Hammad’s Weekend Sky Challenge!
This view of Philadelphia faces the Delaware River and the Ben Franklin bridge. New Jersey is just on the other side.
Kanlaon 