How I love coming across a new-to-me yard with a rock collection. I like a pile of landscaper-supplied river rocks just fine, but a bunch of lovingly curated rocks? I’ll stop to look closely at each one. “Why do they love this one?”
(One neighbor has whole logs and stumps of petrified wood!)

Same! Except I’m going to sleep about when you’re waking up so it’s
- 10 pm (pacific time): ah the east coast has finally gone to bed wait omg terrible things on the west coast
- 1 am: ah the landscapes in Europe are so lovely, and such pretty birds

The larch trees where we parked to put the canoe in, along the Slocan River. #canada #october

“Free markets and personal liberties“ is always some guy who has never had to solve a real problem in his life and is pissed off about:
- labor laws, and/or
- age of consent laws

I finally fixed my loom, so I’m winding my father’s old ironwood netting shuttle. He made it some 60 years ago for crabbing in the San Francisco Bay.

iPhone showing audiobook of Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel “Barrayar” It is sitting on a wooden outdoor table next to an ironwood netting shuttle half wound with thin yarn in multicolored pastels. The ball of yarn is on a spindle next to a glass a wine.

I just want to spend the rest of my life with Lois McMaster Bujold narrated by Grover Gardner. Gardner is the greatest. He’s surpassed the great, great Frank Muller, IMO.
They both, Bujold and Gardner, sound like they just have so much FUN writing and reading these books.

I’m wondering what actual military people will be thinking when they‘re looking across a town square at those dumbass fatass cosplaying armed&masked civilian LEOs.
I’m wondering about the conversations among the highest ranking military leaders. They’re in a pickle. They need high-ranking gonads rn.

Every other journalist in their Rolodex was already tied up on the phone with a different flag officer. The sports reporter for the Bland County Messenger probably has a two-star blowing up his phone right now, looking for someone to gripe to.

She is like Dolly Parton: balancing vast talent, brilliant business sense, and innate kindness.
Parton never let anybody take financial advantage of her even being such a cute and charming young woman navigating the rapacious music industry of her early days. Then uses HER money for philanthropy.

Same people who believe that honoring the Navajo Code Talkers is silly DEI.

Just another day at the office.

I’m on the tracks! Got a few fat tropical splats of rain an hour ago and then just now a minute or two of light sprinkles. Wet dirt! Petrichor!
(First rain of the season, I‘m allowed to do three exclamation points)

Old school singer who knows how to use old school microphones 🎤

I backed up to see who was doing those high-lonesome harmonies at the end - it was Seger! So I backed up about ten more times then played it through a few more times. Thanks for this.

Cotton/silk crocheted blanket in a textured stitch in warm subtle shades of yellow, green, brown. Phone showing my library audiobook of “Ghost” written by Jason Reynolds and narrated by Guy Lockard.

My library has a “banned books“ section. I like this one: 7th-grader does dumb things and smart things; just a normal decent kid trying to figure stuff out. Not even a cuss word in the book. Why banned? Well, the kid is Black? wtf
I like this yarn so much I decided to make myself a little blanket.

Equinox lakelight. Half all gold light, half all reflective shadow.

Every time I feel an earthquake I nervously judge if it might be the Hayward fault, which will be a catastrophe when it really goes off.
This one did feel like the Hayward fault judging from the v brief pause between waves. I’m about 20 miles east.
Got the ShakeAlert right between the two waves.

I got the alert here in concord right between the first small jolt and the second bigger jolt.

Oof. I did that last year knowing I react strongly to Covid shots and knowing the reputation of shingles shots. Figured I’d get the double blerg over with. It took about 48 hours vs the usual 24. Lots of ibuprofen was consumed. Good luck, hope you can just take it easy for a day or two.

Photo of a tombstone over a father, age 40, his 13 yo daughter, and 4 month old son. The deaths were in 1869 and 1870.

Going through an 1800s mining town cemetery my little niece, about 6 yo, started crying. “Why so many dead babies?”

It was 2022 when they swarmed here in the far east bay. I‘ve seen a few so far this year, first time since 2022, but nothing like the ‘22 swarm.

Brown marmorated stink bugs just hatching. They’re orange and black. Some eggs are still full of bug with little legs starting to poke out. They’re tiny, maybe 1.5-2 mm.

Kinda cute babies

It looks like a brown marmorated stink bug, a newish invasive species. They swarmed my apt building a few autumns ago, clustering on the west walls and laying eggs and trying to get inside to overwinter. Dept of Agriculture was soliciting reports of sightings. They have an interecting smell.

I thought: wait, isn’t it early for the Blue Angels?
(Possibly this perfect early-October weather confused me :)

I’d yell “tuna juice!” and she’d come running.

He’s probably thinking about all the poors who work at Maralago, handling his food, serving him. It’s one thing to get MAGA points for yelling about diseased immigrants, but then it occurs to him that he’s got all these immigrant servants breathing on him…

Oh, of course! I’ve wondered at the pattern of child deaths, like when visiting an 1800s graveyard, but post-weaning makes so much sense.

When my brother got bit by a raccoon his doctor ran to get a vaccine then drove over to give him a shot. Urgent house call on a Sunday!
Your docs should be as frightened of rabies as my brother’s doc.

I quit The Atlantic when they ran a long looong article by David Brooks on morality.
Honestly, editorial board, was it that he throws excellent but exclusive parties or what.

Oh, I’m slipping that one into my back pocket.
I withdraw and emerge on an irregular orbit.