As anyone who cares knows, we in Northern California had an annular eclipse on Sunday. "Annular" means ring-shaped, and this term for an eclipse denotes one in which the moon at apogee, the highest point in its orbit relative to the Earth, crosses the sun's disk but does not entirely… Read full post »

It seems like just a couple weeks ago things were still a little damp from the last of our spring rains. I mowed the lawn one Sunday, then went away on a short trip. I came back to find the dry season had taken over. Our little patch of lawn… Read full post »

I'm writing an assigned work-related blog post, which means that I'm procrastinating. Which means that I found it necessarily to vacuum my office and back hallway. Which means that I'm posting another shot from my recently completed trip to Chicago. Last Friday, Ann (my sister), Ingrid (my ni… Read full post »

Me: [Erstwhile Cubs closer Carlos] Marmol. He's bad. He's explosively bad, like a bad case of diarrhea.

Thom: Yeah?

Me: Yeah. He's the only pitcher who has recently been likened to diarrhea. 'Cause when he's on the mound, the other team gets the runs.

Thom: Aw, shit.

Me: Exactly.

Back west tonight after a week in Chicago. Hard to leave there, but always good to be home. Here's my ride back, a Boigin 737, snapped as I was about to step from the jetway onto the plane.

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CHICAGO IL 1216 AM CDT TUE MAY 8 2012 ...DENSE FOG ESPECIALLY NEAR LAKE MICHIGAN TONIGHT... .LIGHT WINDS AND CLEARING SKIES HAVE ALLOWED DENSE FOG TO DEVELOP ACROSS MUCH OF NORTHEAST ILLINOIS AND NORTHWEST INDIANA...WITH DENSE FOG ALSO PUSH…

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Late last Thursday morning, I went walking up Western Avenue from my sister's place. Ultimate destination: the long-term-care/assisted-living facility (a.k.a. "nursing home") where our dad landed after his most recent hospitalization for pneumonia. Secondary destination: Starbucks, for the co… Read full post »

I'm not in the Bay Area to do our Friday night ferry ritual. So the next best thing was to do a Friday evening boat trip in Chicago. Ann (my sister) and Ingrid (my niece) and I drove downtown and caught a Wendella cruise from a dock just beneath the… Read full post »

I managed to miss my scheduled flight earlier today by attempting one too many last-minute tasks before I headed out the door to the airport (including the daily Last Task Before Leaving, walking The Dog). I took BART out to SFO and knew I was kind of cutting it close… Read full post »

Off to Chicago today on a family visit. The top item on the agenda: visiting my dad, who's in a rehab facility/nursing home on the North Side of Chicago after two bouts of pneumonia over the past couple of months (and a more general cognitive and physical decline that's goes… Read full post »

In West Oakland for a news story yesterday (our state senator was promoting her bill to create a statewide mattress recycling system--there are a lot of them left on the streets there), the strong secondary attraction was the graffiti wall running south from 25th and Willow streets. This is a… Read full post »

"There's a house on myblock that's abandoned and cold,

The folks moved out of it a long time ago,
And the took all their things and they never came back,
It looks like it's/… Read full post »

Mount Tamalpais from Cesar Chavez Park (also known as Berkeley's lovely reclaimed old garbarge dump). We wound up there the other night after walking the dog in our neighborhood. It looked like the sunset would be a show, and I said that to Kate when we got home. She said,… Read full post »

I have my coffee in the morning with a little half-and-half in it. I'll almost always drink more than a cup. I'll almost always leave a cup with maybe an inch of coffee in the bottom. I'll walked away and forget it as I get ready to walk the… Read full post »

The neighboring maple. That's a mess of seeds waiting to helicopter down a little later in the year. In the background, the sky is a rain-scrubbed blue. The forecasters say the weather this week will turn warm (quite warm--in the upper 80s and 90s if you're well south and inland… Read full post »

The Peralta (aka the ferry) pulls into the Jack London Square dock about 7:50 tonight. It cleared up today after all the rain of the last two or three days, but the clouds at sunset were dramatic. The ferry ride: on the chilly side for an April evening, especially after… Read full post »

Item: Some among us apparently are not aware that the story of the Titanic was a real, honest-to-goodness, true-life historical event as opposed to a James Cameron "King of the World" extravaganza. (The evidence: a string of Twitter posts from users expressing surprise that the Titanic existed outsid… Read full post »

Sunday evening at Rose and Henry streets, North Berkeley, on our way back from a walk into the hills. The weather service describes these as "high clouds streaming over the forecast area ... associated with a low pressure system" over the Pacific seven or eight hundred miles to our northwest… Read full post »

A crane at the Port of Oakland's Charles P. Howard Terminal, just west of the Jack London Square Ferry dock. We had just gotten off the boat after a roundtrip to San Francisco. I didn't expect to capture Orion, but there it (or he) is at the upper left.… Read full post »

On Capp Shotwell Street, an alley-like little street that runs down the east side of the Mission district in San Francisco. There's one block, between 16th and 17th streets, that always has some visual surprise despite the superficially bland surroundings (a health clinic and a few two-flat b… Read full post »

The west side of the 8300 block of S. May Street, Chicago, in the 1940 census (click for a larger version.)

A while back, it occurred to me I'd better start recording the basics of some of the "how we're related" family stories I'd heard for a long time from… Read full post »

The local hole-in-the-wall liquor store, as seen on a late-birthday-night walk with The Dog.

The city of Berkeley has planted new street trees around our neighborhood. We've seen a variety in the past, from scrubby, less-than-robust-looking Chinese pistaches, liquidambars, and this-one-with-rough-bark-that's-quite-beautiful-in-the-autumn. There's a stout-looking eastern oak across th… Read full post »

The day began with rain, and with rain it ends. A sort of anemic late-season storm arrived before dawn and then parked. Even a weak little storm will get you wet when it decides not to move on. I can hear rain on the roof and running down the drainpipes.… Read full post »

If you spend time on the National Weather Service sites, you're familiar with their regional forecast maps, mosaics of color denoting advisories for floods (in different shades of green), winter storm watches and warnings (purple and pink), and red-flag alerts (an alarming scarlet). One "fore… Read full post »