Such an anticlimax!

The shareholders' meeting has come and gone and I hardly noticed.

I got to work a few minutes before 8:00 and there was plenty of room in the parking lot. I followed a large SUV up the driveway and it stopped in front of the front door and let a bunch of people out. I didn't think this sort of person carpools. I was pleasantly surprised.

When I got to the lobby there was a table where people were signing in. There were a couple baskets of sweet rolls and cookies for the attendees to munch on while milling around the lobby. I think they turned off some part of the badge reader because it didn't beep at me even though a shareholder was standing between the badge readers when I went through. It usually beeps if anybody is within 10 feet of a person going through it.

The only improvement I saw that had been made over the weekend was the curbs had been painted red. Here is the curb next to my usual parking spot without the chipped paint you saw last week.
And the curb in front of the water main has a fresh coat of paint.

Tomorrow we get to have an all-hands meeting with the CEO and the Chairman of the Board. Then it will be over.

No more sprucing up for a year.

That's Life

The view from my recliner now includes this:Liō is one of my favorite comic strips these days. Some time ago, the San Diego Union-Tribune gave us some comic strips to vote on as their replacement for "Foxtrot." One of them was "Liō." It was the only one that had any appeal for me (and at the time it didn't have a lot of appeal, just more than the other choices). They chose "Bliss" instead. ("Bliss" is starting to grow on me but certainly not as much as "Liō.")

I have to read Liō online (you may have noticed I've had a link to the strip's web site in my "Stuff you should look at" list over there on the right).

Liō is basically "Henry" with a wild imagination.

An entry in the blog for another comic strip I read, "Pooch Café," pointed me to a site that is selling a Pooch Café "laser cel" of one of the comic's Sunday strips. It turned out they had a couple of Liō strips. Including the one I find the funniest of all. It's now on my wall.

You, too, can get a copy at lasermach.com. Hurry. It's limited to 500 copies.

(Yesterday, Liō was hauled off by some men in black. He's being replaced by "Li'l Dicky." He won't say or do anything offensive. Old folks love 'im. It's going to be an interesting strip for a while.)

More backyard birds

Today, our backyard had another visitor. This time it was some kind of hawk. It was sitting on the fence that the neighbors made taller around their old chicken coop and was studying the ground by our shed.

There was some activity in the grass at the bottom of the fence now and then and the hawk flew down into the grass once. It was unsuccessful in its attack and went back to its perch on the fence. There was a family of squirrels romping around the other side of the shed all this time.

I am guessing some of the family was playing near the fence. At one point one of the squirrels asserted its right to the territory.
I'm guessing this was a mama or papa squirrel protecting its babies.

Later, a crow joined the hawk on the fence. I was about to take a group shot but just then the hawk tired of the crow and chased it off.
The hawk went back to its place and watched the squirrels for a while longer. It eventually left empty taloned.

I hope it's more successful next time.

YouTube insights

You might remember my movie of making Black and Tans. When I posted that message I just hit the "Add Video" button in the message composition box. That made a video that could be seen only through the blog message. After I started to use YouTube for my movies I decided to put my Black and Tan movie there. (I also put that version of the movie in my blog posting if you want to go back and watch it again.)

YouTube gives us insight into where people are when they watch our videos and how they find us. My Black and Tan movie has been watched in Ireland! Whoever watched it there found it by searching YouTube for "black and tans."

My other movies have been watched in India, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Canada, and England. My PB2 movie has gotten a 5-star rating from one person.

They like me! They really like me!

NO PARKING

The preparations for the visit by the Board of Directors are continuing. Monday is the big day!

When I got to work today, my usual parking spot had an orange cone in it so I had to park a few spots away. I park next to a tree so the car will be shaded a bit at lunchtime so I might not roast while working on my New York Times crossword puzzle after I get back from my walk or hike.

When I went out at lunch I saw why they had kept me out of my space. They added new, very fragrant mulch to cover the bare ground. Other parts of the parking lot had their dying grass covered.

My usual parking spot blocked by a cone

Earlier this week they washed the stairways. Now the floor and stairs shine and seem to have more traction than before. The Board will be impressed with the shininess. (No they won't! Board members use elevators!)

Today we got an interesting email cascaded through several levels of management. We are told that if we need to use one of the labs sometime on Monday and it doesn't really matter when, we should try to be there at a particular time when the Board's tour of the facility should be passing through the lab. They think it would be just swell if there were people there for the Board members to interact with. If they want to interact with the little people, they could simply take the tour through the offices. But we haven't gotten the memo asking us to clean our desks and to take down the Dilbert comics.

The problem with the invitation to use the lab at the magic moment is that nobody in our department is authorized to be in it at any time. Last year somebody got caught pilfering some rather pricey components from the lab and selling them on eBay. Now, to use the labs we have to have special permission.

Monday is going to be fun, fun, fun!

Yet more flowers (sorry)

I can't help it. New things keep blooming!

Our tabebuia is blooming. I was hoping for a better show than this. It didn't bloom last year because we had a rather deep freeze that winter while it still had its leaves. The leaves all turned black and fell off much earlier than they're supposed to. That was too much of a shock to the tree. I thought that maybe because there were no flowers last year that it would make up for it by having a lot more than normal. It's been blooming for a while but has only recently lost its leaves. (The colors are a little exaggerated. I fiddled a bit with the "gamma" and the saturation.)
Back in early March I gave you an update on our rose garden. Well, here's another one. A couple of the new roses have started blooming after just six or seven weeks in the ground. I guess they are thrilled to be here.

Here's Julia Child:

And here's the 4th of July (it's a climber):

Another one of the new ones has some buds and has become quite bushy. These roses started out as a couple of six or seven inch stems.

I still need to get an irrigation system installed. It gets a little old standing out there with hoses.

Heavens to Betsy, it's Aida!

Today we got to see the San Diego Opera's production of Aida. This is grand opera in a not so grand production. The Triumphal Scene left something to be desired. The stage was filled but it still seemed small. They had about 20 Ethiopian prisoners and most of them were women and children. They didn't seem to be much of a threat to the Egyptians. I'd like to see it at the Met.

The singers were hard to hear much of the time. Amneris seemed to hold back until the end. When she had her big scene during Rademes' trial she finally sounded good. I had a hard time hearing Aida and Rademes over the orchestra except for the tomb scene where things are rather quiet.

During "Celeste Aida," I was having a very hard time hearing Rademes and I cupped a hand around an ear but that didn't help. At one point he either forgot the words and just mumbled some syllables or was just way too quiet.

Years ago we went to an opera where a person sitting next to us literally cupped his ears in order to hear better. He had some Dixie cups that he had cut some notches in and hooked them onto his ears. I wonder if that helped. And I wonder if he carried Dixie cups with him to the theater all the time. He sure looked goofy but it was in the back row of the theater so nobody should have seen his improvised hearing aids.

Spring cleaning

Ah, spring! The time for tidying up and the time for annual shareholders' meetings!

Last year NCR spun off the part of the company I'm in to be an independent company. They set up the company's headquarters in Ohio but for some reason they've decided that the company's first annual meeting is going to be held right downstairs here in San Diego.

They expect about 80 people to attend this meeting. I'm guessing most of those are the executives and board of directors and their entourages. I suppose a handful of shareholders will come. They say that the meeting will last about half an hour. It starts at 8:00 A.M. so all the good parking spots will be taken before I get there. I'll have to park in the north forty and hike in. That's OK since I usually park in the south forty. The only problem is I'll leave on autopilot and go to my usual parking spot and have a big hike back to my car.

So, to make a good impression on the royalty and owners, they've been fixing up the property.

This weekend they are going to resurface the parking lot. Our visitors will get to park on dark pavement with bright, shiny lines. I wonder if they'll make wide spots for them and their huge rental cars.

They painted the water main that comes out of the ground to the anti-siphon valves and back underground. It's bright red now. It's on the way from the parking lot to the front door so it's the first thing our visitors will see.

After they cross the driveway they'll get to see the newly planted ivy. It won't have a chance to fill in before they get here. The next thing they'll see are some lights in the ground that used to shine on a tree. The tree's roots were tearing up the sidewalk so it got taken out. Last week there was an electrician digging up the light fixtures and cleaning them up. Now we have lights that shine into the sky that make it more difficult for the Palomar Observatory to do their work.

There is a tile on the front of the building just above the front door that got broken years ago. (I think the window washing platform smashed into it.) Somebody said that they bought just enough of these tiles to cover the buildings when they were being built and they aren't being made any longer. They're repairing that. I wonder how they're fixing it without any spare parts. I'll have to check that out.

Once they get into the lobby, they'll be greeted by a glass partition that has an opening with some badge readers on either side of it. These badge readers are new. We used to simply flash our badges at the receptionist. Now we have to play games with the readers. They have a light that turns green that says we're authorized to pass the partition. But it gives us about a microsecond to get past it. Otherwise it beeps loudly at us and we have to try again. I was getting good at making it through without beeping but they seem to like watching people struggle so they shortened the time it gives us to get through. I don't know what they're going to do to let the dignitaries through.

After they shareholders make it past the badge readers they will go down a gray hallway that is having nicks and scuff marks painted over. The meeting will be held in a newly painted conference room. The walls of the conference room used to have gray, peeling wallpaper. Now it has spiffy gray walls that match the hallway.

I don't know if it is related but last week they shampooed the carpets on the second floor where I work. I don't think that the shareholders will be given a tour of where the product they own is actually worked on. When they were cleaning the carpets they took all the chairs out of the cubicles. When they were finished they put chairs back in the cubicles but usually they didn't put them back where they came from. We get attached to our chairs and their idiosyncrasies. So there was much grumpiness as people searched for the chairs that fit their butts. Mine happened to come back to my cubicle in the first place so I didn't get to join the musical chairs game.

I hope they hold more shareholders' meetings here. It's good to get overdue repairs done.

I've been blinded!

Every so often, Jerry decides we need a change. He changed the windows in the family room and bedroom. We now have Roman Shades.

The bedroom shade is a dark paisley (or something like paisley) and has blackout lining. The two windows in the family room have this shade.
(I should have straightened out the fold a bit here before taking the picture but it kind of shows how the blinds fold as they're lifted.)

As you can see from the pictures there is some touching up that needs to be done. We need to fill holes where the curtain rods were attached. And the track that held the bedroom's sliding panels covered part of the wall and ceiling that was later painted. There's a stripe that needs to be addressed.

Helping to hang blinds involves holding things above ones head for extended periods of time. That hurts after a while. But that's over and things look nice. I guess we'll go through all this again when we do the touching up. But we'll be better at it and it will go quickly.

Two associations with my Little sister

Today we saw BLiNK! at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. It was a magic show. Half of the show was performed by the show's producer, a comic. He was pretty funny. Hearing the kids' reactions to the magic and the potty humor was fun. We sat in the mezzanine to avoid the audience participation. Most of the rest of the show, your usual straight magic, was, well, your usual magic show. If you like magic, you'd probably like this show.

You might remember that above the bar at the CCAE are the comedy and tragedy masks that bring back embarrassing memories. Today, taped on the lights above the bar (where the masks are hanging) were announcements of special drinks (because it is Sunday?):

MIMOSA'S
$4.00

(Two things that bring my little sister to mind in one word!)

Butterfly Amaryllis

Both stalks of my butterfly amaryllis are blooming now.



I'll have to feed them more regularly to encourage more of this behavior in the future.

Another Crow Clip

This morning there were crows washing their food in the birdbath again. There were pieces of a gopher or squirrel in the water when I filmed this crow trying to get into its nut.

We planted a pecan tree for the crows. They really like pecans and work very hard to get the goods out of the shells. They enlist the help of passing cars by putting them in the road. They try to open them by dropping them from the power lines onto the pavement. And they hammer at them with their beaks while wedging them into corners like the wall of a birdbath.

While this crow was working on his nut he had a visitor.



Mind you, there is a close relative, if not a family member, of the squirrel in the water it's drinking from.

Yuck!

Backyard Birds Dining

We encourage birds to visit us. We have two seed tubes hanging from a bottlebrush outside the kitchen window. I fill them with Deluxe Blend from Wild Birds Unlimited. It has seeds for the birds that can sit on the feeders' perches and seeds they don't care for that they throw down to the birds that eat on the ground.

Here are the seed tubes above a bunch of plants that have sprouted from the fallen seed that the ground feeders missed.
It's fun to watch the birds eating and fighting over the best perches. It gets quite raucous at times.

We also have an oriole feeder and hummingbird feeder. The orioles and hummers get sugar water and the orioles also get grape jelly. They eat mostly the jelly (the sugar water never goes away). The orioles are back and I saw my first one today. I got a picture from the dining room through the living room window. They're skittish birds so it will be tough getting better pictures. I tried. I sat on the floor by the window and held the camera up against the window and watched the display on the back of the camera. The bird never came back and my arms got tired. I'll try again when there are more birds coming to the feeder. It's early in the season for orioles.
The orioles really like the bottlebrushes when they're in bloom. I guess the flowers are full of nectar. The bushes in the front yard are spectacular when they're in bloom. That's when the orioles are abundant.

Last week Jerry saw an egret in the back yard that was eating a gopher. Yesterday it was back eating another gopher. I whipped out my trusty Kodak digital camera and filmed it from the bedroom. I didn't know that egrets eat rodents. I figured they were fishers and grazers. We need to get more egrets to visit...we've got a lot of gophers.

We have a couple of birdbaths. One is made out of plastic and the other is concrete. Lately, crows have been using the concrete one a lot. It's stable enough for them to sit on. The plastic one teeters under their weight so they leave it alone. The crows use it mostly to wash their food. They wash their food a lot while we're eating supper. They're taking care of the rodent population. I face the birdbath when I'm eating. It's something that can make a person lose his appetite if he weren't fascinated by the birds.

Prepare to lose your appetite.

Here are a couple of movies I took of the birds eating. The first one shows the seed eaters and and includes the oriole picture above. The movie continues with the egret downing the gopher then ends with a crow ripping apart another gopher (or bunny or squirrel?) on the birdbath.


(The clanking during the egret segment is Jerry rearranging the kitchen.)

The egret came back today and was eating another rodent. It's probably another gopher but it sure looks big for a gopher. I filmed this one from the bedroom window again. It's a lot like the egret in the first movie but it got spooked and flew to a higher perch that was closer and less obstructed. It's rather long (four and a half minutes) so you probably don't want to watch it all but you might want to watch the first minute to see it take off. (I need to remember to paste in a blank frame at the beginning. The video compression Google uses makes the beginning of the movie an ugly smudge without it.)


Here's the first egret holding its dinner.


Ain't nature grand?

Jerry: Basketball Wizard

Jerry won his company's March Madness Basketball Pool. (No gambling was involved...they all filled in their grids before the tournament started and the boss paid prizes for the winners.)

And that's all I have to say about that.

Yet another flower

My butterfly amaryllis is blooming. It's been blooming most years lately. I got it while still living in the condo nearly 20 years ago. (Or else the one from the condo is the one on the left. But I think the one that is blooming is my older one.) For years it just made leaves and nothing else. I'm happy that it's happy.


It's got a second flower stalk ready to go. The other plant shows no sign of blooming. :-(

La bohème

Today's Metropolitan Opera broadcast of Puccini's La bohème was great. The singing was great. The Franco Zeffirelli production was mind-boggling. This time even the camera work was good. They didn't keep us looking only at the principals. In the Café Momus scene they let us see a lot of the activity that was going on around the lovers. And it's a good thing I had my tissues. The end really gets my eyes and nose running no matter how many times I've seen or heard it.

The first time I saw La bohème was at the Santa Fe Opera. One day I was in the Mesa Public Library and ran into one of my little high school group who said she and her mother were going to the opera that night and her father wasn't going to be able to make it. She asked if I wanted to use his ticket. Well, yes, I'd like to see the opera.

So they picked me up that evening and we saw the opera. On the way home we talked about how it affected us. When they dropped me off it was time to settle the bill.

I had thought that it was a situation where they had a spare ticket that they didn't want to go to waste and they had found a friend who would appreciate being treated to the opera. But no, it was a situation where they found a buyer. They didn't make that clear when the offer was made. (I think I had enough money with me. Maybe I had to settle later.)

I'm surprised they didn't ask for gas money as well.

Living in the past

I was rummaging through one of my boxes of souvenirs trying to find something from my high school days. The box I was going through had junk treasures from my college days. One envelope had these two items. I don't know what provoked either of them. Maybe the senders could fill me in.

Being a pack rat is sometimes entertaining.

Thanks but I'll just go without clothes

In the movie "The Devil Wears Prada," Meryl Streep's character explains to her skeptical assistant how elements of this year's haute couture will be incorporated in the clothes she'll buy off the rack at Macy's next year.

I hope it doesn't work that way with men's fashions.

The New York Times gadget in my Google sidebar offered me this item from their fashion blog.

I would feel much more comfortable going naked than wearing this high fashion and I would certainly draw less attention to myself.