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.