Having lost all sense of time, in regards to what day it is or what time of day it is, I’m still “mining” the ton of pictures that I took on the eclipse trip to Texas earlier this month.
This panorama was taken from a rest stop in New Mexico, just to the east of Las Cruces, where I was about to head into that thunderstorm, which indeed did have high winds, lightning, thunder, heavy rain, and light hail. It was spectacular!
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather
I ran into this one twice on my Texas trip.
One of the ways hotels try to spruce up their rooms in an “upgrade” is to replace the bathroom fixtures. They like things that are stylish and “modern,” “artsy,’ or “fashionable” or “trendy.” Anyone else see the problem with this?
Which way do you turn this for hot water and which way for cold water when you’re adjusting the shower? I know that usually it’s hot to the left, or clockwise, but given that hot water takes a while to start after you turn it on, you can screw around for quite a while, either scalding or freezing parts of your naked anatomy you would prefer to not be scalded or frozen.
Then on the way home, ther was this gem:
Same problem with a new problem to boot. Would it really be THAT hard to engrave or stamp a little “H” and “C” onto the handle? Or just a little dot glued on with blue on one side, red on the other (for the international crowd)?
And this sink fixture is on the side, not on the back of the sink. Cool! Trendy! Stylish! NOT!!
Right up until the point where I want to brush my teeth and I normally rinse by running water into my hand and ducking my head to the left or right of the faucet. But here there is no left or right without either being a contortionist or doing that “drop-from-the-ceiling-like-Ethan-Hunt-at-the-CIA-thing” from the first “Mission Impossible” movie.
For us more normal humans it just left me wanting to take a baseball bat to it for kicks. And revenge. And general principles.
Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Photography, Travel
Rain. An empty street. Little or no color. What comes next?
Is there a rainbow? Or a flood?
Blue skies & puffy clouds? Or lightning, thunder, hail, destruction?
If we only knew then what we know now.
If we only knew today what we’ll know in six years.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography
Last night I shared a picture looking west at sunset from a rest stop off of I-10 in west Texas, just east of where I-10 and I-20 split. But if you look the other way…
I’ve mentioned and shown pictures before of the “Belt of Venus,” an astronomical phenomenon seen in the eastern sky at sunset.
It’s simply the Earth’s shadow rising in the sky as the Sun sinks below the opposite horizon.
It can be clearly seen, even from a city like Los Angeles, but it was spectacular from a dark location in the middle of nowhere in a “clear & a gazillion” sky.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Travel
My head is either too full or too empty tonight. Or both. Simultaneously.
It’s odd, and not necessarily comfortable. “Comfortable” might be overrated.
Or not.
Blow this one up. Just look at it. I barely remember taking it, but I’m finding that I really, REALLY like it.
The gradient. The silhouttes. The composition.
Blind squirrel. Broken clock. Paul’s photography.
Filed under Photography, Sunsets, Travel
I got several of these alerts while driving cross country to Texas and back for the eclipse.
It turns out that Hissy has a very nice sound system. And if you’re bombing across the terrain at 80+ mph (I was using cruise control to stay at the speed limit, didn’t want any tickets this trip and as we know from seven years ago in Kansas, the local constabulatory looks on a gazillion eclipse tourists as easy prey to fill their coffers) you sometime need to max out the volume to hear over the wind and road noise. Because, DUH!
Billy was having a White Wedding.
Major Tom was still alive, and going home.
Forty-four women got two lines each.
The Chicks aren’t ready to make nice. (Nor should they be, ever.)
And the fourth movement of the New World Symphony? If Dvorak didn’t want it played LOUD, then why did he write it that way?
What? You say you listen to your favoritest, bestest, most wonderfulest tunes in the car and don’t have the sound turned up to eleven?
You might want to reconsider your life choices.
We saw how they looked spread across the landscape on the freeway medians, center dividers, and through the parks. They looked as good or better one-on-one, up close and personal.
Filed under Flowers, Photography, Travel
There are wild birds and then there are park birds – these were park birds. But they’re still interesting to me.
A mallard in the water at RiverWalk, looking for handouts.
Goslings (no doubt all named Ryan) at the Tower of the Americas.
One adult goose keeping track of the kids.
I figured with that chest marking (it looks like a maple leaf to me) this must be a Canadian goose – as opposed to a Canada Goose, which I’m pretty sure it’s not. (The Merlin app IDs it as an Egyptian Goose.)
The other parent and one little one who’s sticking close.
Mama duck and a flotilla of ducklings.
Maybe it’s Admiral Duck, not Mama.
Out at the eclipse, it’s an American Coot.
I don’t know if it’s an old coot or not…
Filed under Birds, Photography, Travel
We normally would have been seeing “Funny Girl” at the Ahmanson two weeks ago, on April 6th, but I was three large states away, so we rescheduled.
No, I haven’t become homeless – that’s my two-day old Kings playoff beard! Yes, I know the looks are almost identical…
Let the festivities begin!
Filed under Entertainment, Los Angeles, Photography
Spend a few days driving around the American Southwest and you’ll run into a few of these dudes.
Hopefully not literally – that’ll leave a mark.
They grow all over the place, even in some of the most inhospitable locations.
But these are all parts of decorative landscaping, which is also a very US Southwest sort of thing.
I don’t know if it’s a spring thing or year-round, but most of these seem to have what pass for flowers and/or fruit in the thick and thorny plant world.
Is part of this edible? Or, more practically, fermentable? Probably? Maybe if/when we find the Forever Home (R) in the high desert we can experiment with that.
Okay, I suspect this isn’t quite a “cactus” – I think it’s probably some sort of yucca tree or plant?
Again, not an expert at all. (And it shows!)
Or some sort of palm tree. Whatever, it’s life in a very dry, barren, hostile place.
Like Dr. Ian Malcolm says in “Jurassic Park,” somehow life finds a way.
Filed under Flowers, Photography, Travel
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 