Butternuts and Pirate Monkeys

I've photographed these windows before, in context as part of the shopfront. But when I passed them a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd do a close-up. They need a good cleaning, and some of them seem like they may have a second layer of yellowed plastic behind them, and that duct-tape repair job at upper right has got to go -- but still, don't you love them?

And with that, let's take a look at some other random photos I've stacked up over the past several weeks.

My neighbor had this sitting out with her trash. I had no idea what a "Butternut Box" was, and the instruction to "open and sniff" seemed a little strange. (No thanks!) Turns out it's a brand of designer dog food. Her dog is obviously eating better -- or at least more expensively -- than Olga.

When I went to see the Winter Lights at Battersea Power Station a couple of weeks ago, I was amused to find this pigeon strutting around inside Starbucks, looking for crumbs. That's a pretty enterprising bird. Not only was it inside the power station, but it was also inside an enclosed shop where it knew there would be food. There's a reason pigeons dominate the urban landscape.

A student returned this book to the library with color-coded sticky notes inside the front cover. I suppose they were using those colors to gauge their reactions as they read? Doesn't seem like there would be many "happy/yay! 😊" moments in this book -- at least not until the end.

Found this eye-catching sticker on a street sign. CSKA Sofia is a football club in Bulgaria, not to be confused with CSKA 1948 Sofia. (I didn't know any of this until I looked it up.)

Another fun sticker -- Pirate Monkey!

Here's Olga with some big, colorful graffiti we found last weekend. This wall used to be regularly buffed (painted over) so I'm not sure how long the graffiti will last. Seems like maintenance has diminished lately.

Finally, as I walked home from work a few nights ago, this gigantic tractor-trailer was trying to back into a parking bay behind and beneath the new apartment buildings on West End Lane. It was blocking the roadway all the way across, with a couple of guys directing, and this was during evening rush hour. I was surprised more people weren't complaining or honking but they seemed to take it in their stride. I guess driving in the big city presents plenty of obstacles like this. I'm glad no one was in an ambulance trying to get by.

Siri Makes Another Video

We're having some dreary weather here, though perhaps not quite as dreary as in the video posted by the guy from Wales who found the monolith. We had light rain pretty much all morning yesterday and the plants are loving it. The temperatures have climbed a bit, too, with no overnights below 40º F forecast in the foreseeable future. I'm starting to think about moving the avocado back outside, but I'll probably wait until April at least.

It's really hard for me to type this post because the dog is on my lap -- I'm on the couch, holding the computer with my left arm and typing with my right hand. Cumbersome! Also I'm once again noticing that many of the keys on my keyboard have completely worn away. Instead of letters I'm seeing a keyboard full of round O's glowing like full moons, which is hard to deal with when I'm not typing in a normal position and working from QWERTY muscle memory. I probably need to think about a new computer.

OK, I've shifted the dog.

As you can see, I have nothing to talk about today, really. I did read a fun and poignant column yesterday about the 50th anniversary of "Free to Be, You and Me," the TV special produced by Marlo Thomas back in the early '70s that is seen as a cultural touchstone for people my age. I don't remember watching it when it first came out in 1974, but I remember listening to the record and singing the theme song in our elementary school music class. The message that we were free to become whatever we wanted, regardless of the gender roles society tried to force on us, felt liberating to me even then. Girls could have careers, men could cry, boys could play with dolls, girls should learn to fend for themselves.

Of course, being a gay kid, I'm sure I felt that message more than some other viewers. Those songs told me it was OK to be different -- and even though I was seven years old at the time and wasn't entirely sure how I was different, I knew I was. "Like many works from the early ’70s," wrote columnist James Poniewozik, the show "can seem simultaneously a dated product of a specific time and an artifact from an alternative future that never quite arrived."

I'll leave you with this:

My iPhone made another video of Olga images. It does this now and then, all by its lonesome -- the last one was in November 2022. Unfortunately, Siri tends to be a bit haphazard about cropping. I once again had to manually replace a couple of the videos so you could actually see the dog -- she'd been cropped out entirely -- and as you can see, she's at the margin of several of the photos. But it's an enjoyable little snippet nonetheless, so if you want an Olga fix, feel free to watch.

(Top photo: Reflections spotted on my walk home from work.)

White Cat

As I was walking to work yesterday morning, I saw this perfectly poised white cat sitting on a windowsill. It seemed so perfect I momentarily wondered if it was a garden ornament.

But then it moved! It sure blends in well with that building, doesn't it? I wonder if whoever lives there has an all-white living room, like Daisy Buchanan?

I had a strange realization yesterday. I was helping a boy with his library account, and when I pulled it up on the computer I happened to notice his date of birth -- a little nugget of data that normally doesn't mean much to me. It was July 22, 2011 -- just a few days after Dave and I first moved to London. I was amazed to see that we've been here so long that kids born after we arrived are now in sixth grade!

I looked back at my blog to see what Dave and I were doing around that time. That student's mother must have been in labor about when we moved out of the hotel and into a school-owned house, where we lived for several days while waiting for our apartment in Notting Hill to become available. We went to Bibendum for the first time. And he was probably born when I made that Zen video of shadows on the wall.

It boggles the mind. Where does the time go?

When Dave and I were at "Dune: Part Two" on Sunday, I went to get a coffee before the movie. I was walking through the shopping center where the theater is located when I looked down and saw a beheaded daffodil lying on the floor. Someone must have bought a bunch at the grocery store, and then one of them lost its head. I picked it up and put it in my jacket pocket, and when we got home I popped it into some water. It opened yesterday.

This is the first daffodil we've had indoors all season. I used to have to bring in lots of them, because Olga would break them off romping through the garden. These days she doesn't romp as much, so they stay outside, attached to their plants!

Tofu With Mrs. Robinson

A relatively quiet day yesterday. It was a rainy morning so Olga didn't want to go anywhere. I got our bedsheets to the laundromat and did some minor stuff around the house. I also finished the YA book I was reading, "Plague Land," a zombie apocalypse thriller that's probably too gory to recommend to any kids younger than high school.

Then Dave and I went to see "Dune: Part Two" at the cinema. It was very good. I didn't remember a lot of the details of the plot from the first movie, but I really didn't need to. The second one picks right up and keeps going, but I knew enough generalities that it made sense -- and the scenery and costumes and special effects were all so spellbinding that it was impossible not to be entertained. Definitely a big-screen experience. Dave tried to get us tickets to the IMAX theatre but it was sold out, so we saw it at our normal cinema, and that was good enough.

I told Dave afterwards that "Dune" is a good example of a story that needed to wait for a certain level of special-effects technology in order to be effectively told on screen.

We also had lunch at a Chinese place on Finchley Road that Dave likes. It has been completely remodeled from the last time we were there, and it's very colorful inside, with a whole arbor's worth of artificial yellow-orange wisteria hanging from the ceiling. (Is yellow wisteria a thing?) They were playing an interesting mix of '60s and '70s folk-acoustic music over the sound system. I dined on my tofu and broccoli with brown sauce to the harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel singing "Mrs. Robinson." There was some John Denver in there too.

Multiculturalism! It's kind of amusing.

Oh, good news! My black spot has vanished. I guess it really was just a healing injury. So that's one doctor's appointment I won't need to keep. The hospital still hasn't contacted me to schedule it, so when they do I'll just tell them to forget the whole thing.

(Top photo: A colorful mural near Euston Road, taken last weekend.)

Gardening, Taxes and Doomsday

Look! There she is, back in her summertime spot, sunbathing on her bed in the garden. It gladdened my heart when the weather was warm and sunny enough yesterday to make this appealing to Olga. The temperature was in the high 50's and I loved seeing her warming her old bones in the sun.

This hasn't been a particularly cold winter, and we got virtually no snow -- maybe a couple of flurries. But the coming of spring still feels like a release, a time to ease and bask and open the windows and breathe. I left the back door standing open yesterday as I worked in the garden, and it was good to get some fresh air in the house.

I repotted one of those foxgloves just to the left of Olga. Neither of them are doing too well -- we always have a few that get scraggly over winter and seem to struggle into spring. I'm not sure they'll survive but I'm trying. (We have many others that look fine.)

Here's another project. The squirrels have been digging into my Asiatic lilies, uprooting the bulbs and causing a mess. I got out this old hanging basket, removed the liner and used it to cover them like a cage. (It's tied on beneath the pot.) I'm not sure the squirrels couldn't get through it if they really wanted to, but I'm hoping it will be enough of a deterrent.

Inside, I vacuumed and did laundry, and I started on our taxes. Right away, though, I realized we are missing a crucial document -- Dave's W-2! It was a bit like starting to make beef Wellington and realizing I had no beef. I could have sworn he'd sent it to me, but he couldn't find it in his e-mail and I couldn't find it either so I guess he never did. He has to download it from work and he doesn't have the necessary passwords here, so that will have to wait. I did get much of my income entered, at least, including some that came from my mom's pre-tax investments like IRAs and such. I'm dealing with 1099-R forms, which I've never dealt with before. It's a whole new world, and not a particularly fun one.

I'm using H&R Block online tax prep and they want me to pay someone to review the taxes after I'm done because of their complexity. I've never done that before but I might just go for it this year. It costs about $125. I'm on the fence.

After wrestling with Uncle Sam for while, I took Olga for a walk. We passed the new apartment buildings going up near the railroad tracks, where this big photo mural tries to entice prospective buyers. I was amused because someone drew a huge yellow mushroom cloud on the horizon beyond the windows. Dark humor! And yet, it does seem to say something about the way humans are treating the risks to our survival, whether related to conflict or climate -- we're burying our heads in the sand and shopping for well-appointed apartments. The proverbial fiddling while Rome burns.

A Smiley Thread

It's the time of year when people begin tying little red-and-white threads to blooming trees as a way of celebrating spring. This is apparently a tradition that originated in Eastern Europe, where the strings and associated beads or charms are known as Mărțișor in Romania or Martenitsa in Bulgaria. Sometimes they feature little dolls, as I've photographed in the past. I saw this one on my walk to work yesterday, with a little smiley face bead.

Update on the wayward street sign: Yesterday I was notified by e-mail that my report has been "escalated to the Highways Department." You may recall that I reported it as a "missing road sign," because "abandoned road sign" was not an option. Well, it has now been changed to "damaged illuminated road sign post," which also does not at all describe the situation but maybe it will make the Highways Department pay attention. I am amused by the tortured bureaucracy of all this. I predict that sign will go nowhere.

I'm glad to see that the consensus on Joe Biden's State of the Union speech seems to be that it was a success. I read a column in The Guardian yesterday that I thought described quite well the reasons why Donald Trump still appeals to many voters in the United States, to the complete bafflement of the rest of us. Basically, those voters feel despised by the people in power (often loosely and inaccurately characterized as "liberals" or "the deep state") and thus feel allied with Trump, who is despised by the same amorphous group. I think that's all true, though the column doesn't mention the perplexing involvement of evangelical Christians who fervently support Trump. I suppose they are a subset of those who feel despised or ignored, and Trump has certainly delivered the goods on at least one of their goals -- curtailing the availability of abortion.

So basically, all those voters support Trump because he makes the rest of us mad. That's a great foundation upon which to build a government.

My goal for the day: To do our income taxes. This is the first time I've done them since inheriting part of my mom's estate, and I am not looking forward to it. I have a few questions but I'm hoping it all becomes clear as I work my way through the process with the H&R Block software. We'll see.

Pink Clouds

Here's one positive side-effect of walking to the doctor's office on Wednesday: I passed this corner with this amazing blooming tree. This whole street is lined with these clouds of pale pink. It's quite a sight!

After posting about that wayward street sign yesterday I got motivated to do something about it. During some down time at work I Googled the local roads authority (per Rachel's suggestion) and they had an online page to report street problems. They didn't have an "abandoned sign" category, but they had a "missing sign" one, so I chose that, and explained the problem in the narrative. It even let me upload a picture. I got the whole thing filled out, hit submit, and WHAM! I got an error page that not only told me my report didn't go through, but that I had been BANNED FROM THE WEB SITE!

I tried it twice with the same result. So I waited until I got home and did it from here, and it worked. I guess something about our firewalls at school freaked out the submission software.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Our ornamental cabbages are looking pretty sad these days. I believe this is what's know as "bolting" -- basically, they're setting flowers. I moved the pot from our front porch to the back, where at least no one can see them. Time to buy some new annuals, but where? Our Homebase (the British equivalent of Home Depot or Lowe's) closed in December, and that's where I always bought all our plants! More research is required...