grieving

very little has ever made me laugh harder than i have listening to "car talk" on npr --- "click and clack, the tappet brothers" --- tom magliozzi will be sorely missed ---

a tropical perfume in the air

lullwater to the carlos

good little hike with the w.n.g. guys this morning, even though it was in the 30s and windy as hell --- walked from ponce along lullwater creek and road, admiring a champion tulip poplar by the creek and fine residential architecture along the road, to emory and the carlos, which i had not visited in several years --- walkers and riders of public transport get 20% off admission

museums of pre-columbian, roman, greece, etc. antiquities always leave me thinking about plunder and looting

the mummified kitteh is deeply disturbing 

the oncidium alliance rules!

the oncidium alliance is reliable in its contribution to the blooming of the thirteenth floor ---

this the most exotic of my orchids, imho --- good bloomer and fragrant

but whoa howdy, this one has my office smelling like chocolate cake --- nice thing to have hanging over one's desk --- one spray is open and another spray will open in a week or so

winding down the season

one last thursday cocktails in the garden for this season --- thnx for the company, mary, robt, and urn

más magnífico cattleya

this is my oldest cattleya and by far the most-reliable bloomer --- one stem started blooming two weeks ago, with five blossoms, and now this one started yesterday, also with five blossoms --- there's still one more stem to go, so it ought to be blooming into december, with a total of fourteen blossoms!

stupid clock

i like this clock, which john gave me not long after i moved in here --- simple, clean design and lettering, perfect for the kitchen and i generally use it to check the time as i walk past throughout the day --- it's very accurate, too, because it's radio controlled ---

except when it comes to transitions into and out of daylight savings time --- the reset never occurs when it should, typically varying from a few days to a week or two after the actual time switch --- this year they decided to get it over with and changed it monday morning, putting it an hour early for the next two weeks --- oddly, it's already begun to throw off my circadian rhythm (i actually had no idea the clock time might be a factor but we're all idiots about things like that)

fall!

a productive day at my desk and then five miles at the river with the guinnett hound, up rottenwood creek and under the 75/285 interchange --- everything was all nice and clean from a little rain, which also kept nearly all of the people away as well ---

and an absolutely spectacular sunset this evening --- gonna be in the 40s tonight and close to freezing over the weekend!

g'morning

the weather is changing back to fall, with temperatures in the 30s by the end of the week

not posting much these days, since my head is all wound up in writing about the peachtrees --- trying to say all i wanted to say but didn't have the time in savannah

perfecto

an excellent fall day in atlanner, hitting 80 before heading toward a whole lot cooler mid-week --- it won't be long until we'll really miss being this warm

the garden after dark

finished blogging cuba, cleaned house, did laundry --- robt and mary convened here for a visit to abg

recapitulating cuba: the cars

it seemed as though there were fewer antique cars than in 2002 --- but they are still everywhere --- a downside of lifting the embargo is that most of them will probably wind up with collectors in the u.s. --- a lot of late-model cars, many of them chinese

and you almost never see a single person in a car, since cubans of necessity practice ride-sharing wherever they go ---

catalytic converters are apparently unknown in cuba, so the exhaust can be choking