Pictures! We Got Pictures!

I'd love to write all about the great weekend we spent up in Sonoma, but, well, turns out I left my digicam in Debbi's purse, and I can't write an entry without the pictures. So that'll have to wait.

Fortunately, I have other pictures which I loaded from my camera last week, so I'll recap last week's events instead.

Tuesday Subrata and I went to the Giants game, with the Giants hosting the Chicago Cubs, now run by the Giants' manager of the last ten years, Dusty Baker. Dusty's clearly off of Barry Bonds' Christmas card list (as a cow-orker put it), since he got hit three times during the series, twice in the game we attended.

Neither starting pitcher - Kerry Wood for the Cubbies, Kirk Rueter for the Giants - had their best stuff (charitably calling what Rueter throws "stuff"). The Giants left 16 men on base - adding insult to the injury of having been no-hit by the Phillies the previous weekend - and lost the game 4-2.

I was pretty amazed at Pac Bell's concession prices - nearly 50% higher than at the Oakland Coliseum, and, frankly, not really as good (especially now that the Coliseum has real garlic fries). Oof. The stadium sure is purty, though.

I got a number of good pictures, with which I'll now regale you:

	They've replaced the Chevron car in left field with a more colorful design.
	The Cubbies warming up.
	The Giants in the field early in the game.
	Sammy Sosa takes a pitch.
	Bonds gets on base without getting hit. Supposedly he has four straps on his body armor, and takes off one strap for each intentionally wide pitch thrown to him.
	The piece-de-resistance: I snapped this picture of Kerry Wood throwing to someone (Jose Cruz? JT Snow?), and caught the ball midway between Wood and home plate. It's just a six-foot-long blur. Ceej notes that I'd need a hell of a fast shutter to resolve the ball. Subrata points out that you can see the radar gun reading in the top right corner. This is a very cool photograph.

We had a good time. Baseball is awfully expensive these days, though, even with gift tickets.

Now for some floral pictures.

	The view from my office at work a month or two back. Lovely purple blooms on the trees, which are now bright green.
	The garden at the edge of my patio. The red cowbells in the front will bloom for several months. But the pretty purple flowers behind them bloom for just a few weeks in April and then go away (this photo is several weeks old). I think the plant in the back with the red stalk atop it is an aloe plant, but I'm not certain. The white blooms in the foreground are common wildflowers, which I might remove soon (and maybe replace with violas or some greener and maybe flowering groundcover). Not pictured are some deep blue wildflowers which are just starting to emerge right now.
	The pansies and tomato plants in my planter behind the bench. The tomato plant to the right is growing like mad. The flowers have bloomed a lot more in just the four days since I snapped this photo and the next two. I still have space to the left to plant more flowers, too.
	I really like this view. You can just see the crest of the aloe plant beyond the far end of the planter, as well as the grape vines along the side wall.
	A reversed angle.

We've been getting oodles of rain lately, which I think has the plants pleased to no end. I'm kind of ready for it to stop, though. I spent an hour two weekends ago mucking out my pond; the duckweed is breeding like crazy.

Well, it all keeps me out of trouble.