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Recently Read & Reviewed:

• Max Barry, Jennifer Government

Currently Reading:

• Julian May, The Nonborn King

Next Up:

1. Julian May, The Adversary
2. Margery Allingham, The Case of the Late Pig
3. Sean McMullen, Voyage of the Shadowmoon
4. Leah R. Cutter, The Caves of Buda
5. Daniel Keys Moran, The Long Run

Porch and Patio

Another week, another busy weekend.

Last week I got to bike to work twice, and got a lot done since most of my department was up at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference. I went up on Wednesday, which was fun enough, although I'm not really the target audience (both because I'm an Apple employee, and because much of the technical info presented there is outside my areas of interest or proficiency). I did get to ride one of CalTrain's new baby bullet trains on the way home, though!

Debbi came down on Wednesday night, since she was spending the evening with a friend of hers in the Valley, and the kittens came with her and stayed through tonight, so it was five full days of kittens for me and the cats! I think they had a good time, and I enjoyed having them. Roulette is getting very clever, though - she's figured out how to scale the bookcases my comic books are in, and thus get to the top of the cases - something neither of my cats have ever figured out! She's a handful!

We had an extremely productive weekend, helped by the ridiculous number of sales that go on over July 4 weekend (July 4, for those who have never lived in the United States, is our Independence Day). Mainly I dropped a big wad of money at Orchard Supply Hardware to buy a big metal shelf for my porch, and an assortment of additional pots and planting materials. My porch is shaping up very nicely and I am looking forward to sitting on it this summer, surrounded by my plants and flowers!

The hard work, though was a couple of outside projects that I've been delaying doing for months. First, we got rid of the dwarf orange tree I inherited from the previous owner. He had had it in a tub next to the downstairs patio, where it didn't get a lot of sunlight. With a fair amount of effort (and an industrial-strength hand truck), I brought it up to the porch two years ago. It seemed to do well last year, but this year it was not doing so well. It was practically impossible to move, and its big benefit was the two times a year it would flower (very fragrant!), which didn't seem worth the upkeep. So we took apart its tub, chopped up all its dirt, and hauled everything out to the trash. This was not as easy as it sounds, as the dirt was basically a big mass of packed-together clay, and breaking it up was very difficult. It took us at least an hour to finish the task, including six trips to the dumpster (dirt is heavy!). But it finally got done, and now I have porch space for new flowers and plants!

So that was Saturday. Sunday we mucked out my pond, which really needed it. The previous owner didn't put any netting over the pond to keep dead leaves out of it, and a goodly dose of muck built up on the bottom, and the whole thing was just getting kind of yucky and stagnant. So we drained it, hauled all the muck out to the dumpster in buckets, and filled it with new water. We did save as many of the living floating plants we as could, and put them back in the pond this morning after the water had a chance to get to a stable temperature. So hopefully it will settle back to normal soon.

I will probably buy some new underwater plants for the pond, and it also turns out that the pump for the stream has just about died, so I need to replace it. Assuming all that comes off without a hitch, I might then go get a few goldfish to populate the pond. There were three when I moved in, and although they do eventually fall victim to raccoons, if I choose well I should be able to get some which can survive by their wits and speed for a good while.

Sunday night we also biked into Shoreline Park to see the fireworks over the amphitheater. We did this last year, too. This year we left around 7:15 pm and were in plenty of time to get good seats. The fireworks started around 9:45, by which time it was pretty chilly (maybe next year I should wear jeans!). But we had munchies and drinkables and my nice fleece waterproof blanket, and the fireworks display was impressive as always. Biking home in the dark was a trick, as there were lots of pedestrians on the trail, but all-in-all it was a great evening.

Finally, today we got together with Ceej and David for the first time, in, oh, a year or more, to go see the Giants game. The two of them seem much the same, though they've had a rocky year as chronicled in CJ's journal. I hope to see some more of them, probably at a couple more baseball games. I got a clutch of good tickets from a cow-orker, and the seats are good. Can't bear that.

The game cannot be said to be memorable. If you go to a lot of baseball games, you will see a lot of crappy ones, but then they do give perspective to the real gems. (And it's not like other sports don't have crappy games.) The Rockies scored five times off hapless Giants starter Brett Tomko (a pitcher whose performance has never equalled his potential, it's seemed), and while the Giants creeped back in the middle innings, the Rockies had just enough pitching to put the Giants away 7-4. With Barry Bonds not playing, I don't think I can say there was much notable about this game. Not even any home runs!

After the game we did go across the bridge over McCovey Cove to see the statue of Giants great Willie McCovey and the lengthy avenue memorializing all the seasons the Giants played in San Francisco before moving into Pacific Bell (now SBC, or, as CJ called it, "TelCo") Park. They had a lot of good teams (especially in the 60s), and a lot of bad ones, and I'm sure plenty of memorable moments for their local fans. It's a nice memorial to stroll along if you're a fan.