these days of leiderhosen

The soon to be opened Academy of Sciences! After June 1, if you'll be looking for Bennish he'll be working sort of four 'o clock of the Radio Tower Golden Gate Park My favorite tree in the park. It's one leopard short of Serengeti perfect. V. climable. The Botanical Gardens Yes, it's a real heron. We watched her stalk about for five minutes, fishing for lunch. This is Ocean Beach, often reviled as being dirty. I like it because locals use it and the ocean seems as phenomenally enormous as it actually is . That's a sandpiper. Exciting new fire pits! These are enormous concrete starfish. These fire pits are huge beautiful steel flowers. (In this case with cheesy filling.) I want one for the living room. This is Jake the Bulldog who joined us for breakfast at Park Chow. He was jolie laide in spades and shy. His ears were very soft.

lindyinthepark.com Every Sunday behind the De Young.

Parmigianino's luscious Antea is visiting the Frick. I love the Frick; it's the one place you can sit in the deep green carpet, having a long delicious mental repartee with a painting and no one calls you crazy or asks you to leave. Last time I was there a docent sat down beside me and we sat in quiet contemplation for almost twenty minutes. How could one not love a place like that? Last weekend was spent in Big Sur. We stayed at the Ripplewood Resort which is one of those rare old motor inns (individual cabins from the 1920s) plonked down by a river next two beautiful coastal Highway One. We spent the day climbing mountains, eating pie in unlikely places, hunting for wild strawberries and watching the tops of very tall trees wave in the wind. (Photos to come.) Witness my mum in her natural habitat. Taite's smiling these days , totally wrecking any curmudgeonly exterior:

This is the two hundredth post. Imagine that. Thanks for bearing with me. Peter Sagal, beloved host of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me NPR’s quiz show completely loses it and goes OFF on Horton Hears a Who’s treatment of Daughters (Segel has three beautiful ones himself.) As a daughter myself, I applaud Peter. Reading: Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent . Three fun-filled and venom drenched pages are dedicated to the great diss of Proctor and Gamble’s line of Hugo Boss Fragrances. Fantastic. In the same line of thought… Wearing: Salt Air., by Demeter. And clothes, thanks for asking. Next Up: Plucky Fluff’s new book Intertwined ; it’s about spinning and using art yarn. She’s brilliant, particularly when she spun an art yarn based on Reganomics. Stephen Fry is doing podgrams now. As much as I adore him, I have not forgiven him about writing a book about writing poetry while not actually divulging any of own poems. If are a Fry fan and haven’t read Moab is my Washpot...

... as coldfriday . If you are on Twitter, ping me there. (I like the idea of blogging within the constraints of limited characters rather like trying to compose a thought without using "e"s or in rhyming couplets. Rants and Praises here will continue as always. More later.

For those interested tajtunes.com . Here is the story from NPR. Five bones and they send you an mp3 of the delivered song. I figure if Ben can spend most of a decade becoming a doctor , he can bear a few more days of good wishes . My niece (now going by a few monikers, mostly "sweet potato" but I am still trying "T'Oly") is fleshing out nicely and is actually quite beautiful. Her hair is threatening to come in the same dark red as my mum's was. My Da made me a little plaster cast of T'Oly's hand and it's here on my desk, complete with fingernails and knuckle pleats. Da is quite enchanted with her. I caught the *cough-useless!-cough*Admin at work trying stash a half loaf of the brioche/pecan roll in her purse. Seeing as how stupid brioche takes a carload of eggs, a ton of butter, finicky temperatures and about 6 hours from start to finish, I didn't really handle it too well. ZeFrank : comic genius, mad-ass blogger, personal lust object. Th...

Crap. Awake again at 2:00 AM. This usually leads to making brioche if I can't talk myself back to sleep. Curses! (Das Pussycat is not helping.) On Friday, UC has bestowed its staff a short work week for Caesar Chavez's birthday (otherwise known as one-day of staff Spring Break). I have a great deal to resolve at work today.