Animal Encounters

This is the day/night building that I blogged a couple of weeks ago. I walked past it yesterday and noticed that someone has added some graffiti to the front. REZ, I think it says? And "Don't Do Drugs." (Nancy Reagan as graffiti artist...)

If the angles in that photo look weird, it's partly because the building itself is wonky.

Dave and I are off this morning on our journey to Los Angeles. We're not packed yet but I've gathered everything together, so it's just a matter of putting it in a bag. Olga isn't bothered by us stacking stuff up, but when we get the suitcases out she knows what's coming and she goes into a funk. So I wait until the last minute.

I had some interesting wildlife encounters yesterday.

While walking the dog I passed a tree that was positively alive with slugs. I think they're green cellar slugs (but I am no expert) and they appear to live in the cracks at the base of the tree. It was rainy yesterday, so I guess on damp days they come out and climb the tree in search of lichen or fungus or whatever it is they eat. They seemed to all be on their way home when I came across them.

I know some people are squeamish about slugs so if you'd rather not watch, I get it. I did, however, find a pretty funkadelic musical sountrack to accompany that video, thanks to iMovie jingles -- if that's any inducement to give it a try.

And then, while walking to work, this fox was coming toward me on the sidewalk. It crossed the street to avoid me, but then found itself in the path of a man walking a dog, so it went past me and crossed again. I was close enough to get a very good video, because the fox was more worried about the dog than me.

Work yesterday was fine -- it was a very quiet day. My boss asked me to write a thank-you letter to some authors who visited recently, which I did pretty quickly, and she seemed quite happy with the result. My New York Times journalism training is good for something!

Last night, I checked in online for our flight. What a fiddly process that is! Uploading documents, answering questions, blah blah blah -- I'd almost rather just do it at the airport. I'm dubious that it saves us much time but we'll see. At least it guarantees us a seat (hopefully).

Of course, the process might have been complicated by this:

But I tell you, after this week, I needed it. (OK, I admit it -- I had one Thursday night too.) Yes, those are sweet pickled onions and gherkins in my glass! They were left over from our lunch with our friend Josh a couple of weeks ago, and to finish them off I've been using them as a martini garnish. They're actually delicious that way. Who knew?

You can see some of my LA-themed reading behind the glass. I'm not sure I'm taking all of those books with me -- we'll only be there a week, after all -- but I wanted to get in the mood!