Snail Rage

More pavement graffiti from our local artist, Tramp. I interpret this as depicting rage against people who move slowly on the sidewalk -- a rage I often feel myself as a fast walker with places to go, especially against people who are glued to their phones while meandering. But maybe it's actually supposed to be critical of people like me? He added a message to it later but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I like how the snail's shell is decorated with a question mark.

More inventory yesterday -- I'm about halfway through the 900s, which is probably our biggest chunk of non-fiction by Dewey number. I can tell it's inventory time because I've split the knee out of my khakis, which happens every spring. (I spend a lot of time kneeling when I'm inventorying books on low shelves.) This is why every August, before the start of the next school year, I have to buy new pants (or "trousers," as the British would say, "pants" being underwear in the UK).

By the way, I just want to point out to all my British readers that I did in fact use the word "pavement" above to describe the sidewalk. I am trying to acknowledge the vocabulary of my adopted country. I don't promise to do it every time.

A Photograph of a Photograph

When I was walking on South Bank a couple of weekends ago I came across this little photo mounted beside the sidewalk. It's by this street photographer, whose work I've also seen stuck to walls in Shoreditch, if I remember correctly. If that's truly a random street photo, the photographer was amazingly fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. It looks more like a staged fashion shoot, but even so, it's a fun image.

Yesterday was more library inventory. I finished the fiction, where we're missing 19 books -- not bad after a whole year of library use. I expected worse! And I think I know where two of them are. There's a particular student who still has a long-overdue book he checked out last fall. As a result, his library account is locked until he returns or pays for it. A few months ago, out of the goodness of my heart, I gave him the next two books in the same series -- and he hasn't returned those either. Now, the next two in the series are gone. Gee, I wonder who has them?

I also started on the nonfiction, which is organized using the Dewey decimal system, and finished all the 800s -- the poetry, plays and literature section. Nothing missing there. That whole section needs to be weeded in the worst way. Some of the books are ridiculously old. I like old books, but these things are decrepit.

For librarians, at least in a non-archival library like a school, the age of a collection is a reflection of its quality and currency. No one wants an extremely old collection. When I went to my library conference one of the librarians made a critical comment about a collection with an average publication date of 2006. Out of curiosity, I ran our statistics and found that the average age of our 800s section is 1993! And that's the average. Granted, it's poetry, which ages much better than, say, science (where our books are much newer). But it still needs updating. My next project!

This wallflower is growing in a planter atop a rubbish bin around the corner from the school. Look how prolifically it's blooming! It looks much better than ours. What's their secret?

Speaking of aged media, Dave and I watched a movie on Amazon Prime on Sunday called "The Christine Jorgensen Story," from 1970. It's about one of the first well-known transgender women in the United States, who went to Denmark for sex-change surgery way back in the 1950s, and became something of a celebrity as a result. I remember reading about Jorgensen and seeing her in magazines but I'd never seen this film. I wouldn't say it's great, but it was interesting as a product of its time. As a sympathetic portrayal of transgenderism, it probably played a significant role in introducing the concept to many people -- though I'm not sure how big its initial audience was. It's due to leave Prime soon so we caught it while we could.

Homosexual but Bi-Cultural

I may need to clear something up about our application for citizenship, which I mentioned yesterday. Although we're applying to be UK citizens, we are not giving up our American citizenship. So we'll be dual citizens, which is actually very common -- both American and British. It gives us extra freedom to live in either place.

This could get tricky only if the US and the UK go to war with each other, which has seemed inconceivable for the past 200 years or so. Now, with Donald Trump in power, you never know -- but if we find ourselves facing off I'll just keep my head down and be Switzerland. (Which is my approach to most conflicts. I should really get Swiss citizenship.)

I'm also finishing up our US taxes, providing additional information and paperwork to the accountant who's doing our return. It's nice to have someone else handle it for a change, but gathering all the information is almost as difficult as doing it myself! I'll be interested to see what she finds we owe and if it's any different from what we've paid in previous years. If she saves us money, in other words.

It's spring, and you know what that means -- time for library inventory! Perhaps my favorite of all library tasks. I started it yesterday, scanning the fiction section, and after a steady day's work I'm about two-thirds of the way through. I can probably finish fiction today before moving on to non-fiction, which will take much more time. And then I may do the Lower School library as well, if the librarians want me to.

(Inventory means we scan every book in the library to see if any are missing. Inevitably, some are -- usually because kids walked off with them without checking them out -- and we then mark them lost. It's a way to make sure what's in the catalogue is actually still on the shelves.)

We finished "The White Lotus" last night and loved it. The writers really stretched out the suspense until the last possible moment, and I love the way the show examines the effects of privilege and wealth.

(Photos: An apartment building on Abbey Road, and some cute multicultural rubbish.)

In the Pink

Blogger Kelly occasionally posts two slightly different photos of the same subject, and asks us to choose which one we like best. Here's my version of the same exercise.

I walked Olga yesterday afternoon and we passed a cherry tree outside the church near West End Green. This tree is a prolific bloomer every spring, and this year is no different. I couldn't resist trying to get a photo of Olga with the tree in the background.

So which one do you like better? We have the regal pose (above)...

... the confused "I-don't-know-what-we're-doing-here" tongue-licking pose...

...and the goofy grin.

Our weather was spectacular yesterday -- utterly cloudless and blue, and once the morning chill wore off it was quite comfortable. It reminded me of the pandemic spring, in 2020, which was also very dry and sunny. I spent the whole weekend in the garden, barely going anywhere, and thought, "This is just like lockdown!"

I did a few more small tasks, such as potting a piece of ginger root that had sprouted in the blue glass bowl on our kitchen counter. The last time I tried this it didn't go so well, but I thought I'd give it another whirl. Better than just throwing it in the bin straight away. I soaked the ginger first, to saturate it and help it plump up, thinking that might lead to a healthier plant. We shall see.

I spent most of the day on our UK citizenship application, which I finished. It wasn't too difficult, but it was time-consuming. They wanted to know every international trip we'd taken for the last FIVE YEARS. In our case, that's a lot of trips, and they're not the same -- I went back to the states several times without Dave, and his school and Drum Corps trips were without me. So a lot of research was involved in making those lists. Thank God I keep a blog where I write about our travels!

All I need to do now is schedule a "biometric appointment" to drop off all our supporting documents and pictures and whatnot. They need a bunch of stuff. The appointment-scheduling button wasn't working on the web site yesterday and there's no alternative way of getting there that I could find, so hopefully they'll get that bug worked out. Otherwise I'll have to get on the phone to the Home Office.

Having lived here for 14 years already, I didn't expect this step to feel very significant -- everyone says the big achievement is Indefinite Leave to Remain, which we've had for years. That's when you have to pass the test about British culture and values and all that stuff. But I'm actually very excited to become full-fledged citizens, to be able to vote and put down even deeper roots. God save the King!

Too Much About Plants, and 'Queer'

Remember how last year was a banner year for our forget-me-nots? We had masses of them, all around our roses and in two locations at either side of the lawn. I don't know what made them so prolific, but I left them all until the end of May, giving them plenty of time (I thought) to go to seed.

This year? We have almost none.

I am completely mystified about why they didn't come back as they always have. The only place we have them is in two pots next to the back steps (above), where they re-seeded. Those pots are supposed to contain lobelia, on the left, and masterwort (Astrantia) on the right -- and they're there, but the lobelia is barely hanging on.

Before you conclude that my mulching of a few weeks ago is what drove them away -- I intentionally didn't mulch where the forget-me-nots usually grow. So who knows what happened.

Another garden mystery -- our tree fern. It was doing fine, apparently, all winter, and then suddenly within the last week or two all its fronds shriveled and turned crispy. It happened almost all at once. I thought perhaps it got too dry, but we had quite a rainy winter and I watered it a few times over the past month -- so I'm not sure how that would have happened. I cut most of the shriveled fronds off yesterday (which I discovered belatedly I'm not supposed to do). We'll see if it recovers.

Yesterday I repotted our toadflax and threw away the Plectranthus, which you may remember we got from Mrs. Kravitz (along with our mint) during the pandemic. Our local garden center was giving away its plants before lockdown and she took so many that she couldn't use them all. Plectranthus is usually grown as an annual, but we kept this one going for years. I'd bring it in every winter even though I sort of semi-hated it -- it was incredibly messy and dropped leaves everywhere. Finally, yesterday, I looked at that nest of dry sticks, only a few of which showed any signs of spring growth, and decided I'd had enough. It's in the trash.

Olga and I walked through the nearby housing estate, where she checked for the cats beneath a certain courtyard doorway, as is her custom. I'm not sure those cats are even alive anymore. There was no sign of them yesterday.

Afterwards, she lounged in the sun in the garden as I sat nearby and read. I just started a book called "The Satsuma Complex" by Bob Mortimer, a humorous mystery that I'm enjoying. I haven't read a book in several weeks -- I've felt overwhelmed just staying on top of the news online. But I finally made a conscious decision to set aside my devices and get back to books and The New Yorker, so that's what I'm doing.

As you can see, we have another healthy crop of teasels growing in the lawn. I may not mow this back area once again this year, so we'll have long grass and tall teasels and hopefully insect life.

Last night we watched "Queer," with Daniel Craig, a movie version of the William S. Burroughs novel released last year. It was directed by Luca Guadagnino, who also did "Call Me By Your Name," which I loved. I cannot say I loved "Queer." I've never much cared for Burroughs -- I find his writing impenetrable -- and movie versions of his work leave me feeling grimy. Too much sweat, alcohol, heroin and dissipation. Just watching could put a person in liver failure!

"Queer" also employed weird, artificial-looking sets and CGI effects, which I think are supposed to heighten the trippy feeling, but at the end of the day I was not impressed. I made it to the end, but Dave gave up about halfway through.

Jurassic Spring

Here's the tulip that Olga broke off from the plants in the garden. When I put it in the vase it was still green and closed up like a tiny artichoke, but as you can see it miraculously opened and matured in water alone. So despite being beheaded it wasn't a total loss.

Thank goodness it's the weekend! Woo hoo! Since I didn't get a full weekend last week -- having to attend that librarian conference -- this one seems especially necessary. I have a few little projects planned but I hope to mostly relax and read. I've pretty much abandoned reading in recent weeks, offline anyway, and I need to start a new book.

Speaking of the library, I spotted this yesterday in our Lower School:

So many questions. Let's begin with the fact that dinosaurs lived about 75 million years before Jesus Christ was born, never mind resurrected.

I'm sure it's meant in good, innocent fun, but honestly, no wonder people have no critical thinking skills anymore. (Or maybe the book teaches that this scene is imaginary?) Needless to say, this is not what I'll be reading this weekend.

Queen Olga was so exhausted last night that went into a deep sleep after having dinner. As I've said she can't hear too well anymore, so once she's asleep nothing bothers her much! It must be kind of blissful. I wish you could have heard her gentle snoring.

Tulips and Noisy Birds

We're going through a dry spell here. According to our local weather website, March "came in much drier than the long-term average," with just four days of recordable rain totaling 3.8 mm. That's basically no rain.

This was after a very damp February, though, so all in all we're close to average for the year. Still, we need some rain. I've been watering pots as well as plants in the ground, and Dave and I only belatedly noticed that our poor tree fern was dried out and shriveling. Hopefully we got some water onto it in time to save it.

The good news -- no slugs! Remember how our plants were ravaged by slugs last spring?

We're supposed to get up to 20º C today. Everyone's been talking about this like it's an apocalyptic heat wave, and since I don't really function on the Celsius scale I've been vague about what 20º C actually means. Yesterday at work a few of us were talking about it, and I said, "I think it's uncomfortably warm." One of the cleaners said he thought it meant about 85º F! Finally I hauled out my phone and it turns out we were all incorrect, and 20º C is only 69º F -- actually very pleasant.

Thank God I didn't have to convert Celsius temperatures for the "Life in the UK" test. Remember how I had to take that years ago to get permission to live here indefinitely? I passed with flying colors but I'd have failed for sure if I had to wrangle with math -- ugh.

Our yellow tulips opened yesterday on the patio. I think this is the first year we've had two of them. We have another clump of tulips out in the garden, and our bulldozer of a dog knocked the one flower head off before it fully matured. I have it on the windowsill in a little vase and it seems to be opening there, amazingly.

Steve Reed · Robin and Blackbird (Evening)

We were sitting inside yesterday evening at dusk, watching the vintage and very sexist show "Bewitched" on television, when I heard the birds making a real racket outside. My Merlin bird app identified them as a Eurasian blackbird and European robin, and it sounds to me like there are more than one of each. I guess they're getting amorous. You'd have a longer recording if a plane hadn't approached overhead, forcing me to stop it. Urban nature!

Dave and I sat out in the garden earlier in the evening, so don't worry -- we're enjoying our outdoor space too. The only problem is, Olga barks at us incessantly when we're out there. Something about being outside but sitting down (as opposed to playing with her, I suppose) drives her crazy.

(Top photo: A renovation project on my walk to work.)

Pacing Myself

So, back to real life. I'm feeling a little better about things than I was on Tuesday morning. For one thing, I got that spare router mailed off, so hopefully I'll avoid the fee from BT and I still have our main router to provide Internet. One minor issue crossed off the list.

Also, I'm seeing glimmers of hope in the political world. Of course Elon is still swinging his chainsaw through the federal government, but I'm heartened by the fact that the judicial response to Trump's brutality -- against both faithful government workers and powerless immigrants -- has been one of rejection. He's getting shot down left and right, legally speaking. Whether he ultimately abides by any of these rulings, who knows, but it shows the system is working so far and his overenthusiastic embrace of executive power is not going unchecked.

The Democratic victory in the Wisconsin judicial race gave me a boost, and although Republicans won the Florida races, they didn't win by as much as expected. (Knowing Florida and its voters, I don't see it turning blue anytime soon -- unless Trump destroys Medicare and Social Security, which Florida voters would never forgive.)

And Cory Booker! There are signs of life in the Democratic party.

Work continues at a busy pace. I know I haven't responded to comments here in several days, but I am reading them all. I just haven't had time during the day. I generally write blog posts in the morning, respond to comments during my workday and read other blogs in the afternoon/evening. This schedule has been shaken up by my workload lately.

You don't need to hear all the details of what I've been doing at work -- mostly building and taking down displays and covering new books, in between dealing with students and working part-time in the Lower School. I told my boss I was stressed by my doubled workload (and static paycheck) since my full-time co-worker left last fall. She suggested I pace myself on some of these new tasks, so I'm going to do that. Book covering may take a few days rather than me plowing through them all at once.

I am at an age where I feel the physical effects of my job more and more. After covering a stack of new books and shelving a cartload of old ones, my hands get sore. Getting up and down off the floor is harder. All perfectly natural and even expected, but still sobering when it's happening to my body!

I'm going to try to more frequently employ the approaches of my Zen practice from 20 (!) years ago -- deep breathing, pausing the "stories" spinning through my mind, noticing what's really happening.

Overall mood: Improving.

I'm Turning Japanese

You've all seen this photo of Olga before. I blogged it several weeks ago when we went to Fortune Green to see the daffodils, then just coming out. I'm blogging it again today because it was the subject of an experiment.

Have you seen this trend involving tweaking photos to look like Japanese anime? It even made the front page of The New York Times web site. Supposedly people are using Chat GPT to turn their photos into scenes that look like they could have been taken straight from "My Neighbor Totoro" or "Spirited Away" -- specifically Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films, according to the Times.
 
Being a Miyazaki fan, I decided to try it with Olga. But when I went to Chat GPT, it wouldn't let me modify my own photo. (Maybe I need a different version or a pay subscription?) The best I could do was upload the photo so Chat GPT could describe it, and then render its own version using that description. Here's how Chat GPT saw the photo:

"A white staffordshire terrier with brown spots standing among bright daffodils in a sunlit park, surrounded by whimsical European-style buildings."

It didn't like it when I asked for that scene to be rendered like Miyazaki -- it gave me a warning about violating the site's policies. Maybe I was too specific since Miyazaki is still alive and his films are copyrighted. So I asked for the scene in Japanese anime style, and here's what I got:

Not quite what I was going for. A little too cutesy, particularly that second one. So I tried another AI program called Artguru, where I could modify the photo itself, and I got these:

Who is that dog? It's not Olga. Nor is this, the product of another AI website called Fotor:

That dog needs a diet!

(By the way, I am aware that uploading my pictures to an AI website adds to the vast pool of information that AI will use to generate future images. I'm fine with that. AI is probably scraping them from my blog anyway!)

I decided to try again with a picture of Me, Dave and Olga. We took this during our trip to the dog pub on Green Park several years ago, back before the pandemic.

I skipped Chat GPT this time and went straight to Artguru with an instruction to render the photo in a Japanese anime style. Here's the result:

Remember the song "I'm Turning Japanese" by The Vapors?

As Dave said when I showed him the results, "Who the hell are those people?!" And also, why do I look like Dave's grandfather? How did I get hair? Where did that living room behind us come from?

Let's try Fotor:

Well, this looks more like us, but I'm not sure why we look like someone died when we're both smiling in the original photo. What's with the gloomy color palette? Once again, Olga needs a diet. And we both need surgery to remove those extra fingers.

A Litany of Complaints

I woke up on the cranky side of the bed this morning, at about 3 a.m. I lay there thinking, first about my job, and then about our internet service provider and how they're going to sock me with a £30 fee if I don't return our router (more in a moment), and then about income taxes and financial planning and our continued need to get some kind of estate plans in place, and then about applying for UK citizenship. And then I realized that I left laundry in the machine overnight, so I had to get up and hang that on the drying rack, and then I unpacked the dishwasher and hand-washed the things that can't go in the dishwasher, and I just got crankier and crankier because it wasn't even daylight and WHY IS ALL OF THIS MY RESPONSIBILITY?!

It is 6 a.m., people, and I am already feeling put-upon.

I suppose most marriages have a division of labor -- one partner does some things while another partner does the others. In our case, Dave does the food. He buys the groceries and he cooks them, and that is not a small thing. He also has a job that requires more out-of-hours planning than mine, and a health condition that saps his energy, and ailing parents that need whatever assistance he can render from this distance. I understand all of that, and I try to be patient and understanding and appreciative.

But lately I have been feeling like things are at a critical mass -- particularly the big-picture stuff involving finances, taxes and life planning. That all falls squarely on me. Dave says he doesn't have a head for it, and I get that -- it's not a lot of fun (and a thousand times more complicated since my mother's death). It's also incredibly hard because it involves two countries, with two different legal and financial systems. It's not the kind of thing where I can call the lawyer down the street or go to "Wills R Us" online and have a will written. We need specialists, and I have run into roadblocks.

These are also questions that seem incredibly LARGE when it's 4 a.m. I'm sure once I move around a little more and the day gets going they will recede to their proper place in the background of my daily life. I just have to buckle down and deal with them. I have some referrals and I need to follow through.

The internet service provider situation is kind of ridiculous. I got a call the other day from BT (which used to be British Telecom), which has provided our internet service since we moved to this country in 2011. In fact we took over our old landlord's account, and letters from the company still come addressed to "Tong," which is hilarious because that wasn't even his correct name. Anyway, BT said they are switching all their residential customers over to a new spinoff company called EE, and would we make the switch? Now, I was at work, sitting at my desk and trying to deal with students while this person with an impenetrable Scottish accent was outlining the finer points of this change in my ear, and I admit I may not have grasped everything -- but I made sure that our rates wouldn't go up and our service wouldn't change. They assured me that was the case, and it all sounded relatively seamless, so I said fine.

Now they're demanding we return our BT router within 30 days or face a £30 fee, and yet EE has sent me no new equipment. How can I have Internet service with no router?! Honestly, the stupidity is mind-boggling, and I wish I'd never agreed to make the change. I have a second router that BT sent ages ago and I saved as a backup, so I think I'll send them that one and hopefully it will head off the fee while giving us time to get new equipment -- assuming we're even really supposed to get new equipment. I have no idea.

On the bright side (literally), this is the display I built yesterday at work. It was not my idea, and I usually dislike displays that focus on the aesthetics of books as opposed to the content, but having said that I think it turned out pretty well. I'm waiting for students to ask, "Who's Roy G. Biv?" There's a learning opportunity here.

I just looked out the window to see Olga rooting around in the flowerbed by the back door, which is fenced off to prevent that. I have no idea how she got over the fence but I had to go shoo her out of there before she trampled everything.

I hope this day improves.

(Top photo: Some new graffiti on Finchley Road, yesterday morning.)

A Day in the Garden

I spent virtually the whole day in the garden yesterday. At this time of year there's so much to get done -- everything is in transition and it's time to plant and prepare and discard and organize. Above is our purple primula, which grows in a hanging basket and sometimes gets nibbled by critters, as you can see. It's been in that basket for years.

First, I planted some stuff. Digging holes is just about my least favorite garden task -- our native soil is heavy clay and hard as a rock when it's dry. Now is the time to dig when there's still some moisture and it's softer, but it's still not light. Also, for some reason, in our garden, it's often full of brick debris and other rubble, I assume from the construction of our house, not to mention the roots of other trees and plants.

Still, I managed to plant two pots of mint, in the area where English ivy was running rampant until recently. I know, I know -- everyone says mint will take over. Frankly, it couldn't take over as thoroughly as that ivy did, and I need something that can hold its own in that space. I also planted the two hogweed seedlings that I repotted last August (not giant hogweed, which is invasive), and a teasel that grew by itself in another pot. My continued goal: fewer flowerpots.

Here's one of the pots of mint. It doesn't look like much now.

And here's one of the hogweeds, with stakes to protect it from our canine bulldozer. Assuming it survives, it will grow four or five feet tall and produce white umbrella-shaped flowers, like Queen Anne's lace on steroids.

All this time, the weather was beautiful. I could not have asked for a better day. I also did some watering -- we're in a bit of a dry spell -- and gave the grass its first mowing.

Meanwhile, the queen presided from her throne.

(As I was writing this just now, a fox walked past the back door, causing Olga to leap headlong, barking, into our purple heart houseplant and break off multiple pieces. Fortunately that plant is basically a weed and there's no stopping it.)

Anyway, it was a great day outdoors even if it was full of work. And then I came inside and vacuumed and did laundry and remembered only belatedly, around lunchtime, that our clocks had jumped forward so what I thought was 12:30 was actually 1:30. I guess that's why it happens on a Sunday, to give everyone a chance to catch up. So yes, we are now on British Summer Time (BST). Woo hoo!

A Pint on the Patio

I took this picture of our snake's head fritillary, aka checkerboard lily, just now when I took some suet balls out to the garden bird feeder. The fritillary is having a good year, with one mature blossom and two more on the way. And there's already a hungry ring-necked parakeet on the feeder, such a bright green that he's practically glowing.

I survived the conference yesterday but it was a long day. Many of the sessions were more about teaching, so they didn't apply directly to me (because I'm not a faculty member and I don't teach kids directly), but it was still interesting to hear from various librarians how they tackle the difficulties of their jobs. My boss and co-worker did a presentation about all the data we gather on library usage, and gave me a shout-out for crunching the numbers on the spreadsheets, so that was nice. Hearing them talk about it gave even me a better sense of why we collect all that information.

Terms I learned included "cognitive offloading," which is what happens when people use tools like AI to perform tasks that used to require human brainpower. When you ask AI to write an e-mail or design a logo, that's cognitive offloading. It's not necessarily a good thing. (I suppose the same could be, and probably has been, said about the use of calculators -- and we all use those.)

There's also "critical ignoring," which is a clever way of saying avoiding online noise and disinformation. We all participate in critical ignoring -- or should, anyway.

We also discussed the "value of constraint," which is certainly a useful tool for any writer or editor. An extreme example was the book "La Disparition" by Georges Perec, which was written entirely without the use of the letter E. That would be impressive enough in any language, but Perec wrote it in French, which is LOADED with E's. It made me think I should try to write a blog post without a commonly used letter, just to see how well I could do it and how hard it would be -- but I'd need some time and I'm not sure I have the patience.

Last night we had a dinner, but we had about an hour and a half to kill between the last session and the meal. So I went to a local pub by myself, got a pint of Abbot ale and sat out on the front patio watching the world go by. I had to let my mind settle after all the information and socializing of the day.

A table of "lads" came and sat next to me, and they were quite boisterous. I heard classic Britishisms like "bird" (for woman) and "fags" for cigarette butts. I didn't know "bird" was a term anyone used anymore but I'm sure one of them said something about "George's bird," and I don't think he meant a budgie. At one point, a semi-trailer (excuse me, "lorry") drove past with the logo for the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the side, and someone exclaimed, "What, are they all in there?!" Laughs all around.

Perhaps I should have been exercising my critical ignoring skills.

I finally got home about 10 p.m. and went pretty much directly to bed. Dave said Olga was anxious all day, waiting for me, and she wouldn't eat in my absence -- so I was glad to get home, coax some food into her and then all of us could have a good night's sleep.

Planters

Remember the architecture/planning fail that I wrote about in January -- the sharply sloping sidewalk in front of Five Guys on the high street? Well, the hideous plastic barriers have disappeared (after months) and in their place are these two massive wooden planters.

(I took one picture walking to work and one walking home, so you're seeing them from both directions, in morning and evening!)

I suppose this is aesthetically better than the barriers, but they look a little precarious, don't they? I hope that wood is strong. Also, they look like they've been outside for a while already, so I suspect they came from somewhere else. They are used planters -- or perhaps I should say pre-owned. Repurposed.

If I'd built them I'd have specified a sloping bottom so the planters themselves sat even. But maybe that would have been more money than anyone wanted to invest.

Today I'm back at work for that conference. In fact I'm about to get ready to leave. Registration starts at 7:45 a.m.!

Taking My Time

I had a nice, leisurely walk to work yesterday. Now that the weather has warmed up a bit and the sun is shining, I'm really enjoying that time to myself. I was running a little late, but I didn't feel any pressure to get there precisely on time or to hurry. My supervisor is at a conference in Frankfurt, and the school will survive without me for a few extra minutes. In fact I took some pictures, listened to music and stopped for a take-away coffee along the way.

I wound up at my desk eleven minutes late. My co-worker was there and the library was quiet, so she wasn't concerned at all.

I feel like I give the impression on this blog that I am kind of a slacker, wandering in a few minutes late and reading at my desk during downtime. Honestly, I don't think I am. (Then again, do slackers recognize that tendency in themselves?) Some days I'm early to work, and I do stay very busy overall. I suppose, like anyone with the so-called "Protestant work ethic" (whatever that is), I'm more conflicted about stray moments of workday leisure so I write about them more.

But I also find that as I get older, I'm less concerned about stuff like that. Carpe diem, right? Enjoy the moments as they come.

Anyway, it was a glorious day, very low-key. I got everything done I needed to do, like re-shelving a cartload of books about Ancient Greece checked out by the 5th Grade, and still had moments to relax, chat with the kids and be a kinder, more generous presence than the harried librarian I sometimes feel like lately.

Here are our front-porch plants. Those violas (or pansies?) are the ones I found last fall in St. John's Wood. They survived the winter just fine. I have a hanging basket of them on the back patio, also blooming up a storm. The orange flower is an African daisy (Osteospermum).

Words of wisdom from some fortune cookies we've had hanging around the kitchen for a couple of weeks, the remnants of a Chinese take-away. I'm not a huge fan of fortune cookies so they tend to linger until I figure out what to do with them. I crumbled these two up as a crunchy topping for last night's ice cream, which I thought was a pretty clever way to dispose of them.

That second one made me glad I took the time to enjoy my walk to work!

(Top photo: The morning bread delivery at a restaurant on my route to work, sitting inside on a table. I like the reflective layers in this photo, even showing my hands and my phone.)

Construction

I had a very slow day in the library yesterday. But in a way I'm glad because I'm going to be working this weekend. My co-worker arranged a conference of European school librarians on Friday and Saturday, and since it's happening at our school I couldn't very well not attend. Maybe I'll learn something. Who knows?

There is construction everywhere at the moment. Parts of Finchley Road are closed near the school for some kind of water works (above)...

...and the entrance to Billy Fury Way (that alley between the two buildings) is closed on West End Lane. I have no idea what's happening here and Google can't seem to tell me, but there's a notice posted at the site so maybe I just need to read it a bit more closely. This sidewalk is a very busy path between West Hampstead's three tube and train stations -- driving all those pedestrians into the street (or across it) seems pretty hazardous, even temporarily.

As a friend of mine used to say, "Will the world ever be finished?"

Dave and I started "The White Lotus" last night. We're two episodes in already, but I dozed off about halfway through the second (a fault of fatigue, not the show) so I need a recap. I'll re-watch it this evening.

Yesterday I got rather exasperated that there was yet another article about "Severance" in The New York Times. The NYT folks are obsessed with that show. They've run at least 14 articles about it in the past month, according to the somewhat wonky search function on the web site, and 24 since January. For a single TV show in the newspaper of record, that seems unprecedented. There have been articles about the building where it's filmed, the food in the show, the "dystopian signifiers" in the clocks and cubicles, the paranoia depicted in the show's relationships, and the proposition that it's "a brutal tale of female self-loathing." It's to the point that yesterday I tried to leave a comment on the most recent article to say "ENOUGH WITH 'SEVERANCE' ALREADY!" But the site wasn't accepting coments on that story, so I'll leave my feedback here.

Rubble in the Gutter, Trash in the Dog

A mostly pictorial post today, since I don't have much news. Mrs. Russia is silent upstairs -- so silent, in fact, that I think they may be out of town, which would explain the early rising yesterday. (But not the early vacuuming.)

Here's a beautiful tree I passed on my walk home yesterday evening. I'm going to try to get a better shot of it when the sun is on it, because this shadowy picture doesn't quite do it justice.

Remember how I mentioned that a building on the high street was struck by lightning over the weekend? Well, here it is. You can see the top of that gable is blown off. I imagine that pipe, which looks like plastic but I believe is actually metal, served as a giant lightning rod. I wonder what poor soul lives in that top flat. They must have felt a jolt.

Rubble rained down in the street after the strike. It's all still lying in the gutter.

And remember how I told you Olga likes to sniff garbage on our walks? Well, here she is in full garbage mode, with her nose entirely inside that bag. I hear you saying, "Oh, Steve, you shouldn't let her do that! She might eat something dangerous!" All I can say in my defense is that she's a lot stronger than she looks and walking her is exhausting because she pulls for every garbage bag she sees. I get tired of the fight. I usually manage to keep her from eating anything, unless I'm sure it's harmless.

Finally, one of the school moms brought me some flowers yesterday -- a pink Ranunculus and a yellow tulip. She came in as I was working and wordlessly set them on my desk, which was so nice. There was an event going on so I silently mouthed "Thank you!" to her.

I showed you my desk from the other side a few days ago, so here's what it looks like from the front. Those little friendship bracelets were lost in the library and I set them there thinking someone might reclaim them, but no one ever has. I found the animals years ago in a storage cabinet and put them out for some colorful decoration. The parrot is a Beanie Baby ("Jabber"), and that little blue thing is a rhinoceros.