Stickermania

Aas you know, I always keep an eye out for unusual stickers when I'm walking along Finchley Road (which, in general, is not a very scenic thoroughfare). Here are some I've found in recent days.

Perfunctory Googling this morning didn't solve the mystery of the sticker above. There are songs called "Not So Good," so maybe it's a reference to something like that, but otherwise the meaning is lost on me.

I think "Tommy" must refer to Tommy Robinson, England's criminal right-wing provocateur and all-around loose cannon.

I'm not sure what this one's about. Looks like a logo, but Google isn't sure for what. 

"Boo" has posted several stickers featuring chili peppers.

"Clean Out Louis" really IS a band, or at least a musical duo. I think they're Danish. Apparently one of them is named Louis -- a fact he didn't know until he was six years old, if this article is to be believed. Perhaps he's trying to "clean out" this alter-ego?

And finally, yet another cat sticker. I never tire of them.

Pondering Light Bulbs

There's an apartment in the building behind us where the light is always on. I took the picture above at 3 a.m. this morning, when I got up to get a glass of water. That light is bright, but it doesn't illuminate the whole scene the way it does in the photo -- that's a function of the iPhone's "night photography" feature.

When I turned off night photography, this is what I got:

Not as interesting as a photo, but closer to real life.

Anyway, I think the apartment is vacant. I wish someone would go in and turn off the light. I was a child of the Carter years, when we all talked about energy conservation and were instructed to turn off every light when we left the room. The New York Times says this is no longer necessary, because modern bulbs are so much more efficient than they used to be. (In 1974, the paper said just the opposite -- "It all three million customers in New York City and Westchester County cut off a single 100‐watt bulb that might burn six hours a day, the savings would be 1.5 million barrels of oil a year, 10 days' supply." Apparently incandescent bulbs really were incredibly wasteful, with most of the energy expended as heat rather than light.)

Today is just a half-day with students. Parent-teacher conferences begin in the afternoon and run for the next two days, which means Dave will be busy meeting with lots of parents online (which he's going to do from home), but I don't have much to do during this time since far fewer people will be in the school building itself. I suppose I can neaten shelves.

Picnic in the Street

Yesterday I was carrying the yard waste bags out to the street and I noticed this ladybug (aka ladybird) on one of the discarded stems of the dusty miller (Senecio). I gently broke off that leaf and brought it back to the main plant in the garden, where the ladybug took refuge. I probably disturbed its winter hibernation by trimming away some of the foliage where it was concealed. Hopefully it will find a new retreat until spring comes.

I had to come home yesterday at lunch because our boiler has been leaking and we had a repair scheduled. It only started dripping last week, but by Sunday the leak was worse and I thought, "We can't go away to Spain with this thing dripping like that!" I called British Gas yesterday morning and got a repair window of noon to 6 p.m. I stayed here for the first part of the shift, and Dave relieved me around 1:30 p.m. so I could get back to work. Martin, the engineer, was here by mid-afternoon and our boiler is once again watertight.

It's always something.

Meanwhile, the roofers working on the house next door set up a picnic lunch in the street, right in front of our steps. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone eat lunch in the street before. I wondered why they didn't use the parking space in front of the house (it's full of roofing supplies, I realized later) or the back garden (maybe too wet). Anyway, they didn't seem to mind.

On the way home in the evening I stopped on Finchley Road for a bubble tea (I get the taro milk with tapioca beads). When this place first opened several years ago it was quite swanky, but now it's looking a little downtrodden. I still like their stuffed bubble-tea toys, even though they are themselves bearing the stains of spilled bubble tea.

A Quiet Day

It's official -- I'll be headed back to Florida in early March, for a quick trip to join a "celebration of life" for my stepmother. I bought my ticket yesterday. I bought premium economy again, and it wasn't much more than what I've paid in the past for tickets in regular economy, so I felt pretty good about that deal. More legroom and the world's most expensive glass of "complimentary" champagne!

That's about the only meaningful thing I did yesterday, besides realize that we'd better stop spending so much money. Between our travels at Christmas, our trip to Spain, our summer cruise to Italy, this new ticket to Florida and my new laptop, I am hyperventilating about our checking account balance. We have more in savings but I'd rather not rip through that like a racehorse on the straightaway.

I went out yesterday morning with grand plans to transplant a buddleia that was growing at the back of our garden, underneath our fig and ornamental plum trees. The location was far too shady and last year it didn't look so good. Well, no transplanting was necessary, because when I looked again yesterday it was dead as a doornail. This is not a crisis. We have more buddleia than we know what to do with.

So I spent most of the day on the couch, reading. I polished off three New Yorkers. Oh, and I organized and archived all my photos for the last month or so.

In the evening, Dave and I went to see "Melania." NO! I'm KIDDING! I would never pay money to see that ridiculous film and in fact I wouldn't even watch it for free because WHO CARES?! Mr. Pudding posted this brilliant review from Mark Kermode on his blog and I have to link to it here as well because I got such a kick out of it. "Melania always talks about working," Kermode says. "When she says working, she means trying on frocks."

Other memorable lines from his review:

"It's like somebody making a documentary in which Eva Braun feels sad about war whilst Hitler invades Poland."

"She makes Derek Zoolander seem smart and self-deprecating."

"In its final act, it basically turns into 'Triumph of the Will.' It's a piece of handsomely mounted, crypto-fascist propaganda...a heist movie about a crime family breaking into the seats of power and stealing the cutlery whilst destroying democracy."

Trump "claims to be a peacemaker and a unifier and the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl fills the room."

(Photos: Stickers on Finchley Road.)

Rainy Walk and Coughing Fox

Free picture frame, anyone? Kind of a peculiar way to offer it up, and I'm afraid the rain hasn't done it any favors, but it's there if you want it. I also found a free chair (below) that I left behind.

I came across these treasures on an unexpected walk to work yesterday morning. I realized that I once again needed a computer cable adapter, this time to download the video from the garden cam to my new Mac. Remember how it only has two ports and my devices don't fit them? Also, Dave couldn't find his headphones and thought they were at work, and I had a couple of other things to drop off at the office. So I took a walk.

I got the adapter, dropped off the stuff and couldn't find Dave's headphones. And because I wasn't on a timetable I could make it a leisurely walk, stopping to take pictures now and then, even though it was raining lightly. I remember a photography teacher of mine telling me years ago to get out in all weather, because pictures on a rainy day could be just as interesting as those in sunshine and they offer all sorts of possibilities.

When I got back home, I went on Amazon and ordered my own cable adapter, which I should have done last week.

So that was the morning.

In the afternoon I spent time catching up on blogs and reading The New Yorker. Yes, I'm finally trying to work through my massive backlog of New Yorkers. I've been off the magazine entirely for several months but I intend to catch up. We'll see how that goes. Right now I'm reading an issue from August!

Here's what the garden cam yielded from the past week or so. At 0:24 we get a good look at a fox stretching, and at 0:43 we see one scratching and then hear the poor thing having a coughing fit. Wonder what brought that on? I suppose foxes get respiratory illnesses too, especially in this weather. At the one-minute mark we briefly see Pale Cat and then Tabby comes by at 1:29.

In the afternoon I did some springtime pruning. It seems a bit early but the roses are already putting out new growth so it was time. I pruned them back as well as the buddleia.

I haven't heard a thing from the tree man about clearing that ivy at the back. I think we've been ghosted. If I want it done I may have to do it myself. Which will be interesting, since we don't own a ladder.

We have crocuses, but as you can see, the squirrels are already gnawing the flower heads off!

Daffodils

I just now took this photo in order to have something to put on the blog! I don't know why I haven't been more inspired to take pictures lately. A lot going on, I suppose. But for what it's worth, here are our daffodils, coming more fully into bloom as they usually do in February. (My hand is in the photo because the flowers flop in the rain, and it's raining AGAIN this morning.)

I had a really solid night's sleep last night, which felt amazing. I was exhausted. We've had some family drama that has consumed about 98 percent of my brain over the last couple of days. It's not anything I feel comfortable blogging -- at least, not yet -- but I talked to my siblings last night via Zoom and I think it's all going to work out OK. It's related to my stepmother's estate, and it's been an emotional roller coaster. Fingers crossed, we've arrived at a good place.

My next-door neighbor on the right -- the good neighbor who we almost never hear anything from, and whose wall we share -- is having some work done on her house. A huge scaffold has been built in both the front and the back, and I'm hearing some guys clambering around on it now. I think it's roof work. If it keeps out the rain, I'm all for it.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what's going on upstairs. It's been weeks since I've seen or heard anyone from the family that moved in after the Russians left last summer. Their car is still in the driveway but if they're home they're very quiet. I don't think they're around. Also, the apartment listing is still up, though it does say it's "under offer" and perhaps that's real-estate code for "unavailable." I can't tell what's happening. The mysteries abound.

I am looking forward to a quiet day at home, doing some reading and not much else.

Iguanas

Well, this has been a dispiriting week. My stepmother's death has knocked all of us on our backs, for a variety of reasons. I'm sick of hearing and thinking about Jeffrey Epstein and his disgusting cult of exploitation, and I'm sick of rain and grayness and winter. I'm in one of those moods.

Did you see the story about the iguana cull in Florida? Iguanas, which are not native to Florida but like a lot of exotic reptiles have run wild in many areas, do not react well to cold. When the temperature dips too far, their nervous systems shut down and they literally fall out of the trees where they live. They're not dead, just in a cold-induced torpor -- they reawaken when the temperatures warm up again. Meanwhile, it rains iguanas.

Apparently it's been so cold in Florida that iguanas have been dropping left and right, and the authorities have encouraged people to collect the poor helpless critters so they can be "humanely" euthanized. I understand that they're an exotic species competing with native creatures for limited resources, but still, this seems patently unfair to me. Talk about kicking someone when they're down! It's very effective as a public policy, though, and more than 5,000 iguanas have so far been killed.

See? Dispiriting.

It's also been a long week at work. Fortunately next week we only have a few days with students and then it's parent-teacher conference time, which means the library will be pretty quiet. Maybe I can do some back-office stuff and some shelf-organizing. And then Dave and I are off to Spain!

(Photo: A colorful window at Roche Bobois on Finchley Road.)