Dogs Reading and Starlet Blues

Apparently we're in for some stormy weather this weekend. There's something with the provocative label of a "weather bomb" brewing out in the Atlantic, and Brian (as the storm has been named) is supposed to strike the southwestern UK on Saturday with high winds and rain. The warning area includes London, although when I look at my local weather forecast it says the rain chance is only 20 percent, so who knows. Contradictory information! I could stand a day of staying inside and reading, to be honest.

We librarians had our annual group picture taken. I didn't mention it this year, did I? Well, we always do a photo with some kind of theme -- remember a few years ago, when we had our tie-dyeing party and were photographed wearing the results?

This year, the theme included our pets!

Three of the four of us have dogs, and at some point last year someone came up with the bright idea of Tweeting (on the library's account) pictures of our dogs "reading," just to be silly. I swear I did not originate this idea, but I did go along with it. I took a picture of Olga lying rather disinterestedly next to a book (ironically a book I didn't like very much, "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes).

A few weeks ago, we decided to incorporate our pet pictures into our group photo. We had them printed at the school -- which gave the teacher in the robotics lab a chance to experiment with his new, large-scale printer -- and then we held them in front of us for the final image. (I'm just showing you me, and not the whole group, because I'm not sure my colleagues would want to be blogged!)

We were originally going to wear t-shirts with the pictures ironed onto the front of them, but we had technical problems with the iron-on materials and had to go to Plan B.

Anyway, the group photo is always a fun little team-building exercise.

On a completely unrelated subject, I forgot to tell you a story about my Jane Fonda outing with Dave on Sunday. We were sitting in the audience waiting for the show to start when a man and woman sat down behind us. The woman, who sounded American, proceeded to regale the man with tales of acting and her cancelled TV show -- "they say they only want shows with the potential to be as popular as 'Game of Thrones,'" she told him -- and her plans to stay in Europe most of the coming year filming something or other. I looked at Dave and whispered, "I am dying to turn around." Who could this person be?

I developed some theories, and then stood up to "remove my jacket" while discreetly stealing a glance. I am disappointed to say I had no idea who she was. She didn't look familiar at all. Kind of generic, actually. Twentysomething. Long, brown hair.

I sat back down and told Dave I didn't have a clue as to her identity.

"That's because it's all lies," he said -- rather caustically, I thought.

(Top photo: Yellow trees near a tennis court in West Wickham, London.)