Meandering Through Mayfair

I was back down in Westminster yesterday, this time to meet up with my friends Chris and Gordon for lunch and do a bit of paperwork. Gordon is one of our referees for citizenship, so like Sally he had to sign a paper attesting that Dave and I are who we claim to be. We got that out of the way and had a good vegan lunch at Mildred's, which is possibly one of the most popular vegan restaurants in London. We got the lunchtime prix fixe menu, which was very good.

Then I went for a wander through Soho and Mayfair, taking photos all the way. I've photographed this dramatic lamp shadow (above) before, way back in 2014. This time a bird flew into the shot and placed itself just so, as if the shadow were some kind of laser beam blasting that pigeon from above.

In Mayfair, echoes of mid-century media at the Time & Life Building, now the home of Hermés. I wonder if the passing teens and 20-somethings know (or care) why the building is called that.

This little pub, the Coach & Horses, used to be crowded on all sides with buildings, but now the ones behind it have been torn down for some grand project or other. It makes the pub seem even more oddly isolated.

At Berkeley Square, home of the famous nightingale, I re-created yet again my photo from April 2000, which I first blogged about and re-created back in 2011. It's hard to believe that more time has elapsed between that blog post and now (14 years) than between the first photo and the post (11 years). The scene hasn't changed much.

I popped in to a Pret and ordered a coffee and some chocolate-covered almonds, and waited with other patrons in a rather disorganized group as the coffees were produced. When the barista called "white Americano" I stepped forward to take it -- not because I am a white Americano but because that really is my usual coffee order -- but she said it was with hot milk and thus belonged to a nattily dressed older gent behind me. I stepped aside and said to him jokingly, "I didn't take a sip from it, I swear."

"I wouldn't have minded if you did," he said to me, rather suggestively. Whoa! Was I hit on by a nattily dressed older gent in Berkeley Square? I believe so.

Hedonism Wines was bursting with springtime color, adorned with huge clusters of tulips, trees of Easter eggs and larger, graffiti-covered eggs down below. As the sign says in the window, "Have an eggcellent day!"

From there I walked to the Bond Street stop, took the Jubilee Line back up to St. John's Wood and stopped at school to scan the documents Gordon and Sally had signed. I uploaded all our supporting docs last night, so now the application is complete except for our "biometric meeting" on April 30. After that, it's just a matter of waiting.

The wisteria around the corner from the school, which I've photographed in years past, is once again in full, flourishing bloom. It smells heavenly.

Back to the Eye

Yesterday I got out for a little adventure in London, thanks to a friend at work and a family with kids at our school. The family wound up with four spare tickets for a river cruise and a visit to the London Eye, and they gave the tickets to my friend and co-worker. He invited me and two more guys along.

I've been to the London Eye several times, but it's been ages. I've just spent about 20 minutes going through old blog posts and trying to figure out when I was last there. I think it was July 2012, when I went twice -- once with Dave's parents and once with our friend Kellee.

So I was due for another visit. But first, the river cruise:

We sat on the top deck of the boat and got a look at sights along the river from the Houses of Parliament to just beyond Tower Bridge. Our helpful guide Jordan pointed everything out and told bad jokes along the way. I wondered if he ever gets sick to death of doing the same spiel over and over, and trying to get a laugh out of foreign tourists who may not even understand everything he's saying. (The older Asian couple sitting next to me clearly had no idea, though the man made a video of the entire journey on his phone.)

I texted another friend and told him what we were doing. "You tourists!" he texted back, with a laughing-face emoji.

The guide insisted that we wave at everyone on the bridges as we passed beneath them, and of course the people on the bridges waved back. This was funny because I'd just been walking over one of those bridges shortly beforehand, and a boat passed beneath me and I pointedly did not wave. What a crank I am. I did wave, a bit half-heartedly, from the boat. When in Rome.

From the boat we walked the short distance -- just a few steps, really -- to the Eye and jumped the queue with our VIP tickets. Soon we were in one of the glass pods making the roughly half-hour circuit around the wheel. I wonder what would happen if someone did lean against those doors? Surely they wouldn't just pop open. I didn't test them.

I made a video to give you the London Eye experience:

There are three clips spliced together. We begin with the Houses of Parliament and pan along the north shore of the river; we then look east toward the City of London and gradually southward to Elephant & Castle and west to show an adjacent pod on the wheel; and finally we pick up at Elephant & Castle again and look west along the river toward Vauxhall before ending back at Parliament and Westminster Bridge.

I paired the footage with a song from my iTunes, "How Do You Feel" by Wave System, which was just the right length. Its copyright holder apparently permits its use on YouTube. I had to put some music with the video to eliminate the conversational chatter within the pod, which was fairly loud because there were several little kids. (Don't lean on the doors, kids!)

Anyway, after this adventure I bade adieu to my friends and walked northward through Trafalgar Square (which was closed off for filming of some kind) and Soho all the way to Baker Street. I passed All Souls' Church (top photo) which was decorated with a special cross for Easter week.

And now, Olga wants a walk of her own!

A Spiny Surprise

I got the surprise of my life yesterday morning while watering our houseplants. Another one of our cacti is blooming -- and this one has never bloomed before! It's the left-hand cactus in this post. What's funny is, I had always imagined that if this cactus ever bloomed, the flowers would be pink. It's like I manifested them.

It's only blooming on the side that faces a sunny window, which is interesting. I feel a little bad that it's putting so much effort into flowers when there are no pollinators around, but I get to enjoy them, at least. (When I crane my neck to see them on the opposite side of the plant!)

I had a busy morning yesterday doing all the predictable things that I do around here -- cleaning the house and mowing the lawn and plant caretaking. I intended to go through our old paperwork and shred some of it, because seriously, we are saving things that are of no use to anyone. I discovered that while fishing around for documents for our citizenship application. But I just didn't have the heart to immediately tackle that project.

I will say this about computers -- it's great to go paperless and have so much stored digitally, as many things are nowadays.

Of course I would never throw away my elementary school annuals, which I came across in my rummaging. Here's my fourth grade class. Can you find me? Hint: I had the biggest forehead in the room.

What's funny is, I still remember many of these kids' names. Not all of them, but many. I don't know who that kid in the second row is with the bowl haircut, looking like Cousin Oliver from "The Brady Bunch." And I don't know why Gary wrote that I have a bad temper. He was a pal so I'm sure it was a joke. Mrs. Herb, my teacher, didn't have her photo taken so she drew herself in, with eyelashes weirdly on the bottom of her eyes.

Oh, and Melissa's last name was not "Mouse," despite being from Florida and thus potentially related to Mickey. I'm not sure she was even in my class -- her photo's not there, in any case.

My tax preparer got back to me with our completed US return yesterday. I looked it over but it was huge -- 50-something pages with worksheets and supplemental material, far bigger than any return I ever prepared myself. That accountant knows how to parse everything properly. I could really only skim through it to make sure it basically made sense, and it did. So I signed it and Dave signed it, and it's been filed and we've paid what we owe (not too much).

Next, we get to do our UK taxes! Woo hoo! (Sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear.)

Dahlias

Yesterday was my appointed day for the dahlias' annual spring reveal. I hauled them all out of the shed where they'd spent the winter, dry in their pots. There are eight of them altogether, and my plan was to repot them so they'd all have fresh soil for this year's growing season.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough compost to repot them all completely. So I repotted five of them, and the other three I simply took away the top couple of inches of soil and gave them a fresh layer, figuring at least some of the nutrients from the new compost would filter down into the older soil below. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference as they grow and bloom.

I once again realized that I have too darn many dahlias. Five of them I grew from seed -- I planted a bunch of seeds and that's how many sprouted, so I didn't have much choice in the matter. Another one grew of its own accord in another plant's pot, presumably a seed that somehow got away. The other two I bought as mature plants.

By the way, when you dig up a dormant dahlia, this is what they look like -- a thick knot of tubers. If I did this the way the experts recommend, I'd wash all the soil off that ball, neatly trim away anything shriveled or dead and repot the tubers in entirely fresh dirt. But I'm going the easy route, so I just brushed them off. If I lost a few dahlias it wouldn't kill me.

Here are some things that are blooming at the moment: Our aquilegia (above)...

...a fancy variegated deadnettle...

...and the candytuft, which persists every year despite the fact that Olga wipes her face on it every evening after she eats. (This is a tough plant -- it's one of the few smaller plants in the garden that's been here longer than we have.)

We've had a few failures, though. I already mentioned our struggling tree fern -- the jury's still out on that one. The foam flower (Tiarella), which looked so healthy in its pot last summer, and which I was so proud of having saved from its crowded, overshadowed location in the flowerbed, failed to come up this spring and when I examined the pot it was completely empty. Not sure what happened there.

Dave got launched successfully yesterday morning and he sent me a text last night that he'd landed safely in Michigan -- in Romulus, the township that includes the Detroit airport. Earlier he'd texted me "Jolan tru," which I did not understand at all -- I replied "Covfefe," thinking he'd simply done some sloppy typing. It turns out that he was about to take off on his connecting flight from Minneapolis, and "Jolan tru" is Romulan (as in "Star Trek") for "goodbye." Dave is officially nerdier than I am when it comes to "Star Trek."

I spent yesterday evening watching "All the President's Men," a movie I have seen a hundred times and could watch a hundred more. It makes me nostalgic for journalism, conversations with demanding editors and smart newsroom repartee. My grandfather and my uncle, both staunch Republicans who lived in Washington, hated The Washington Post for its relentless reporting on Nixon and Watergate -- I'm pretty sure my grandfather called it the Pinko Post, or something like that. I wonder what they'd make of Trump if they were alive. Trump's dogged insistence on loyalty isn't so different from Nixon's "enemies list," and his insecurity and paranoia are very Nixonian as well.

Green Goddess

Dave and I went all the way down to Greenwich yesterday, in South London, and yet somehow I managed not to take a single photo until we were back on our street walking home from the tube. This California lilac (Ceanothus) is such a vivid cloud of blue in this front garden, especially against the electric green of the euphorbia and the maple in the background.

So, yes, we ran our errand, in which our friend Sally signed the papers with the annotated and then mysteriously glued photos of us to submit with our citizenship application. I have another meeting with another friend on Wednesday to get his form signed, and then I'll upload everything. From there, it's just a matter of waiting.

I had a fairly lazy morning, sitting in the sun in the garden with Olga. I finished Bob Mortimer's entertaining book "The Satsuma Complex" and read part of a New Yorker. Once again, I'm about six issues behind on those, so some catching up is in order.

Then we hopped on the tube ("Don't hop on the tube -- it's dangerous," Dave would say) and went down to North Greenwich, from which we caught a bus to the Green Goddess pub in Blackheath. Sally and Mike met us there and we marveled that we haven't seen each other in person in TWO YEARS, which is just ridiculous. If you'd asked me I'd have said a year. I had no idea it had been twice that.

(Of course the name of the pub made me think of Green Goddess salad dressing, which I used to love but haven't had in years. I'm not sure it's even a thing in England. My mom used to buy all manner of Wish-Bone salad dressings, bright orange French and dark orange Russian and pale orange Thousand Island, and nowadays Dave and I just use oil and vinegar.)

Anyway, we had a pint and then another pint and discussed all manner of things, from what's new on TV to Trump and Keir Starmer and the politics around transgender issues. One of the bartenders was getting a graduate degree in gender studies so Mike called her over to give her opinions, and the conversation got very involved. Dave, who wasn't drinking because of his Crohn's, looked on gamely while the rest of us got buzzed. We were there about three hours.

And then Dave and I hopped back on a bus ("Don't hop on the bus -- it's dangerous") and came home, where Olga was eagerly awaiting us. She is prone to dizzy spells when she gets up suddenly and runs around with excitement, and she had such a spell in the back garden upon our return, so I had to sit with her for a moment until she calmed down and walked back inside, and then she was totally fine. Old dogs!

This morning, Dave is off to Michigan. He has to be at the airport at 9:30 a.m. and he hasn't even begun to pack. I'll miss him but I'm glad I'm staying home.

Silent Squirrel Spring

I snapped this picture as I left school yesterday afternoon, headed to a pub with Dave and a colleague. The peak of spring! That apartment building behind the trees is the same one I showed at the very beginning of my walking-home video a few weeks ago.

And we are now on Spring Break! Woo hoo! I sort of let it creep up on me, partly because I don't have any big plans. I'm going to hang out with the dog while Dave flies back to the states to work with his sister on clearing out his parents' Michigan house. The parents themselves are staying in Florida and will be advising from afar. I would help them except someone needs to stay with Olga.

Dave is leaving Sunday. Today we have plans to see our friends Sally and Mike, because I have to have Sally sign one of our referee forms for our citizenship application. If I'd known I had to get a physical signature on a piece of paper I'd have chosen someone closer -- Sally and Mike live down in Charlton, which is the other side of the city from us! We surely know several hundred British people between here and there. But I wanted to have at least one referee who wasn't associated with the school and Sally is a good choice in that respect.

This whole process seems a bit retro. We had to get passport photos taken, and I'm to write our names and birth dates on the back of the photos before gluing them to the forms for Sally to sign, one form for each of us. My question, of course, is how will the Home Office know I've written our names on the back of the pictures if they're glued to a form? But that's what the directions say to do, even specifying that I am to use glue -- so that's what I'm doing.

This is a courtyard outside the Lower School library. As I stand at the desk checking books in or out, this is my view. That windowsill used to be covered with potted plants but they've all been removed -- I think they got too messy.

Speaking of which, I brought home one of the library Thanksgiving cactuses that seems to be suffering. It has mealybugs and needs some TLC. Another Spring Break project! I also need to get our dahlias out of the shed and get them going. I want to repot them all in fresh soil.

Dave and I have noticed that we have almost no squirrels this spring. I have no idea why that is. We usually have plenty of them, crashing through the trees, digging up our plants and eating the neighbor's camellias, but I've only seen a few scattered individuals here and there. I wonder if wandering local cats have done them in? Or has a neighbor been waging a squirrel purge? Our squirrels are the invasive gray variety, and killing them is not only legal but sometimes encouraged -- the law only says it must be done humanely. Who knows?

Somewhere Between Easy and Hard

One of our geraniums has an early flower, and I'm seeing lots of buds elsewhere on the plant. There are actually two plants, one grown from a cutting taken from the other, and they both need bigger pots and fresh compost. A project for another day.

More inventory yesterday. I finished the 700s, which is art, music and sports, including one of our most heavily used sections -- graphic novels. There are 5 books missing, four graphic novels and one on sports psychology. The kids do not care about Rembrandt.

As I was scanning, some high school boys were sitting next to me and they asked what I was doing, so I explained inventory and why we do it. They couldn't believe I had to scan every book in the library, but I told them I thought it was fun -- I could let my mind wander as I did this fairly automatic task and there was always a bit of mystery and suspense involved in seeing what had been lost. "As long as I can think about things, I'm never bored," I said.

One of their friends came in later and they told him what I was doing. He said it looked "tedious." Oh well. I guess they are not destined to be librarians.

I got a chuckle when one of them began telling the others about an economics test he'd just taken. He described it as "somewhere between easy and hard."

Some of you asked yesterday about specific Dewey decimal ranges in our collection. Sue in Suffolk wondered what we had in 942.64, which is Suffolk history and geography. As you can see, Sue, we have nada. We go straight from 942.3 (Southwest England) to 942.7 (Northwest England and the Isle of Man). I think this is mostly a matter of cataloguing, though, because we do have books about Sutton Hoo and probably other Suffolk-related topics that are tucked away in other categories.

And Andrew asked about 994, which is geography and history of Australia. Here we do have some success, both with big books for the high school and adult crowd, and skinnier ones for the younger kids.

Last night Dave and I watched another old episode of "Bewitched," from 1964, and who should turn up playing a bit part as an airline stewardess but Raquel Welch! She had one or two lines and never even faced the camera. Talk about a missed opportunity!

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.