About to Take Flight

Once again, I felt better yesterday -- well enough to take Olga back to the cemetery. I had to keep her on the leash much of the time because I saw about a half-dozen people there decorating graves, I suppose for the holidays. I'm sure she didn't understand why she couldn't chase squirrels, but she didn't seem to greatly mind. She could chase them with her eyes.

Dave still had a cough and a slight fever in the afternoon but he said he feels better too. So I think we're in good enough shape to board that plane today.

(Either way, we've gotta do it.)

And supposedly, a sick person is only really contagious when their symptoms begin. Right? Or is that an old wives' tale?

My packing is done. Olga's new harness is at the ready. Now we're just waiting for the dog boarder to show up this morning, and we're off!

Oh, and I've finally uploaded all my Lisbon photos. There are probably far more than you would want to see, but if you'd like, you can check them out here.

(Photo: A neighborhood Christmas tree, on Saturday.)

The Cemetery, and a New iPhone

Well, I don't know what's going on health-wise. I felt better yesterday -- still tired but not as tired -- so I took Olga to Fortune Green and to the cemetery. It felt great to get out of the house and get some fresh air. I know Olga appreciated it.

She also appreciated the brief burst of sunshine we experienced, and she appreciated the grass. As usual, plenty of it wound up in her digestive tract.

At Fortune Green, we saw a Christmas tree recycling enclosure with a sad little tree already abandoned inside it. (Well, Olga didn't think it was sad. By the look on her face, she found it hilarious.) If we weren't traveling I'd grab that tree, bring it home and decorate it, a la Charlie Brown.

In the afternoon, Dave and I went on a mission to get him a new phone. A work colleague spilled mulled wine on his old one, much to Dave's delight -- he'd already been angling for a replacement. (In fact I'm not at all sure Dave didn't douse it with wine himself.) We traipsed down Finchley Road to the Vodafone store, where we met with a very chatty salesman who presented us with a surfeit of options -- various data and calling plans combined with various phones, all with different up-front and monthly charges. He did a great job explaining everything, but good grief! In addition to phone plans, he told us all about telecom regulations and corporate telecom network purchases, as well as -- surprisingly -- cage fighting.

About an hour later we emerged with a new iPhone 6S and a fancy data plan, as well as an insurance policy should the phone be lost, damaged or stolen (a policy I'm taking with grain of salt given Ms. Moon's recent iPhone travails).

I thought about replacing my ancient iPhone, too -- the iPhone 3G Dave bought me in 2009 -- but the truth is, it's fine for talking and texting, and that's all I ever do. So I'm holding out for now.

We also thought about going into town for a new computer, but neither of us felt up to that task. I still think I can squeak a few more months out of this one. I'm all about pushing my electronics to their utmost limits!

A Post from Indoors

This is about all of the world that I saw yesterday -- the view from our front window. I barely left home except to run briefly to the cleaners in the morning.

I am definitely not well, exactly, because I'm really tired and kind of nauseated. But I don't have any of the coughing or other respiratory issues that Dave has had, and I'm hoping that rest will clear this up quickly. I haven't taken my temperature, but if I have a fever it isn't much -- and Dave's was much lower yesterday.

Unfortunately Olga is home today with no dog walker, so I'm going to have to take her out for some kind of walk. It may not be the long walk to which she has become accustomed!

Meanwhile, we've been preparing for our trip as much as possible. I have Olga's new harness at the ready, to appease the demands of the cranky dog boarder (who picks her up Monday morning right before we leave). I've gathered all the paperwork we'll need -- and then some -- for our wedding license.

Not much else to report!

A Dinosaur of a Virus

On my walk to work I pass this office where a huge, golden dinosaur skull hangs in the window. It has sparkly teeth. I don't know what it means, but I kind of dig it.

Maybe it's a metaphor for our lives right now, because things have gone awry around here. Dave, who has been dragging a bit this week, felt seriously ill yesterday morning. He got himself to work in order to conduct his final band performance and then came home and got into bed. I was unable to reach him by phone all day because he was sound asleep. When I came home in the evening, I woke him up and we took his temperature -- nearly 103º F!

Now, he'd been lying under blankets for hours, so I'm guessing that was a bit exaggerated. But still.

We had plans to attend an IMAX screening of "Star Wars" with others from school -- in fact we'd bought tickets in advance for £20 each. But obviously Dave didn't feel like going (that's when I knew he was really sick, because he's been looking forward to this movie for months) and I couldn't very well traipse off to see it without him. So we had to let those tickets slide.

And now, of course, I'm wondering what to expect regarding our trip to Florida. We leave on Monday. I don't have time to get sick and get better.

Hopefully Dave will have time to recover and if I get this bug, hopefully it will be less severe with me, and over by the time I fly overseas. Some of Dave's coworkers have had it, and it seems to differ substantially with each person. Dave's entire department is run-down, having just come off an insane two-week period of almost nightly concerts and performances, and in fact Dave was sick at this same time last year.

But seriously. I cannot believe this timing. We can't bring all our family members a mysterious European flu for Christmas! Fortunately when we first get to Florida we'll be staying in my dad's guest house, which is a separate structure unto itself and I suppose if we were sick we could hide out there until we're better, without fear of infecting anyone else.

Honestly.

I stole that little sunrise/sunset symbol from a Web site I visited yesterday, just to show you how dark it is in London right now. Even after the sun manages to crawl above the horizon, it's almost never very bright. Which is another metaphor.

Plant Purge

We've performed a houseplant cull.

Our Brugmansia, which you may remember bloomed just a few months ago, has a very persistent case of red spider mites. We've sprayed it thoroughly a couple of times with an organic bug spray, to no avail. It's dropped almost all its leaves and recently passed the mites to the dahlia that Olga nearly destroyed a few weeks ago -- so now that plant is not only ragged from the dog, but its leaves are shriveling.

Dave, the gardening maven, was never all that impressed with the Brugmansia blooms, and the dahlia was a free gift from a nursery when we bought some other stuff.

Meanwhile, our frost-nipped hibiscus also has some pests and has dropped most of its leaves. And finally, we have another potted plant that we think is another Brugmansia -- I found it in the trash at a house down the street -- but it's never really grown or done much and it doesn't look great either.

So we put them all outside. We're going to let winter take its course. Time to start fresh.

That leaves us with just the avocado tree, the venus flytrap and an anthurium at the back door. I'm really hoping those mites don't somehow make their way to the avocado. I'll resort to the nuclear option (pesticide) if that happens.

We haven't done anything in the garden for weeks now. We probably ought to get out there and clean up some of the "winterkill" (to use a word I learned when I was on the board of my co-op back in New York City). But we want to let things go a bit, to give the critters winter cover and allow the plants to disintegrate and re-nourish the soil. Besides, we haven't had a hard freeze yet, so some of them are still doing their thing.

(Photo: Grass plumes in St. John's Wood, on our one sunny day last week.)

Giga-Mansions

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times yesterday about mega-rich homeowners in Bel Air, California, using shell companies to hide their ownership of property. In some cases these shell companies become so multi-layered and complex that local government can't enforce building codes and matters of public safety.

That's what's happened in the case of a house that neighbors call the "Starship Enterprise," a vast, curved glass structure that landed on the hills and looms over the surrounding houses -- which of course are hardly modest structures in their own right. The house's construction has flouted local building and planning laws but inspectors seem powerless to stop it, because they can't figure out who owns it.

This isn't a phenomenon unique to Bel Air. Wealthy property buyers all over the USA use similar techniques to conceal their identity. Similar things occur here in England, where The New Yorker not long ago reported on residents' frustrations at being unable to determine who owns a huge mansion in Highgate, North London, where a massive renovation project was planned.

Side story: When I visited Los Angeles as a kid in 1983, with my family, I was very insistent that we do a tour of the movie stars' homes. So one day we piled into the car and went to Sunset Boulevard, or maybe Hollywood Boulevard, and arranged with a tour operator to drive us through Beverly Hills and Bel Air in a van or small bus. (There were eight of us.) I took a million blurry snapshots of houses belonging to Lucille Ball and others of her generation -- most of whom were still alive at the time -- and the remarkable thing was that their houses, although large, were just houses. They weren't giga-mansions that looked like spaceships. Of course, Lucille Ball was probably poverty-stricken compared to modern Russian oligarchs.

Are the super-rich more insular now? Do they have less regard for the people who live around them? When is a big house big enough? If they're just looking for a place to park their money, they have no community interest at all -- they're not going to live there.

Most importantly, isn't there a legitimate public interest in being able to identify the owner of a piece of property? Legislative changes are clearly in order.

(Completely unrelated photo: St. John's Wood, in October.)

Skype Drama

I Skyped with my mom in Florida last night for the first time since her recent major life changes -- selling our family home and moving to an apartment in a senior community in Jacksonville. The house sale closed last month, but she was incommunicado for a while because she had to get settled into the new place and have her Internet connected. We'd traded a few e-mails, but while she's quite conversational, my mom is almost comically taciturn in writing -- prone to answering questions with one, two or three-word responses. So it was good to actually talk to her, even though I'll be seeing her in just ten days.

However, we had a terrible Skype connection -- the worst I've ever experienced. I think it was a combination of my creaky computer, our weak broadband signal and iffy Internet on her end. We got bumped offline so often I thought we'd have to give up, and then I remembered that Dave uses his iPad to Skype. So I grabbed that and we managed to talk for about an hour more, though we had to reconnect once and we didn't use the video option. Which is fine, because I was in my bathrobe.

I guess the Universe was sending me yet another sign that it's time to get a new computer.

Yesterday a guy came into school to give a TED talk in the library. I got to hear bits and pieces -- something about "pushing the edge of innovation" and being "in the idea space." I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but in all honesty I was also trying to check out books and computer chargers and keep the kids in the next room quiet. I wasn't focused enough to be in the idea space. Everyone acted very impressed at the end, but being my journalistically skeptical self, I wondered whether the Emperor had any clothes.

Continuing my recent photobook fetish, I bought a copy of Robert Frank's "The Americans," originally published in the mid-'50s. During several cross-country road trips, Frank took a, well, frank look at America and published a book that questioned the glossy advertisements and Pepsodent smiles so common in popular culture at that time. It's a surprisingly diverse book, with blacks and Orthodox Jews and others who may not have seen themselves much in the media during the white-bread fifties. And it has an introductory essay by Jack Kerouac, which I haven't had a chance to read yet. Now I really must stop buying photobooks. At least for the time being.

(Photo: Leaves on Hampstead Heath, on Sunday.)