Yosemite

Leaf shadows, and the usual photos of this place of staggering beauty. -- Rachel

Decoration Day

Memorial Day has become merely "the three-day weekend which marks the start of summer." But I remember veterans visiting cemeteries, and the vast veteran's cemetery near the intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and Sepulveda Blvd. in Los Angeles.

Today, I learned of a group that helps support the survivors of soldiers killed during their service careers. No Greater Love

You can send them an email of support (or ask them how to donate funds) to remembrance@ngl.org.

Most Saturday nights, after I leave my group of quilting friends, I drive home past the Lafayette BART Station, and see a hillside full of crosses, crescents, stars, and other memorials to U.S. soldiers fallen in Iraq. The video I took is too large, so I will find a place to post it, and then come back and revise this message.

And I don't know the significance of the three tiny crosses in the center front.

-- Rachel

Lizard Info

Seems it was an alligator lizard, a species native to northern California. They _can_ bite, so I guess I'm glad this one didn't.

   The California Herps website www.californiaherps.com has some good information and lots of clear photos. This shot of a San Francisco alligator lizard (note that this one is brown, while the one I saw was quite greenish) was taken by Gary Nafis.

If I ever see another one in a space as unsuitable as a parking lot, I will capture it, put it in a safe container overnight, and drop it off in Golden Gate park or somewhere similar, free of cars.

-- Rachel

Sad postscript: no more lizard

My co-worker Bill reported seeing the lizard, dead in the parking lot, having been killed by a parking car. -- Rachel

Lizard in the Office Parking Lot

At first he tried to hide against the side of the building.



Then he turned to face me, and ran across the driveway.



I tried to "herd" him back to the building, since it seemes like a safer place for him to be. At one point, we both just stood there, and then he astonished me by walking towards me, and climbing up my foot and finally up my leg to about my knee. I began to slowly walk back across the driveway, and he stayed on my leg for most of the trip. Eventually he turned around and walked back down my leg (I was wearing jeans), and went back to a sunny pad of concrete. When I came back later, he was gone, and I haven't seen him since.

Can anyone tell me what kind of lizard this one, and what is its normal habitat? Thanks.

-- Rachel

Bike to Work Day

I actually biked to work today. No excuses for anybody -- I have the rattiest bike and helmet in the world. Here's my helmet, with its visor held on by a combination of double-sided sticky tape and this amazing, non-sticky tape (the purple stuff, if you look closely) that only sticks to itself and is slightly stretchy. I think the Clotilde catalog sells it, and so do some hardware stores.

I am always careful to wear my velcro ankle bands made of reflective tape, when I cycle. They're at eye-level for cars, and I'm convinced they make me more visible to drivers.

-- Rachel

New Car for Me

The interoffice email said, "Free car...will need a clutch...first come, first served." I phoned. I had my mechanic check out the car. "It'll need a clutch in a few months," he confirmed. I'm registering it right away, and I've already added it to my car insurance policy. A huge thank you to my generous co-worker, Billy Bicket.

-- Rachel

Plant sale purchases

I went to the sale on Saturday (it turned out the Friday night sale was only for members of the Botanic Garden), and came away with four plants: a golden currant (which is supposed to actually bear fruit, plus have beautiful yellow flowers in spring), an erodium -- a small tufty plant with white flowers that have dark pink veins, a sort of iris that has blue flowers, and a white cistus (non-thorny, non-scented roselike flower).

The helpfulness of the garden volunteers at the sale was just amazing. No sooner did you pick up a plant, than a volunteer would appear at your elbow, offering to carry it to a safe place for later pickup. When you were ready to pay, you went to the pickup place and verified the plants they had set aside for you, and collected a slip of paper with the prices. Then a volunteer would ferry the plants on a wagon to the garden exit, where you could pick them up by showing your "paid" slip. If you wanted to load plants into your car, there was an extremely efficient system for waving you to a special section of curb and bringing you the box of plants you'd purchased. Everybody was friendly, too, not just efficient -- they seemed really glad to see you planning to use native plants in your garden.

As Californians become more water-conscious, using plants that don't need summer watering makes sense.

-- Rachel


Agave?

Native Plant Sale at Berkeley Botanic Garden

The Berkeley Botanic Garden in Strawberry Canyon is having a rare sale, tonight (April 27, 2-7:30 pm) and tomorrow (10 am-2pm).

MouseKicks

Mouse Tricks

When I was a child, people at a nearby park would often form human pyramids and perform other gymnastic feats. Here are the mice, balanced carefully.

Puffins can be found in California

And not to forget my favorite birds: puffins. Here are some puffin links. Puffins are hard to spot in the wild, since they like to nest on sheer cliffs over the ocean. There are nests at Point Reyes.



British Columbia Puffins, Puffins in Seward, Alaska.

Peregrine Falcons -- Urban Birds of Prey

One of an urban-dweller's only defenses against the hordes of pigeons which can be hazardous to hair and hats, is the peregrine falcon. You may have heard the phrase, "She Stoops to Conquer" -- which comes from the term for a falcon's bullet-like dive to break the neck of a bird flying below it.

I learned recently about George and Gracie, a peregrine falcon pair that has been nesting on top of the PG&E building near the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. There's even a webcam on their nest: http://www2.ucsc.edu/scpbrg/index.htm


Here's George.

-- Rachel

Rainy Morning Photos: Yellow Iris, Long Silver Grass

I took these photos early last week (maybe April 10?). -- Rachel

Tiny Scissors

A birthday gift from my sister (delayed by the Post Office).

These scissors came from a vendor whose contact info is: phone (859) 881-0377, fax -1927.

Mouse Square Dance: Grand Right-and-Left

A Grand Right-and-Left takes everyone around the circle and usually begins with an "allemande left" where partners link left hands and walk around each other. In the grand right and left, men go one direction around the circle (usually counterclockwise), women go another (usually clockwise); so each dancer takes the hand presented to them and walks past to the next dancer. When they get back to their partner, usually the caller says, "swing your partner and promenade home" -- so the couples embrace and go around each other, then link both hands (often crossed in a sort of figure-8 pattern) and walk back to their original spot in the square.

-- Rachel

Mouse Square Dance: Do Si Do

(Pronounced dough see dough, it means "back to back".) The mice are learning to square dance!

Flaked-Out Mice

The mice had a busy weekend, so they are all taking a nap.

Hobby Theaters -- Card-table Sized

One fascinating store that I visited during a trip to London sold miniature theaters printed on paper, for cutting out, assembling, and using to produce your own plays. One could buy theaters, scenery, sheets of drawings of people in various costumes (with the sizes of the people scaled to match the sizes of the theaters). I could never decide which one, and hoped to return to the store, but I never did.

http://www.kannikskorner.com/toytheater/abouttoy.htm

When I did a websearch hoping to find them, I turned up the Kannik's Korner site. They're not in London, but here in the U.S., and I immediately purchased a theater.

The Kannik site is full of interesting information; one can buy plays, see photos of the lightweight wood frames which are used behind the scenes to give structure to the paper facades, and read discussions of such topics as how to use moving wave backdrops!

For anyone hoping to wean their children away from too much television -- or with a budding actor, playwright, or drama queen in the family -- this site might be fun to explore.

-- Rachel

Unusual Folding Fork

I was amazed by this unfolding fork -- at first I tried to rotate the back portion like a clock hand, but then I realized the two parts were hinged, and the hole-and-spoke mechanism merely locks everything in place. -- Rachel Holmen

Group Hug -- Fourth Mouse Reunited with Friends

Da Splits

Amazing East-European Easter Egg

I bought this fabulous hand-painted, empty egg at Sweet Adeline in Berkeley. Here are two more views of this fabulous egg. -- Rachel

Welcome back, Stephen!

My co-worker has been away from the office for several weeks, so the mice are celebrating now that he's back.

-- Rachel

MousePlay

Mouse Dispute

Mouse Teacher

Fuzzy photo of Lupines

It was nearly dark when I took this photo, and a flash picture lost the mustard flowers in the background. So I just shot the photo hand-held, for a rather Impressionist effect. -- Rachel

Yoga Circle

Happy Birthday to Me

It's my birthday today; for far my best gifts have been an unexpected visit from an out-of-town friend, a trip to Point Reyes on Saturday (foggy but beautiful), and a great conversation with my dad this morning. We reminisced about when I had a bit part in "An Affair to Remember" as a teen viola player. (He was thinking of the film and my role in it partly because his retirement community showed it last night.) I remember playing on the sets, and doing homework with other children since all young actors had to spend at least half the day on the set doing school assignments. My trumpet-player friend Glen Sallow (sp?) was in the film with me, as was a very cute female schoolmate who played some sort of percussion instrument (cymbal?). Our classroom was the area around the fountain which appears in the film as part of Cary Grant's mother's villa.

Our best day was the first, when we found a whole village set, and we walked the streets from Chinatown to the Old West to New York all within a few steps of each other -- every time you turned a corner, you were in a different "locale". But when the studio realized we were playing in this particular set, they stopped us because the whole village was about to fall down, and they worried for our safety.

Deborah Kerr actually conducted our little scene, but she must not have had much musical training (I heard later that another singer dubbed the songs she seemed to sing); when you conduct an orchestra in 4/4 time, you move your hand in a sort of X pattern -- up for the starting beat of the measure, down for the second beat, up and to the side for the third beat, horizontally for the fourth beat, then back to the top for the start of the next beat. Kerr couldn't stay consistent even with four beats per measure, so we had to ignore her and just play in time to the pre-recorded soundtrack.

That was another interesting bit: although you saw us on screen, and we COULD play the song, the orchestra that you hear in the film is a much larger orchestra, of older children plus some adults who were added in for this single recording. We in the VISUAL orchestra rehearsed the tune to the sheet music, then for filming, we had to pretend to play in time while an LP recording of the larger orchestra started up. I had to hold my bow up above my viola strings, never touching; children playing wind and brass instruments had to pretend to blow and just do the fingering. Only the percussionist was allowed to actually play, because nobody could figure out how to fake her part.

I never did get Kerr's autograph -- she signed some one day, then said she had to leave and would be back and sign more, but we never saw her again.

-- Rachel Holmen

Yoga Mice

Skype toy

http://www.emtcompany.com/products/adapters/usbaudio-usb-to-audio-microphone-adapter.htm\



I'm interested in Skype, so I signed up for an account. Free long-distance calling has to be appealing. But when I located a computer headset, I realized there was nowhere on my Mac G4 cube that the plugs would fit.

The gadget above, which I ordered today, should complete the circuit. I had hoped to buy a Griffin iMic but prices were too high, even on eBay. -- Rachel

Fun link for the day

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/maps/realunderground/realunderground.html

Watch the intro, then click some of the links. Cleverly done.

(I _do_ hope that I can get back to London again.) -- Rachel

Chinatown in San Francisco

After a good dinner, we posed for photos: me and Jason; Paco, Helen, and Andres.

I'm heading for one of my favorite restaurants in Chinatown: Sam Wo on Washington Street. I've been eating in this place a couple of times a year since the late 60s, when friends and I went in because it was the only thing open very late one night. The menu included "duck dry noodle" for a price I could afford, so I tried it. Yum -- I order it every time now. The chow fun is pretty good, too. I'm going with friends from work: Helen, Andres, Jason, and Paco. -- Rachel