Jack London Square

A few blocks from Oakland's Chinatown is Jack London Square, one of those working waterfront areas that so many cities have turned into a trendy shopping/dining/entertainment/lodging districts. My own foray into Jack London Square was decidedly low-key: I skipped the entertainment and lodging entirely, confining my shopping and dining to the Barnes & Noble and its café, respectively. (Well, OK, I did make a pass through California Canoe & Kayak, but I was just browsing; I knew I couldn't get one of those in my carry-on luggage anyway.) I wandered about the waterfront for a bit (until impending rain sent me inside that B&N) and snapped a few photos along the way, like this statue of (who else?) Jack himself.

The central square was dominated by an imposing stand of palm trees. (Did I mention there was a storm brewing?)


The grounds were dotted with little garden-y areas, including some rather peculiar-looking topiaries like this one, which I think is supposed to be a dolphin. All in all, I have to say I prefer Virginia Beach's signature dolphins to this macrocephalic model.

Read More......

King of Grocery

On my business trip last fall, the meetings wrapped up earlier than expected and gave me a free day, so I hopped the BART to Oakland's Chinatown and environs. Love the bilingual street signs. This is just a few blocks from the Oakland Inner Harbor Channel, which separates Oakland from Alameda Island. (More photos later from Jack London Square.)

At another intersection closer to the heart of Chinatown, intricate patterns are set into the crosswalk pavement (that's not paint).

And on the other side of that intersection, a closer look reveals that we are in the presence of royalty, to wit: the King of Grocery.

Read More......

A tree grows in Alameda

Not, strictly speaking, San Francisco (as this post is tagged), but close enough; this is in Alameda, which was my actual business trip destination.

Read More......

San Francisco Victorian

You know I was taking photos just as an excuse to stop and catch my breath, don't you? Good lord, I'm out of shape. The climb didn't seem to bother my companions, but then they haven't quite reached my advanced age (which felt at the time like it was about the same as that turreted Victorian on the corner); one's around 30, and the other in his 40s, I think. Thanks for slowing down and waiting for me, guys. No doubt you feared I would have a coronary if you didn't.

Read More......

San Francisco row houses

Just a shot of some of the charming houses I passed while trudging up the hill toward Haight-Ashbury. Oddly enough, I had to actually straighten the photo in Photoshop to show the true slope; apparently I partially compensated for the incline when I took the shot, making the street appear more nearly level.

Read More......

The Hashbury

Almost my first assignment on my new job when I started last October was to head out to California on a business trip with my project team members. Our business was in Alameda; we stayed in Oakland, and rode the BART into San Francisco one evening and climbed the hill up to Haight-Ashbury. Kind of odd to see, for the first time, the district that was an icon of an era that encompassed my high school years.
And no, I didn't wear flowers in my graying hair...

Read More......

Master of all she surveys

Generally speaking, the avian population in my back yard is limited to the prosaic likes of mourning doves and blue jays. But one day back in March, I took a look out my back door in passing and was startled to spot this rather large bird (about a foot tall) perched on the deck railing. Though it may not be immediately evident in the longer view above...

... a closer look (click on the photo for an even larger view, if you're not the squeamish type) may reveal that it has a chunk of some hapless prey clutched in its claws, upon which it intermittently munched between long spells of swiveling its head back and forth to eyeball the surroundings, no doubt on the lookout for its next meal. It sat there for a long time finishing its dinner before eventually retiring to the branches of the crape myrtle, where it continued its steely-eyed lookout for another hour or so before finally disappearing.

A friend at work has tentatively identified the beastie as a female Cooper's hawk. I haven't seen it since that day, which is fine with me; I don't really think I'd be comfortable lying in my hammock, or even mowing the grass, back there with this perched in the tree overlooking the yard.

Read More......

Up a tree

The photo shows one of the branches I lost off my Bradford pear the other night (the one you can a good bit of in my previous post). Now, if you're familiar with Bradford pears, you know they tend to be brittle and break in windstorms, and you probably think that's how this branch came off. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There I am, relaxing in a hot bath with a good book, when I suddenly hear someone pounding on the front door. Now, I should point out that this had to have been pretty heavy-duty knocking, because I have a hard time hearing anything in the bathroom, which is at the back of the house. In fact, I can't even hear the phone ring there. I can't imagine who would be knocking on my door at 8 PM; I'm certainly not expecting anyone. Nevertheless, I cut short my reading, finish my ablutions, get dressed, and go to the door.

There's a fire truck sitting in the street in front of my house, red strobe lights flashing.


Three firemen are under the tree, apparently addressing someone up in the tree. They've got a stepladder they're trying to position. A man, standing out in the street, catches sight of me and starts demanding to know why I didn't answer my door, which he claims to have been pounding for "twenty minutes". I inquire of the firemen as to what the hell is going on.

Seems that a young woman who lives three doors down from me has climbed up my Bradford pear tree in an attempt to rescue an errant pet. No, not a cat. That would just be too much of a cliche. No, she is after an exotic bird (looked somewhat like the picture at left, which is a "blue and gold macaw") that flew the coop and perched in my tree. (It must have been the first one it could find. The house next to me has no tree in its front yard, and the second house down just felled the remainder of their Bradford pear after it came apart in the recent windstorm and went through the rear window of their car parked in the driveway.) The firemen are trying to convince her to come down before she gets hurt (one branch has cracked already), and point out to her that she is, in fact, trespassing. She's ignoring them, because the damned bird cost her $2000 (yes, that's two thousand) and she has to rescue it. The guy in the street continues to berate me for being rude enough not to answer my door, despite the fact that I told him I just didn't hear anything until five minutes ago.

Well, she manages to grab the bird and starts to maneuver her way down towards the stepladder the firemen have waiting, when CRACK goes another limb. Fortunately the firemen manage to get her down safely, bird clutched to her bosom. She apologizes all over the place but allows as how the bird is OK, so everything is all right, totally ignoring the fact that she has broken two major branches off my tree. The guy in the street, who I assume is her husband, points out that she "got hurt" (she had a scratch on her leg) -- so he hoped I had insurance! I replied that I hoped they had insurance to cover the damage to the tree.

Meanwhile (probably due to this exchange about injuries, damage, and insurance), the fire captain has asked a city cop to respond to the scene. Before he gets there, the women and the guy (who it turns out is actually her boyfriend) go back to their house, presumably to cage the damned bird. The cop arrives and I give him a brief rundown of the incident; the firemen leave. The cop goes down the street to talk to these people, and eventually comes back with the woman (sans bird and boyfriend). She apologizes some more and says I don't need to worry about any liability -- she just got a scratch and the boyfriend doesn't have anything to do with it.

For some reason, no one except me seems to be concerned about the property damage. I've got one branch lying in the yard and another broken at a right angle but still partially attached to the tree, and I'm probably going to have to pay a tree service to take it off before it rips off in a storm and causes even more damage. I've got a $1000 deductible on my homeowner's insurance so no help there. And all she can say is that the important thing is, she got her bird back!

Read More......

The roof over my head

For some reason, I never got around to blogging about my second major home improvement last year: my new roof. (The first being my new air conditioner.) I shall rectify this omission forthwith, beginning with an overall shot of the house from the street, shortly after the work was completed. This doesn't really do it justice -- even if you click on it for the larger view -- because the color comes off as grey when it's actually blue. The closer-up before and after pix after the jump show it better.


As you can see, it was a significant color change, from a dirty reddish-brown to a dark blue. As such, I had to get it approved by my homeowners' association. I wanted something a little different; three quarters of the houses in the neighborhood are roofed in various shades of brown and tan, and the rest shades of gray to black. And blue has always been my favorite color.

Before and after (click to enlarge)

They did the whole roof in one (somewhat long) day, after previously delivering the shingles by crane to the roof. I wish I could have been around to watch this process; having observed my ex in the processing of reroofing three houses, I'm used to it being a much longer job. But then, roofing techniques have changed a lot since the last one he did (around 1987, if memory serves), and my ex didn't have a crane. Not to mention that two of those roofing jobs involved houses around 90-110 years old, with porch roofs and additions to deal with.

Anyway, I was happy with how it turned out, and even happier that I got it done last year, before I got laid off.

Read More......

Daffodil

Read More......

A field of yellow daffodils

OK, so this modest bed around my Bradford pear isn't quite a "field", but the fact remains that my yellow daffodils are up 4 to 8 inches and several are in bloom. And it's only February 7th, for Pete's sake!

After a downright cold (for Hampton Roads) January, we got a record high yesterday of 80 degrees (and close to a record in the mid 70s the day before). Evidently this unseasonable warmth has gotten these poor misguided bulbs confused enough to think spring is here. I don't even know just when they popped up through the mulch; all I know is, when I went out to fetch in my newspaper this morning, there they were.

I just hope they survive if we get another cold snap.

Read More......

Things you don't want to hear

There are probably lots of things you don't want to hear your air conditioner installer say. Quite high on my personal list -- right at the top, as a matter of fact -- is:

"The new heat pump won't fit through the gate."

followed closely by:

"Looks like the fence'll have to come down."

This is not a hypothetical statement. On the contrary, when I recently got my less-than-state-of-the-art heat pump and positively decrepit air handler replaced, these were pretty much the first two pronouncements made by the installer. Seems that, while the sales rep dutifully measured to make sure they could get the air handler into the attic space, he somehow neglected to similarly check the access to my back yard.

The gate and fence in question are the ones I replaced myself some time ago. This was the first time I'd needed to get anything bigger than the lawn mower into (or out of) the back yard, and it never occurred to me that it might be a problem. After all, the previous owners had obviously gotten the existing heat pump in through a gate the same width (although, admittedly, only about half the height). Of course, the new heat pump is about twice the size of the old one.

Well, in the end it turned out that all they had to do was take out the section of fence next to the gate, seen in the photo above. And having installed the bugger myself, I actually knew that it was feasible and exactly how to do it without destroying anything. The heat pump went through with an inch to spare, they replaced the fence panel, and all was well. (Well, the day lilies are a bit the worse for wear, but it looks like they're going to survive.)

So I am now the proud owner of this 15 SEER heat pump, with a matching variable speed air handler tucked up in the attic (where I am not going to go just to get a picture). It's incredibly quiet; you don't even know it's running unless you're right next to it.


The old one, by contrast, sounded somewhat like an airplane taking off. And considering that it was only a 10 SEER unit, I'm expecting to see a significant drop in my electric bill. Which will be A Good Thing (tm), because the new system has put a rather large dent in my bank account, to put it mildly.

Next up: a new roof and gutters!

Read More......

Rabbit Redux

Almost two months ago I made note here of a white rabbit sighting in my front yard. Now, I know you all thought the Major had a) finally gone completely round the bend; b) been listening to too much Jefferson Airplane; or c) gotten into the magic brownies. Herewith, photographic evidence of d) none of the above. (Indeed, I went round the bend years ago, so it couldn't have been a. And, sadly, I haven't a clue where my Jefferson Airplane albums have got to.)

The bunny's still around, still very white, and still munching on my vegetation, having raised his (or her, as the case may be) culinary sights from clover to my pansies, dammit. She (or he) even put in an appearance at my recent yard sale, when I was startled by some browsers suddenly exclaiming, "Oh, is that your pet bunny?" after spotting the little bugger under the privet.

I haven't seen him/her for a couple of weeks, but I'm sure she/he is still lurking around, probably in the hayfield that I call my back yard. Anyway, now you (and I) know I wasn't hallucinating.

Read More......

A tree grows in Virginia Beach

Well, OK, a shrub. A couple of years ago, I ripped out the overgrown holly in front of the corner of my garage next to the front walk. For a while, the spot held some ivy and pansies, but I always figured I'd eventually plant another small shrub there, if I ever found something I liked that could be kept under control, size-wise.

"Eventually" finally arrived last weekend, when I got into the ground a Cryptomeria japonica (Japanese cedar) "Black Dragon" that I bought at Lowes the week before. (See, I'm getting a little better at planting in a timely manner.) They're supposed to stay relatively compact, so I'm hoping it won't require too much pruning to keep it from taking over the sidewalk. It's a nice deep green (more so than it appears in this photo, which looks slightly washed out), no yellow/gold coloration which I dislike. Now I just have to keep it watered and hope it lives through the summer.


In other gardening news, I spent a good bit of time this weekend digging out of my lawn some of the biggest damned thistles you ever saw. If the things I plant deliberately would grow even half as heartily as the thistles, I'd have a prize-winning landscape here. Pulled up a pile of clover, too, but hardly made a dent in it. I think it's going to take a dose of Roundup, which is also what the cracks in my driveway need. That's another place I manage to grow an amazingly healthy crop of weeds.

And finally, I bit the bullet and hauled the lawn mower out of the shed yesterday for the first mowing of the year. I was gonna do it last weekend, until we had a deluge. So I figured I'd best take advantage of a dry and sunny weekend to fend off the local grass police. It was so tall that I set the mower at maximum height (which I think is 3.5") so I didn't scalp it too badly. Of course, that meant when my buddy Tim stopped by just after I finished the front yard, he thought I hadn't started mowing yet. But then I pointed out to him the side yard where I hadn't mowed yet, and he revised his assessment of the situation.

Read More......

The art of home improvement procrastination

When my dear departed father received clothing as a gift -- say, a new sports shirt -- he would never wear it right away. No, it went into the closet for weeks or months, until he considered it was properly "aged".

I have embraced that same principle for home improvement projects. Three months ago, in a post about my new patio door, I mentioned that I had bought a new lockset for the front door in the same oil-rubbed bronze finish as the hardware for the patio door, but hadn't installed it yet. Lord knows the front door was in sad need of an upgrade from the El Cheapo brass key-in-knob lockset with no deadbolt, but you can't rush these things. Last weekend I finally decided the new lockset had aged long enough, so on Saturday I pulled out the instructions and set to work.

Three days, two trips to Home Depot (to buy (1) chisels and (2) a drill bit in a size my set didn't include), one pile of debris, and a lot of cussing later, I finally have a not-shiny but new handleset and deadbolt on my front door, as you can see in the inside and outside views below.



Like all such endeavors, it wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have seemed. The front side of the instruction sheet, in three languages and with line drawings, informed me that the Required tools (Outils nécessaires, Herramientas requeridas) were a straight screwdriver, a Phillips screwdriver, and a tape measure.

Ha. I can only assume that the people who wrote the front of the sheet (which addressed the actual installation) didn't talk to the people who wrote the back of the sheet (which covered marking and preparing the door and jamb), because they somehow failed to list -- on either side -- the cordless drill, two battery packs, two hole saw bits (one of which did not fit the mandrel in the kit), Crescent wrench (to remove the mandrel that was stuck in the hole saw that did fit), spade bit (substitute for the hole saw that didn't fit), two regular drill bits, hammer, two chisels, utility knife, ruler, carpenter's pencil, one two-inch nail, and hunk of 2x4 that also proved to be nécessaires (or if you prefer, requeridas).


And then, when I start to gather up the plethora of tools and old parts to deposit them in the garage, I discover a leftover part. Oops. That can't be good. Back to the instruction sheet... where I eventually track down where the damned thing belongs and then have to disassemble the deadbolt again to install it.

Anyway, it's done, and looks so nice that now I'm going to have to paint the door because it looks pretty crappy in comparison. And then I need to install the new weatherstripping that's been aging since I bought it last summer. But first I need to get out the vacuum cleaner to clean the sawdust and metal shavings out of the rug.

Read More......

Wild roses, coastal Maine

Read More......

Unexpected encore

Among the plants I've put in over the last couple of years are some so-called "rebloomers", that are supposed to bloom in spring or early summer and then again in late summer or fall. But with the hellish heat this past summer, even daily watering didn't seem to be enough, and my Endless Summer hydrangea and Encore azalea wilted repeatedly. It looked like there would be no encores this year; I wasn't even sure they would survive.

Then, in late October -- only a week before Halloween -- some splashes of color caught my eye in the front yard. And lo, the azalea and one of the three hydrangeas had, after all, bloomed again. Not a lot of blooms, but the shrubs are still pretty small, and I was quite frankly amazed to get anything so late in the year.

With a little luck, fertilizer, and water, just maybe I can prod them into a growth spurt in 2007 and a more normal "endless" or "encore" blooming cycle.

Read More......

More home improvement

Getting that tree pruned wasn't the only home improvement project I got around to this past fall. I've been planning since I moved in (over three years ago) to replace the sliding patio door (below) with a hinged door.

This picture doesn't really convey the sad condition of the slider (I use that term loosely; the tracks were so crudded up and pitted that the door threatened to leave its track each time I tried to close it), so you'll have to take my word for it that this replacement was long overdue. The insulating value of the door was approximately R-0.001; I'm pretty sure the seal on the glass had failed. So I finally went to Lowe's, picked out and ordered a new steel door, and contracted for its installation. And here it is:

The left panel is hinged, the right is fixed. Such a configuration more typically is hinged in the center, but the door frame nearly butts up against a wall inside (the front of a pantry closet), so I went for center latch instead. I still need to paint the door both inside and out (that's just primer), but I no longer have to fight with that non-sliding slider, and it's also Energy-Star rated (tax credit!).

I also opted for a lockset and deadbolt of a better grade than the usual bright brass "builder's run" model. I'm partial to the oil-rubbed bronze finish that is so widely available these days, so that's what I settled on. (In fact, I also got a new lockset for my front door in the same finish, though I haven't installed it yet.) The only thing wrong with this hardware is that I wasn't able to get both locks keyed alike "off the shelf", so I'm probably going to want to get one rekeyed. Oh, yeah, I also discovered, upon reading the instructions for the lever handle the other day, that the guy who installed it got the levers reversed (i.e., the inside handle is outside and vice versa). The curve of the lever should come up from the bottom of the shaft. Not that I'm sure exactly what difference it makes (it seems to work OK), but the instructions are quite explicit that this setup is wrong. So one of these days I need to take the handles off and swap them.

Changing the door also means I can finally get rid of the crappy vertical blinds which I hate. I just ordered wood mini-blinds in a walnut finish from JCPenney. Another week or so and the vertical blinds are history.

Read More......

Leeds, Maine

Another photo from my vacation -- my erstwhile college roommate's back yard.

Read More......

Bailey Island, Maine

It occurs to me I never posted any photos from my August vacation trip to Maine. In truth, I didn't take many, but there's a few that I liked. Here's one.

Read More......