conference traffic

Clouds low over the Pasadena mountains this morning: it rained in the night; it was raining hard this evening.

Perhaps it was tempting fate for the organizers to decide on "traffic" as the conference's theme:  today's FAA shut down gave a whole new spin to the concept.  

 

power to the people

In Highland Park when stopped at traffic lights this morning, en route to Pasadena.  I can't decide what to make of the irony that I'm driving to and from a conference whose theme is ... Traffic: it seems to be carrying self-referentiality too far. I did debate with myself whether to stay in the hotel ... it was very, very tempting, but no way would USC pay for me to be overnighting somewhere that's within easy driving distance.  And yes, I could, technically, cut some time off this journey by taking the freeway, but the complicated, traffic clogged bits would still be there, just differently calibrated.  But the experience of going to a conference in one's home city is always a confusing one.

 

seasonal signs

Quite definitely the end of the Hallowe'en season: this skelly, lying on a garage roof, has had quite enough.  Only the spider remains, hovering.  And driving back from Pasadena this evening I saw definite signs of lit Christmas trees (I thought that wasn't meant to happen until after Thanksgiving?).

And it's conference season, or at least time for NAVSA, this year jointly with NASSR, the romanticists.  I love interdisciplinary conferences, NAVSA above all - but.  If I have one bête noire (just one? I'm sure I have a whole stable), it's people who don't realize that pictures need captions.  If I'm shown this in a paper about rag trading, I want to know where these two images are from, and what they're illustrating, and where ... I tried doing a reverse image search on Google for the left hand one - it looks a bit Russian, but isn't; I also wondered if it was by Sylvia Pankhurst, but I think not ... and I didn't want to embarrass the person giving the paper.  But.  All I could turn up were up a couple of unattributed uses of it on the web, one of them in Greek.  Should anyone recognize it, let me know ... 

 

signage

S. Hoover Street, on my way home.  I love the much older style of lettering advertising "General Merchandise" on the wall placard above.  This looks very much as though the artist took their inspiration from soap packaging, but they seem to be offering a blue shirt or a very small bicycle.

On a completely different note - or rather, a deep hooting note - there were two large great horned owls on our deck railing this evening.  Wonderful birds.

 

feline breakfast information

When I came upstairs this morning, Alice was already almost off to a very early PT appointment, and Moth was ... waiting for me, labeled.  Seemingly I was to believe her claim that she'd not been properly fed: the note indicated that Gramsci (his large tabby backside is visible on the right hand side of the picture) had eaten more than his fair share.  Since she - Mothy - is usually Economical with the Truth when it comes to maintaining that we have ignored her desire for food, it was, of course, useful to learn the actual facts of the matter.

 

look whooooo

A lovely warm sunny day today, and we took our lunch out on the deck.  Then ... both of us had something of a sense that we were being watched.  Then ... our friend turned her head, and we realized that we were probably interfering with her privacy, her squirrel-watching, her general sense of owning the space.  We crept back indoors.

Actually this Great Horned Owl is a regular visitor - recognizable because she has a tiny wobble at the first part of her hoot.  She likes the camouflage that the Live Oak provides, and usually has one or two friends or family with whom she does regular evening hooting.  Today, she sat there all afternoon, looking for all the world like a big feathery cat.

 

sardines

Sardines for lunch!  - with some fresh herbies from the garden.  I was so very happy when Alice came back with these at lunchtime: she'd gone (successfully) to buy salmon for dinner, but she knows that I love fresh sardines (I'm quite happy with tinned ones, too).  Gramsci thought that they smelled wonderful, but true to his principles, he backed off when he realised that they had eyes: for some reason, fish with eyes (even when in a can of cat food, which these certainly aren't) trouble him enormously.