Simba soldiers on

It'll be a year next week since my mother's death, and it was so much touch and go - I always thought - whether she or Simba would shuffle off the mortal coil first,  Here he is, welcoming me today in Wimbledon with his mildly aggressive, but still very alert stare.

waiting for the rain

In all honesty, I could have done without a trip downtown today - in between admin, grad meetings, and catching a flight to London.  But it was the time allocated for me for fingerprinting at the Immigration Center - the next step to getting a replacement green card (this one will have an image of me looking like a really depressed criminal on it, I fear) - so I had to go ... It was worth it (apart from the fingerprinting) for a dialogue that took place.  They make you turn off your phone completely, so I was reading on a Kindle ...

Guard to me: why so sad?

KF: huh?

Guard: why so sad?  You reading ‘bout Boris Johnson?

KF: no!  You don’t let people go on line in here - so I’m spared news of him for a bit!

Guard: [points to picture of Trump, and rolls his eyes, and shakes his head]

And it was worth it for this picture, of course, from Wilshire.  I'm so sad to be missing the first rain of the season - even though I'll probably curse at it in the UK ...

fig leaf

Autumn in Los Angeles - hot and dry again today, but there's some chance that this leaf will be damp and soggy, under grey chilly skies, on Wednesday.  Mind you, by then I should be in England, under colder and greyer skies, and I feel unreasonably cheated at the thought that I'll be missing out on the first of the season's rain...

watering out front

At 91 degrees today, it was unseasonable - even for Southern California - in mid-November.  So it definitely was a good idea to water everything in the front yard - and in doing so, there was such a beautiful spray that I called to Alice to come and hold the hose, so that she could replicate my water effects and I could take a picture ...

changing the bedclothes

We have a guest staying from the UK for a couple of nights.  Understandably, this means changing the sheets on the spare room bed.  Moth decided that this was something with which she could play a major role ...

decompressing

It's been a long week, with too much fraught admin.  I was so grateful to have a reason to go to the Huntington today - a lunch reason - and even though the siren song of yet more work related emails was yowling to me after that, I was inordinately thankful that I managed to resist it for a while, and went for a restorative walk around the gardens instead ...

stuck in a traffic jam

I blame Google Maps: it told me, and doubtless countless other people, to turn left over this bridge.  What it failed to register was that the left hand turn was entirely blocked off by road works.  Indeed, there was a wonderful rearview mirror vista of downtown LA, but when one's trying to get to an appointment in Pasadena, that's a rather small consolation.  The irony was that I'd consulted Google Maps at all, considering that I have a perfectly trusted usual route between USC and Pasadena.  And yes, my mirror needs cleaning.