Emma

 Have you ever felt like you were headed down the road in one direction only to see a number of signs luring you a different way?

Fog and the Flock

The dogs and I were out recently, a pleasantly foggy dawn, enjoying the new day.  When we got out to the misty campground, looking over to the boat ramp, the sky looked like this:

Unvoluntarily “Green” Commuting

We had a little hassle with the SF Bay Bridge recently, closing it down. You may have heard about it.

Scorched Flora & Snatched Fauna

 I seem to have developed a thing for trying to save scrawny trees. When I had such a notion last spring, near where I work at SF’s Civic Center, it met an ignoble end. 

 Sometime earlier this summer there was a fire in the old campground out on the former naval air station, where I walk the pups. The kids sometimes party out there at night, and occasionally the homeless spend a night there; it isn’t hard to guess how it started. Most of the burn evidence is gone and green was sprouting again by autumn, but you can still see some evidence of the fire.

A Big Blow

Mrs. Ombud and I were watching a movie (Little Fish, I think) when the phone rang. We don’t always pick up during a movie, figuring they’ll leave a message if it’s important, but when I heard my next door neighbor’s voice I hit pause and got the phone. He was talking about some large branch that fell in our yard, across the fence into his.

Obviously confused, sometimes sunk

Despite the fact that  I’ve worked for a computer book publisher and a technical media organization (jobs I approached as editor and journalist, respectively), I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always grok the bells and whistles.

But I thought I had a pretty firm handle on email, and how it works, and a general sense of wordpress. Actually, it’s wordpress that seems to leave me in its dust all too often.

The No Internet Blues

Nor no e-mail, neither. (Triple negative there—whichever direction that ends.) 

Drifting Loose

The boat first appeared in late spring. With the battered economy, perhaps its owner had abandoned it, and it had drifted into the boat ramp harbor, and there it sat, mired in the mud. I thought the angle was kind of arresting, so I took a few pictures of it.

Submarining the Work Week

Our BART train stalled in the Tube down on the floor of San Francisco Bay today. It seemed to run into some trouble as we left Oakland and entered the Transbay Tube, stopping and starting a couple times. During a stall the driver came on and said they were having technical difficulties and we would be delayed. The next time he came on he said they had to turn off the power for 90 seconds to get the train running again. There would be no lights.  So there we were, down on the floor of San Francisco Bay, in complete darkness.

the list

I’ve done exhaustive research on this.