A bit of a round up, changes coming

One of the views from a walk yesterday. More further down. No, not an essay about empty towers, that might be later.

I've been out already to sniff the peonies this morning. The white one is beginning to shed petals, but there's still some blooms coming. The red one is looking great! There are two beside the house, the pink one you've seen, and another white one. As mentioned below the pink one in the back is starting to bloom. That one is extremely ruffled, if that's a word.

There's even an iris still doing it's thing.

The day lilies have been keeping a low profile this year. The other lilies have been protected from the lily beetles so far, and are about to bloom. There will be photos. Here's a teaser.

A few people have asked about this most recent un-retirement, and working from home. It's all going really well. It's nice not having to commute downtown, though that makes it really tough to justify a Repsol membership. After dithering about it a bit I asked for a refund. I dropped by the local pool and chatted to one of the staff. Getting a membership is a bit of a circular process and I went around the loop a few times yesterday. I'll try again.

I was browsing through Facebook yesterday afternoon, and realized it was making me unhappy. So many ads. So much crap about all the crappy things going on in the world. So many angry people, some justifiably angry at big things, some angry at trivialities. So much anger. It's almost as bad as the comments section for news articles.

In contrast, I was out for a walk in Inglewood with some photo buddies. Lots of people were out strolling on a beautiful day. A guy was noodling away on a guitar outside the coffee shop where we met up and had a coffee to discuss where we'd go. People were respecting each other's personal space. We had a great walk; it felt almost normal.

On another walk I managed to get a photo of a napping dragonfly. Not the best, but still, they're even harder than bees to capture. I sent if off to a buddy because while she loves reptiles, the close up dragonflies give her the willies, though this isn't as close up as some. This one.

We were chatting about stuff, and she mentioned she had pulled the plug on her Facebook account. Deleted it, as much as one can ever delete such an account. Her thinking is that if she actually misses it, she would rather start over because her life has changed so much.

That really rang my chimes. I had started by going through my LinkedIn account, updating it my profile, and realizing that some of my connections were to dead people. I deleted them, then realized there was a lot of, I was going to say dead wood, but that isn't quite true. There were lots of people I once had an association with for whatever reason, but no longer do, have not had for several decades in some cases, and cannot imagine the circumstances we'd need to associate. Lots of agency recruiters that I almost certainly won't need anymore. That connections list is much smaller now. I went through the settings and turned a bunch of stuff off. It's turning into another version of Facebook.

While I was at it, I started winnowing out Facebook 'friends'. Not quite as drastically, but I was still wondering how long it's been since some people updated their account, and how often they actually used it, and how much I really cared about what they might have to say or if they saw what I had to say. Which made me start wondering about the whole Facebook experience. I started thinking I've been spending too much time reading it, and with all the other changes, maybe it's time for a change there.

The news has been awfully depressing lately, so I've taken to just reading the headlines, though even that is a bit much when it comes to USA news. I think that's what I'm going to do in Facebook. Read the Notifications thingie, see who's commented or replied to my comments, or if a limited set of people have posted on a couple groups that I follow. I'll probably unfollow several groups I don't actually look at any more. I'll still post that I've blogged, at least for now.

Our daily walks lately have been past the ring road construction. It's full speed ahead. The gigantic pedestrian bridge is getting the approach built up even more, if you could imagine such a thing. It all might really be ready in October like they say. In other construction news, the great pit at the bottom of 24th Street is almost fixed. I can't wait for this to be open again. Where I'm standing for this photo used be be a gigantic hole, 50 feet deep or so.

Of the Day
Michelle

Celina

Flowers
The Sarah Bernhardt peony in the back garden is starting to show off.

Driftwood

Ribbon Creek
Another attempt at capturing flowing water, while trying not to get the milky effect.

Me
One more to go on this feature, then a comparison, then done. Unless Michelle is persuasive, you might never see another photo of me on the blog.