early morning beach

I got to the beach early and did a long run.  When I got back to where I started I sat in the sand and a group of nuns came and settled in close by.  They brought army-green folding chairs and lined them up in a row- sat down and opened their bibles but one of them went straight down to the water and stood facing it, so I took her picture.

Friday night snakeskin

I went bowling tonight with 2 friends, and had a great time.  They're both friends I've met since being here in LA, which is nice.  It's a giant crazy city but I still have faith that it can work for me here.  I suppose time will tell...

Wednesday pattern

An old scan of a drawing reworked...

cold winter's night

All the flora here in LA is amazing- the pods and seeds and crazy-giant leaves that grow and grow without a frost to kill them...  And I've taken photos and drawn some but not nearly like I thought I would...

These pods are from the loop I run at lunch- How funny that I moved to LA but still managed to find myself working at an office close to a really nice trail for running.  Instead of Coyotes and Bald Eagles and Prairie dogs it's Lizards and Crows and Egrets now, but reminiscent of my Colorado runs, and still restorative to leave my desk at noon and slip into a different space for part of the day.

brown widow, eh?

Brown widow venom is twice as potent as black widow venom, but is usually confined to the bite area and surrounding tissue, as opposed to the black widow's. Mere toxicity of the poison is not the only factor in dangerousness. 

That's reassuring.  This is the little guy who hangs out on the floor at the bottom of his web in my garage, and when I approach my car every morning he climbs his web to my neighbors storage box.  I have a bag of Diatomaceous Earth in my car but haven't had the heart to dust the edges of my garage with it, yet...  It would wreak havoc on the the whole spider community...  Do I really have the right to do that?  I'm just a renter, after all...

dropped off the face of the earth

But back. (For tonight at least...)

Yesterday as I was starting to move a wooden patio chair into my car I thought better of it as I noticed all the crazy spiderwebs and egg sacks crammed into the corners and cracks on its underside.  I decided to spray it down instead so turned on the hose and power washed away as much of the debris as I could.  I watched a lot of poor confused spiders come out from the webs and cracks and I let them scurry into the bushes nearby without bothering them.  But then I saw the giant black widow that was clinging to the chair's leg.  *shudder*.  How can such a small thing make me feel so threatened?  I knocked it onto the ground and killed it with the toe of my sneaker.  It's innards were off-white, like the inside of a blueberry, almost.

I left the chair there to dry, but I don't know that I'll go back to pick it up.  Maybe put it on the street with a 'free' sign on it, instead?  Is that too extreme?

And now to get that whole thing out of my head I will look at this picture of flowers I took at lunch today...

hi lizard.

Thursday pattern

animals with things on their heads

nice hats, you strange little animals.

American Apparel

What I want to know is how American Apparel found my mailing address.  I got this ad in the mail yesterday- addressed to me specifically.  And then for the model to be all bloody like that, and calling my boyfriend by his first name?  I just don't like any of it...

another blog

My friend Kristin came to LA for a conference a couple weekends ago, and it was great to see her.  When she wasn't at the conference we walked around a lot, cooked and ate lots of vegetables, drank wine, and talked. After she left I had the idea that we should use our crappy cellphones to send photos to each other every day.  I like the idea of being nostalgic for the look and feel of crappy cellphone photos.  I have a few old and outdated cellphones in a drawer of random electronics- maybe I'll work on some sort of project using their cameras?  In the meantime, here is the blog of Kristin & my photo correspondence so far:

www.littlemegapixel.com

marshmallow branches

I guess some of these are just mutations on the branches, though, since a marshmallow couldn't be threaded onto a branch like some of these are.  Perhaps they're marshmallow-shaped galls like the oak galls that I would find on branches in the woods when I was little.  Even though they were like infections in the tree I always thought they were so pretty...

flower in the pocket of my windbreaker

I found this flower out on a walk this morning, and tucked it into the pocket of my windbreaker.  I just remembered about it so got it out and put it under my digital microscope to take a look.  I have some work that I should be doing, which makes it a perfect time for using my microscope to check out little flowers...

zebra on my patio

I once did an internship with a rug weaver in Oberlin Ohio who taught me that any woven rug can be cleaned successfully using plain water and a little pressure.  I decided to clean this zebra print rug that I got from my sister-in-law so I draped it over two chairs on the back patio and sprayed it with the hose.  I left it to dry and when I came back later, having forgotten it was there, I honestly thought there was a zebra on the other side of the door.  It was just for a split second, and then I quickly figured out what was actually going on, but for that instant I believed a zebra had managed to find his way onto an enclosed patio in the middle of LA.  Hmmm...

grapes

I have been buying grapes lately, because they are a good start to a lot of the different juices I've been making in my Vitamix.  They are sweet and juicy and I throw them in with a half a pear, some kale, broccoli, pumpkin seeds, and pieces of mango for a pretty fantastic drink.  I love my Vitamix.  It is truly helping me take full advantage of the amazing produce available here in Southern California.  *sigh*