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Well, Mother Nature sent a couple of odd visitors to our garden today. One was a tiny, white egg–about one centimeter in length. I found it while I was planting some new items in the succulent garden. The egg was sitting in the open, on the rocks…so it must have fallen or been carried from somewhere.

Secondly, we watched a lone hornet building the beginnings of a nest in the bougainvillea that Jeff was trimming. In one of my braver moments, I cut the limb and hid 🙂 Victory is mine! (Ah, Stewie.)

What a yummy food day! This morning, I made hearty blueberry pancakes and bacon for us. And this afternoon, I broke out the panini press that Jeff got me for Christmas–its a Cuisinart model, and thus far it is working quite nicely. I made delicious smoked turkey, bacon, and monterey jack paninis. I could truly eat these any time of day or day of the week. In the afternoon, on our errands out and about, I snapped another picture in my emerging graffiti series. This isn’t an intentional series…this stuff is just catching my eye recently. I’m sure it will run its course, and I’ll be back to fog and rain and blurry pictures soon 🙂

On mornings when traffic on the freeway into downtown is slow, I often take a meandering route through the City’s Bayview neighborhood, which hugs the industrial eastern bay coastline. On one of these mornings, I noticed a small, out-of-place sign for a coastal park. So, I veered from my route, only to enter a pre-dawn apocalyptic world.

I’ve been drawn back to this unlikely spot several times, including this morning, when I knew the early morning light would really bring out the colors in the graffiti art.

Literally, every surface–from building to bench to fence to rock–is covered with the most elaborate street art. They even painted the tree! I will certainly go back for more, but enjoy these initial images.

I wanted to post some of the photos from my snowy Sunday with my parents. Here are some random shots from their backyard, more colorful birds, Sparky eyeing a feathery morsel, and some steaming mussels for good measure. (My mother made a really nice mussel dish, which started with steamed mussels that were then baked in their shells with garlic, bacon, herbs, and breadcrumbs….YUM!)

Honestly, I toyed with a number of titles for this entry. My flight home from Dulles was quite uneventful. And all the annoying stories I could tell you about Dulles Airport (don’t get me started), were washed away by my upgrade to First Class–FINALLY. Sooooo, I had to amuse myself somehow. Here were my working titles:

• “Fudge and whipped cream…”, which were the words of my very nice flight attendant as she offered me toppings on my ice cream dessert.

• “Grey crab cakes…”, which wasn’t quite the color I was expecting United to serve me…also considering that I had scrumptuous crab cakes at Clyde’s in Virginia this week.

• “Red wine and Baileys…”, neither of which the flight attendant allowed to let drop below half-glass the whole flight.

• “First class ass…”, for the clueless prick who boarded at the last minute with an enormous bag, ignored the attendants guidance that the overhead bins were full, and proceeded to open all of the bins in first class and acted shocked when they WERE ALL FULL.

Or my favorite subject: “I’m sure you could kill a man with a plastic knife…” And if not, then you do get real forks on airplanes…aren’t those good at poking? We could try them on the guy with the huge suitcase!

Can you tell I was bored? (Hey, they show the same crappy movie in First Class 🙂

Whatever…I am home again.