The cat likes to burrow so I wrapped her in my bathrobe. She seemed to like it. At least, she tolerated it.

I went to my hospice shift tonight and ended up doing tech support on a Windows machine. I'm a Macintosh person. While I'm Windows-literate, I'm certainly no MIS Windows guru. Still, it seems that I am often called to do tech support in Windows offices. I think this has happened every place I've ever worked. Maybe the technical support skills are what matters, not the actual subject matter knowledge. Well, tonight's lesson wasn't very obscure. The problem was that the keyboard cable wasn't plugged in. This made it difficult to log in.

This is the cat.

She usually doesn't roll around on her back like this. I think she looks kinda funny when she does.

This is the leaf of a calla lily in my garden.

Spring is coming. The freesia are starting to bloom.

This is a rasberry start. It looks healthy.

My huckleberry plant also looks healthy.

The blueberry isn't dead but it has no new leaves.

In about two months, the climbing rose branch behind the statue will be covered with purple roses.

I went looking for tomato starts for my garden without any luck. I know. It is early to be starting things but I live in California. I get my tomatoes in the ground by March. I'll try next week. The plant store had a white Japanese wisteria and a purple Chinese wisteria. I've been wanting a wisteria in the back of the garden. I want either white or purple and I can't decide. Do you have an opinion? Let me know.

It looks like I'll be on this low iodine diet for another week. This makes me unhappy. The only silver lining I can see is that there is no chance I will feel obligated to take myself out for dinner (sushi, of course, a high iodine dinner) by myself on Valentine's Day. I will still do the sushi dinner, just not on V day.

I went back to knitting my afghan.. This is a mammoth project where I decided to knit until I ran out of yarn. Now that the object is almost as tall as I am, I am sick of it. I've decided to stop at the next repeat. Knitting 'until I run out of yarn' isn't a good meaurement, especially when I tend to buy much more yarn than the project actually requires.

I made a vegan caesar salad for dinner. It wasn't horrible but I wouldn't say it was a caesar salad.

I've been wondering about the difference between a blog and a personal web site and is this is something that matters. I think of this site as more of a personal web site instead of a blog...even though I usually keep it updated about once/week. There is almost always a daily photo. However, there are no 'comments' which means no community around the site. Is that what makes the difference between a personal web site and a blog? Does it matter that there may be a difference? Most bloggers use tools to publish tell the world they had cornflakes for breakfast. I use more manual tools to take pictures of the cat. And yarn.

I can't forget the yarn. This is linen. I went to the knitting convention and came home with this, a sport weight linen that I had thought I was going to have to order from Canada. I will make it into the DNA scarf.

I spent 6+ hours today in a class on Estonian Lace. This was a good class and I learned a lot. I was definitely one of the less experienced knitters in the room. Fortunately, the lesson plan was well organized. With some extra time working at lunch, I managed to learn pretty much what was being taught.

I also did some more shopping. This is alpaca. This is destined to be a...well, it's a surprise. Let's just say this will not be an ordinary knit and there will be dinosaurs.

This is my Meyer lemon tree. This is lemon season.

The rain is coming. I've been transplanting things in my garden. Now instead of watering things by hand, I will be able to rely on the rain to soak things.

I've been on a Bollywood movie kick recently. With Bollywood, a little goes a long ways. The movies seem to be about 2.5-3 hours long. I watch them in several sittings. I think part of the appeal has to do with the songs. I find myself with Bollywood songs stuck on my head. It beats "Little White Duck."

The cat likes to sit on whatever I'm working on at the moment. If I'm at the computer, she wants to be at the keyboard. If I'm knitting, she wants to be sitting on my project.

I think this is a miserable holiday. For anyone who is single, this holiday reinforces societal pressure that you SHOULD be in a relationship. For those in relationships, there is pressure to have the perfect romantic date. Either way, no one wins. For myself, I refuse to play.

I went grocery shopping. I met a man in the produce section who asked me to tell him what a 'button mushroom' might be. He had a recipe and it looked like he might be trying to cook something. I think his intended dinner date should order out.

There was another man who was wandering through the store with a list. My guess is that he was doing the grocery shopping as a Valentine's Day present. He certainly didn't do this on a regular basis.

The man ahead of me in the checkout line had an interesting collection of items: a bag of dog food, a box of dog bisquits, two large containers of strawberries, bag of chocolate bars and graham crackers. I wonder if his Valentine's Date might be his dog.

This is more knitting. Yeah, my life is dull. I knit. Obsessively.

This is an alpaca scarf. It will be a gift.

Spring is coming. The freesia are starting to bloom in my garden.

This video is one of the silliest things I've ever seen.

Today was my annual "take pictures of the garden" day. I do this at least once/year so I can see how the garden is doing over time.

This is the passionflower which I planted last year. It's doing quite well for only being a year old.

This is the end of the low-iodine diet. I celebrated by picking up some sushi and eating ice cream. And cream cheese. And a few marischino cherries.

Today, it rained a lot.

I'm thinking about where I was a year ago. Last year at this time, we were on a trip around strange parts of Southern California. We spent the night at Bombay Beach (have a drink or three at the Ski Inn if you go visit) and met Leonard at Salvation Mountain. We also saw mud volcanos. In 2002, we took a walk through the 'Forests of San Jose' or what counts as a San Jose forest.

We live in an era of eroding civil liberties. There are new rules and laws that sometimes are only exposed when someone 'breaks' them. This is the beginning of a police state where the laws are not public. The 'no pictures' policy on San Francisco MUNI is an example - or is it? The law isn't clear so a group of people went on a MUNI ride and took a lot of photos in an attempt to clarify whether there is an actual policy or law or regulation about taking photos on the subway. This is what happened. MUNI is claiming there is no anti-photography regulation or law. This is despite having previously detained someone for taking photos on MUNI. This gathering of photographers was to clarify if such a law actually exists.

I'm glad that things like this are happening. I think this will help in delaying our slide into a police state with secret laws. However, with the current administration, all bets are off.

I missed the event. My picture for the day is at the beach.

This is another view of scenic San Francisco. This is a part of the waterfront which not many tourists get to see.

I am wondering what it is that I am doing with this web site. The daily photo things I've worked out a reason for me to do it. But why do I have 5+ gb of other material up here? What's the point of this? I'm not entirely sure. I see some radical deleting in my future. Most of the material was posted a while ago for reasons that made sense at the time but are no longer relevant. Inertia won and it was easier to just leave things be rather than go back and clean up everything. Now I'm in 'clean up' mode. Clutter is going away in a lot of ways in my life - including this site.

While it is still technically winter, the climbing rose in my back yard is starting to put out new buds. Everything is starting to grow.

This is a rasberry in my garden. It's looking pretty healthy.

This is a store near my house.

We saw this on our way to see the Dr. Hal show at the Odeon.

Today's cooking: vegie fritatta, olive bread, greek salad with lemon juice from the lemons in my garden, lentil soup with homemade stock.

This is a part of a sock, the meaning of which will be revealed in about a week.

Tonight's hospice computer training class was about which button to use on a three button mouse. I am still amused that I am being asked about how to use a Windows machine even though I am and have been a Macintosh person for over a decade. I think it is the technical support and training skills that matter, not so much the subject matter expertise.

This is from my garden.

This is the cat in my garden. I don't quite know what she's doing here, other than looking at me and wondering when I will go back inside.

We went to an open house. This was only one of the many holes in the ceiling. One of the holes was acting as an indoor water feature as the outside rain came inside.

Even with all these problems, I expect this house to sell for a half million dollars. It has location, even though it may be unihabitable. The yellow 'hazard' tape around the rotting floor in the bathroom was only one problem. Bay Area real estate is a strange thing.

The lemon tree in my garden is doing good things.