August 1

I've been playing with different filters in Photoshop.

This image was taken down on the Peninsula, near Menlo Park.

It's a morning of errands, including a stop at Scrap.

In the evening, we gathered for a fantastic meal & a viewing of old Passions episodes.

Yesterday, I went to Emeryville for my meditation group gathering. We talked about dana/generosity.

Today, I made hummus. This picture is hummus before I mushed everything together.

Later in the day, we went to Terry's Lodge & had a beer. While at Terry's, I found out that a friend of mine had died that morning.

On the way home, we stopped by the Gold Dust Lounge, home of Chuck the Bartender. This is the ceiling of the bar.

This is what's underneath the front door mat at the Gold Dust Lounge - a sign that used to say "Bustles & Beaus" from when Bing Crosby owned an interest in the Gold Dust.

We went down Balmy Alley, famous for its murals.

Later in the evening, we went to the Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay awards where Dive Bar was a co-winner in "Best Extremely Organized Bar Outing" category.

After the late night at Dive Bar, I got up early to see Dick Cheney's identical twin (the good one) protesting the appearance of his evil twin in San Francisco. (I guess San Francisco got chosen as the 'undisclosed location' since this is a very unlikely place for Dick to be found)

I wore a double breasted suit. Most of the protestors stayed away from me. They figured I must be with the Dark Side. One woman talked to me, mostly about her newfound enthusiasm with a cult. She asked what I do for a living. I told her I'm unemployed. She said "We're not unemployed! We're Peace Activists!" wait. This isn't a label or identity that I want. Oh, the culture around these protests...I am very glad that the protests happen but at the same time, this is definitely not my thing to do.

I took this on Stockton Street this morning. The Pig Truck was being unloaded.

We're having a heat wave.

I'm drinking iced cranberry juice (the icemaker works again! Yeah!) with lemon juice ice cubes added for extra flavor.

I went to the dump. OK, technically speaking, this is the Transfer Station but I figure with this much garbage, it should be called The Dump.

There were huge cranes with pincers for moving the garbage around. We also went to the sculpture garden & the open house for the Artist in Residence.

August 10, I went to a reunion BBQ with my old rugby team, Chaos. It was good to reconnect with old faces.

The rest of the weekend was kinda dull...until Monday night when I landed here, facing a wall with pink elephants.

It's Zeitgeist! This was a movie festival thing, short films shown on the wall of the backyard patio. One of the films was 3D so everyone donned their glasses.

Dive Bar gathering included this, a jello dessert made with a jello-mold in the shape of a human brain. Surprisingly, while people readily ate the strawberries, few dared to taste the jello-brain.

We did another stairwalk, this time around Potrero Hill.

In the evening, I went to my hospice shift.

August 15

After hospice, I met up with a friend's birthday party. We went to Fort Mills, an abandoned battery with an ocean view (the better for defending the Golden Gate from invaders). There was too much fog to see stars. Even so, we had a beautiful view of the city lights and ocean. This image was taken from Fort Mills with no flash. Everything is fuzzy.

Later (much later), we went to the Mission to pick up a special delivery of Dunkin Donuts, arrived today from the East Coast.

This image, I don't understand. That's a parking meter there in the sidewalk. Somehow, the meter became one with the sidewalk.

We heard a noise. I thought it was the cat. I was wrong.

Somehow, this baby opossum made it inside the open door in the garage, up the stairs, into the kitchen & to the cat food. After I took a few pictures, the opossum decided to 'play possum' and hide in the cat scratching post. The post was carried outside with the opossum still inside. The scratching post was left in the garden where, at some point, the opossum left on its own.

Scooter Polo mallets at the ready!

The mallets are made from empty beer cans (poke a hole in the side, drain the beer, pour in plaster of paris mixed with rice puffs, insert PVC pipe & let set). The rice puffs were an attempt to make lighter (=less dangerous) mallets. It didn't seem to help. The mallets were as dangerous (=heavy) as last year's version.

Stairwalk through the south side of Russian Hill.

Scooter Polo! with headless Stinky Bunny as a mascot.

I went on a City Guides walk around North Beach at night. This building was an old jail.

This is the tower at the San Francisco Art Institute. It's supposed to be haunted.

Later, we went to the Gold Dust Lounge for Bar Tricks night.

I just realized I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of this photo-a-day thing. August 24, 2001 was my first photo.

Here is the cat, doing her 'burrowing' thing. Actually, she was sleeping & Someone put a newspaper on top of her.

This is a knitteed fox sock puppet for the Black Rock City Sock Puppet Theatre. This is before I added eyes and a tongue.

This is Henri, the opossum. It might be Henrietta. We didn't get close enough to find out.

I found Henri(etta) cowering behind the toilet. Tonight was the Mini-Bar in the Jungle event. Everyone was supposed to be in either safari garb or dressed like an animal. I took my knitted animals (frog hat & fox sock puppet) and Henri(etta). Taking a real wild animal on safari seemed appropriate.

At the end of the party, Henri (etta) was released in the 'jungle', between a dumpster & a creek in Glen Canyon Park. I hope Henri(etta) is happy in the park and doesn't find his or her way back to my kitchen or the cat food.

See the eyes there in the left side of the picture? Henri(etta) is probably happy to be under a dumpster & out of the cat carrying cage.

I put eyes on the frog hat. I also put eyes on the Fox in Socks sock pupper.

Here's the tipi. We took this to Burning Man as a shelter structure. It didn't do do well with the 'shade' component but otherwise, it kept things quite dust-free.

Here's the rental car being loaded for the drive to the Playa.

See the tipi poles on the roof?

With the late departure, we only made it to Reno. We spend the night at the Sundowner.

Playa-bound...

and this has me thinking about Community & what it means...