Turn Back The Clock

Since arriving at my interview site half an hour early, I took advantage of it and walked around my old office area. Boy, I couldn’t believe that it had been 10 years! 10 Years ago I was working in this pink marble building shown in the photo, sharing many happy and painful memories with a group of close co-workers. The building is still there, but I’ve lost touch with most of my co-workers. As I’ve learned, “The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself.” Very true!

It seemed to me that the Oakland City government has tried to beautify the Lake Merritt area (and only the Lake Merritt area, unfortunately). The Snow Park was well maintained and dogs were forbidden.

Our StairMaster Stroll

This morning Ingrid came join us for another stroll. David handpicked all the long, steep paths for all of us to get rid of our holiday fat. See this path? (David was calling, “You can do it!“) It was just one of them that we climbed today. Boy, by the time we came back, my legs literally no longer belonged to me…

When I saw this giant frog, all I thought was, “Gosh, I’m exhausted, too!” But both David and Ingrid just thought that it had too much fun last night and now suffered a hangover. Funny how people project their thoughts onto other objects; everything, in a way, is just a reflection of the mind.

A deer family out for some exercise:

Fortunately, all the beautiful flowers made it possible to climb the Mont Everest:

Our Bee Farm

Our front yard has turned into a bee farm.

This year I intentionally restrained myself from pulling out clover (三葉草), so poor bees can have something to eat when the supplies are low. (Frankly, it’s a little hard to imagine that they can die from hunger in this neighborhood.) Well, now clover completely took over our front yard with 2 dozen or so of hard working bees visiting it whenever it’s sunny and warm, like today.

	I guess that you can’t really see them from this photo, but, trust me, they are there and busy sucking the clover nectarine.
	A hard working honey bee.

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

By the end of our long stroll yesterday, I had shot a record amount of flowers and plants. Let’s see…

The crimson bottlebrush grows everywhere in the Bay Area, but we rarely paid attention to its pre-brush state. Seeing how it untangles its wires is quite fun! Here is a quick demonstration:

My collection of beautiful flowers and wild plants from this stroll:

Chayse & JC

Jon and Tammy got two very cute kids, Chayse & JC.

	Chayse is not a stranger on my blog; I’ve tried to draw her so many times without success. *sigh* She took me to their backyard to have her photos taken. The afternoon sun wasn’t good for that, but I just love the fish-eye effect focusing on her cute, curious face.
JC was pretty sick to have his photos taken all the time, even when he was asleep. (But he sleeps pretty much all the time except when he’s eating or bathing.) He talks all the time, awake or asleep, and no one can understand a word he says. And this boy really hates to get naked! He’s in pretty good mood unless you start undressing him. A funny boy.

Yet Another Long Stroll

Today we had a company for our morning walk — our neighbor Ingrid, who had been walking around the Hills with Gerry until he busted his back. David wanted to show her the paths that they hadn’t done before, so when Gerry recovers from his back surgery, she’ll be able to take him on new paths.

So of course we would have to take her on the unusual gated path — the Stevenson Path (top section). The gates are to keep deer out, not the hikers. In fact, inside of the gates, there are no fence to keep the hikers from the garden as you can see from the photos. I feel bad that one corner bedroom is right next to a gate.

Even though we had been trying to make as little impact on the paths as possible,

My Way

How cool is this, have your driveway named “My Way”?

Actually those photos were taken at the end of our long stroll. I was trying to pick up an appropriate photo from my photo collection to congratulate Gerry for his successful back surgery, and found that I had completely forgotten to put those two in that blog entry. Oh well. I seemed to space out a lot lately… Hopefully the job hunting business will soon be done and I can have my peace of mind again.