(taken in backyard)
© 2012 Proper Manky
I admit it. I was proud like a little boy when I took this photo. A kick-ass nature photographer. Ready for National Geographic. But I popped my own bubble by googling “blue dragonfly photos” to get about 18,100,000 practically identical results. I guess these dragonflies sit for any half-cocked shutterbug.
Related article.
Have been trying to remember this word for a while: estivation.
a state of dormancy similar to hibernation, except done so in the summer
Molluscs, lady beetles, land crabs, some (but not all) desert tortoises, crocodiles, frogs, toads, salamanders, the fat-tailed dwarf lemur and the East African hedgehogs all are said to do it.
I often feel like estivating.
Source: Washington Post
Interesting throughout:
For owners of Vietnamese restaurants in the area, Hispanic workers have become vital to the eateries’ survival. Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the 1970s after the fall of South Vietnam in 1975 are retiring. It is hard to find a chef now — a Vietnamese chef,” said Thi Quach, owner of Viet Taste. “Most young Vietnamese people now, they tend to stay in school and they do professional jobs, so they don’t want to stay in the kitchen, and the older generation are getting old already.
Have noticed a similar trend in Asian eateries in the Phoenix area, e.g. at Shimogamo in Chandler with its outstanding Hispanic itamae.
Done reading.
Second in the Commissario Soneri series, now also a popular television drama in Italy. Nice mountain landscape descriptions of the Ligurian Apennines south of the upper Po Valley roughly between Parma and La Spezia on the coast.
Not the best of crime stories but entertaining nonetheless. Published by MacLehose Press, known for quality translations from Italian, Spanish, Polish, Icelandic, French, and Arabic. Lots of good authors there.
Bistro in Carefree. Better than expected. One of the few true “bistros” in the Valley. The Chopped Salad was a rare surprise in the common salad category.
Source: Guardian
Barnes brings it home. Last paragraph is spot on. Like him, I’m in the habit of buying books at a rate that far exceeds any possible reading speed.
But again, this feels completely normal: how weird it would be to have around you only as many books as you have time to read in the rest of your life.
True that.
Done reading.
Not abook about money in the strictest sense. John Lanchester’s latest novel, ”Capital” *, is set in London and follows the lives of residents of Pepys Road leading up to and during the financial crisis of 2008.
There are many different characters ranging from a professional banker and his wife to the Pakistani owner of a corner store to a graffiti artist modeled on banksy to a Polish handyman and an immigrant traffic warden from Zimbabwe. Lanchester doesn’t write a fast-paced story but he gets into the heads of all his characters and writes with deep empathy and profundidad.
* The book contains the phrase “proper manky” meaning something close to the right kind of dirty, not cleaned up or tarted up.
That said, it will be tough to stuff oneself with foie gras in CA after today:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foie-gras-farewell-20120629,0,4604886,full.story
Another Wes Anderson gem. TLMW says Bill Murray and I were separated at birth. Flattered.