was outdoing itself today: House Assails Media Report on Tracking of Finances and House approves coastline oil and natural gas exploration.

the web practicing a little creative procrastination, I ran into these thoughts on the subject at Powazek. Today, I split my procrastinating time between noodling a re-design for CaliforniaAuthors.com, fooling around with the LibraryThing, exploring the vagaries of Google AdSense and learning to work with my bitchin’ new macro lens. None of that was on […]

was Yeknom and I used to like snuggle with him wedged in the “way back” of my mom’s VW Bug. This photoset of handmade sock monkeys took me back. (thx boing boing)

We squeaked by today when the Senate declined pass a Flag Desecration Amendment by a single vote. There was a particularly revolting performance by my Senator Diane (for it) Feinstein — in which she went on about iconic flag-raising Marines on Iwo Jima, but seemed not to understand that those men did not fight and […]

Summer solstice traditions ancient and modern.

predicts solstices

we learned the fate of two boy-soldiers kidnapped in Iraq — their gruesome deaths only today’s iteration of the suffering and grief brought into the world by the Bush Administration’s misguided Iraq war — I remember this quote from His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “In my own experience, the period of greatest gain […]

is a wonderland of stuff I want. A wanterland! Spent a couple of dreamy hours there Monday afternoon looking at painting mediums, brushes, boxes, books, paper, pencils, portfolios, pastels, paint tube squeezers, solvents. Still, I was almost able to stick to my shopping list and just replenished my supply of some oil paints and smaller […]

crochet dolls.

A nice National Public Radio piece on the joy of city chickens by California author Susan Straight.

from the construction across the street was wearing me down, my Beliefnet.com Daily Buddhist Wisdom e-mail was this quote from Thich Nhat Hahn.
“Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I […]

confirm what I’ve known since kindergarten: group work sucks!

and it’s my day to make dinner. So, I put a roast in the oven this morning and the cooking will be done before the sun blazes down on the front of the casita and really heats things up. Cooking in the morning made it feel like a holiday. Here’s a handy link w/ […]

A cave painting believed to be the earliest known portrait.

through the Nikon, it was a beautiful day!

Kevin Roderick has a nice excerpt from his new book on Wilshire Boulevard at CaliforniaAuthors.com

Really nice work and more every day. And, the beautiful A Painting A Day.

Seeking Rare Dyes in a Kabul Bazaar from National Public Radio and Color: A Natural History of the Palette.

Just when commercial broadcast news is at its most disgusting, it looks like Congress is getting ready to cut funding for public broadcasting. That lead me to tellthempublicmatters.org. I used their pretty cool letter-building tool to send a letter to my Representative. (Of course, since my Rep. is Dana Rohrabacher …)

I avoided the news today. Instead, I watched a little of the interesting French documentary Life of Buddha (Says one holy man: the Guru does not tell you the truth, he prepares your heart to accept truth). Then, I headed out into the blue and breezy day. And — despite the fact that this was busy update day — I took the binoculars and went out to the Bolsa Chica wetlands trail.