I go past this sign each time I cycle to work (yes, I do cycle the 42 miles to work once a week). I've always meant to take a photo and post it here... because, well, who *doesn't* like to picnic next to the firing range?

So then July 2004 came along, and the frame with Borough Market photos was needing a new set. I put in it these nine from March 2004 in Denver:

which is where they are now, about to be replaced...

It's my birthday today, and I'm about to fly to London.

Going allll the way back to Fall 2001, a set of nine from Borough Market in London, where I lived at the time. I had these 2ft x 2ft on my wall when I moved to the States.

Taken last year up in the Wine Country:

In fact, not far at all from Healdsburg, CA. Where I'm getting married. In 124 days...

One day there were a monky. He was a crazy monky. His name is Isaac. He was from enigln and there were a girl monky. Her name is miss cram. She is from Colirdoe. When miss cram and Isaac bump to each other and they fall down together. They help each other and ther were boyfirends and girlfirends and they got mery and Isaac put the ring it miss cram finger. They were together now. Then miss cram did her hair do. It was a Rock hair. Finally, miss cram was a teacher and Isaac came to school to tech us airplane. The End

True story.

Been busy recently, with hardly any time to do anything. Today, though, finally got around to uploading my cars photos from last year. Trying something a little different, here's a fancy slideshow:

Also posted a bunch of photos from Mission Carnaval last weekend. What a very strange parade.

It's not from many places in the world you get a view like this

but from Bernal Heights in San Francisco on a May Monday evening you do.

Did I mention how colorful ths Mission is?

This week saw the launch of wendyandisaac.com!

The Mission remains as colorful as ever.

Wedding plans continue apace: I wrote a whole bunch of "Save the Date" cards this weekend, and Wendy went shopping for something to wear on our big day (I was considerably more successful than Wendy).

Matt's blog is compulsive reading; you should check it out.

Got that?

Midwestern zoos have a unique utilitarian perspective on the animal kingdom. I took this last year in Fort Collins, Colorado:

Of course, you're forced to wonder:

HUMANS
USE: ...

They're strict up in Napa.

Rob says:
    flaky ftp connections are so very irritating
Rob says:
    just thought i'd say that

Where else but the Mission? In fact, less than 100 yards from our house:

This last weekend Wendy and I volunteered at a "build day" at Wendy's school at the end of our road. Between us and the 400 others there we painted benches, mixed concrete, constructed a wicked climbing frame, erected basketball hoops, planted plants, cleaned classrooms, and painted a mural. "Neglected school yard blossoms into made-to-order playground", no less. It was altogether very cool, and kinda like the barn-building scene in Witness.

It's now 191 days to go until the wedding. Wendy's in Colorado with family at the moment, doing scheming and such... rumor has it she even tried on a dress or two today. Me, I'm just trying to decide which Google t-shirt I'll be wearing.

More Mission colors:

This week's wedding update: locked and loaded for October 13th at Barndiva. We were up there today starting on the arrangements, and even put down a deposit... yikes. I also took a bunch of photos while we were there.

Things are getting serious now. Exactly 200 days to go, and counting.

I'm going to put these in a "colors of the Mission" series, but for now you get to see them one by one:

Wedding planning is in full, although rather unstructured, swing. We decided on a venue in the wine country, which is (thankfully!) much more of a delightful place to get married than its baroque and unnavigable website conveys.

Also a date: October 13th, 2007. Stay tuned.

Tasty, tasty, very very tasty! They're very tasty!

It's been a while since I hung out with any concentration of people who grew up in the UK at the same time as me. But when one does do this, the conversation will inevitably turn to at least one of Rhubarb and Custard, Chigley, Trumpton, the Bran Flakes advert or the one for Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills.

Such conversations aren't new to me.

What's new, though, is that nowadays you can actually dig these things up on the internet and take quite a spooky trip down memory lane:

• Rhubarb and Custard
• Chigley
• Trumpton
• Bran Flakes
• Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills

Astonishing.

Dolores Park in the Spring:

A bunch of people have emailed, written and called to congratulate me on my engagement to Wendy, which is very nice. Weddding planning (such as it is) is going pretty slowly, starting with a sleepy conversation in the park about who we might invite, and how big a wedding might result. Baby steps.

Bard sent a link to a blog posting he thought would be helpful; I liked the first item in particular.

Boo ya! More colors in the Mission.

I went to Amazon today to have a look at a new phone---and was greeted by something un-phone-like; something which in fact seemed strangely spooky since last week I got engaged to Wendy.

Yesterday I took this, which I adore:

Wendy has fallen asleep in front of the Super Bowl. Wendy---the woman who took me to my first football game, taught me the difference between a false start and offside, and made me a Broncos fan---has fallen asleep in front of Super Bowl XLI. Unbelievable

But we've had a busy weekend (brief adventure yesterday). And there's a couple of things which make the Super Bowl actually less interesting than your average football game and make you more likely to skip the game in favor of the commercials rather than the other way around.

Firstly, chances are you don't really have much invested in either team. You've not followed them week in and week out over the previous few months: not spent hours delighting in their wins and despairing with their losses. You may have a vague preference but hell, in all probability neither's your team.

But in this situation the crowd usually makes all the difference: the home team gets the cheers and the away team the jeers (much more so than in English football, for instance, where away crowds actually... exist). And you can decide to go with or against the crowd: cheering with them or joining in their mockery of the "other side". The sound of the crowd is a polarizing factor, and they make the game interesting.

Super Bowl, though, both sides are "away", and the crowd's reaction is pretty much a wash. Which is why, I suppose, after a long weekend, even the Super Bowl commercials can't keep Wendy awake.

Continuing the theme of colors in the Mission, I can barely top this snap of Wendy out for dinner a couple of days ago.

I was in New York City last week, visiting the Google office there. I hadn't been there for about seven years, and nor did I see much of Manhattan, but boy the feeling is just the same as I remember it.

 

Rob says:
    just about to click "order now" for a hard disk video recorder
Rob says:
    sometimes it's easy to do
Rob says:
    sometimes it's hard

I found something so insightful about this observation. I wonder what that means?

In other news, Sue has become a supremely prolific blogger! Not one, but two blogs maintained by my mother, no less.

New camera again. Is this shot a newer version of this one?

 

Talking of colors, wow I love this shot. Still getting to grips with the new camera, I took this using slow sync last night (New Year's Eve).