Yesterday after lunch the pumpkin (on my work table) that was outfitted with mini-motion sensing lights kept coming on by itself. A family member had tried to deactivate the blinking aspect of these lights, but was unable to do so Sunday night. I thought perhaps the vibration from my loud music was somehow triggering it. It stopped after a bit. When I tried pounding on the table to start it up, it didn’t work. But after a time, it would begin flashing again.

I spent part of the late afternoon at another house caring for a disabled relative. The dog next door, normally quiet, never stopped barking. The relative, usually napping in a chair, was extremely restless and fidgety, unable to keep still the whole two hours. I was somewhat irritated, because I usually try to get some work done on the laptop, but found it hard to focus for those reasons.

When I got ready to leave, I asked the returning family member if rain was forecast since it seemed so gloomy out. He told me it was clear.

Well, it was and it wasn’t. Six o’clock, a darkish cloud or fog maybe over the foothills. A strange stillness.

The official word (USGS) is that there is no such thing as ‘earthquake weather’.

No less than Aristotle believed that winds in the deepest underground caves were the cause of earthquakes. Which brings to mind this poem by Matthew Arnold, where he mentions ‘Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep. . .’

Well, almost.

There I was at Lowe’s, loading up the cart in the almost deserted nursery. There was only one other customer, but then most people don’t shop for flowers at night. Then the big, loud train came by. It shook things the way the trains in The Triplets of Belleville did. A few things slid off some high shelves, but the guy didn’t seem concerned, so I began looking for cyclamen. He meandered out.

A few minutes later, a family member found me. That’s when I learned the entire store had been evacuated. Well, except for us. And that several people were crying out in the parking lot.

I couldn’t help it. I completely cracked up. You see, usually we go to Home Depot (for those not familiar with American home improvement stores, these are the two biggest ones), which is located next to the railroad tracks. Not that I ever experienced such shaking there, but I mean, that’s sort of an excuse.

The ceiling fans and lamps on display were still kind of swaying as we checked out, and quite a few of the store staff were sitting in small groups in the parking lot.

So I missed all the brouhaha, but got to have the fun. I hope my luck holds out next time.

If you thought the choices in toothpaste, for example, were daunting, you might visit the hardware store and check out the caulk section (aisle 18 at the local Orchard Supply). In paint, not plumbing.

A new tool in my arsenal against the continuing ant battles. Over time I will seal every possible entry point, because I’m really tired of writing about ants. Especially after a family member reached up for the shower head only to find his hand covered with a multitude.

If you’re in need of aquarium sealant, which I needed a few weeks ago to patch a fountain, the hardware store is a better choice than the pet store. The sealant is hanging there alongside the 30 kinds of caulk, and you’ll save at least $5.

I miss my old dog, who always managed to tell me in no uncertain terms that it was going to rain. It wasn’t a conscious act, he didn’t come up, put his paw on my foot, and whine while looking up at the sky. That would have been kind of cool, actually.

No, he just did his usual, leaned his weather-sensitive fur against the door and then sink into a daily torpor broken up by the postman’s visit and regular trips to my various flowerpots. But there was never a mistake, even on an otherwise brilliantly sunny day. Brutie and I knew it was going to rain.

Now that he’s gone, the Argentine ants are trying to take up the slack. I’m not quite on their wavelength, and their collective attempts over the past six weeks have failed. (It did rain yesterday, but I had no idea it was coming.) I couldn’t help but notice their insistence at every crevice in my bathrooms, and their improved resistance to Terro ant poison. Stomping them didn’t work, as it seems every pair of shoes I own has soles designed to protect small insects. My fly swatter didn’t work either because the bathroom tiles have small indentations that provided just enough shelter for a fleeing ant.

Am I going to seek out another golden retriever? Oh yes. Not just yet though.

Back in 2004, the Sicilian village residents endured spontaneous fires rising from their cell phones, tvs, refrigerators and other household appliances. After multiple investigations following evacuation of the citizens, no real closure has been achieved.

Person(s) or speculative beings of interest include Satan and aliens. There is talk, serious talk of possible sacrifice to the gods.

Maybe it’s all just a prelude to the coming of the zombies.

The boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese (Blue’s Clues version) brought back from the boys’ college apartment needed to be used up. Using a trick from one of Jane and Michael Stern’s books (I think), I used two boxes but three cheese packets. The proper proportions were two packets to each box of macaroni, but I didn’t push it. I added half a stick of butter.

The salmon was served with garlic butter and fresh dill (which is also very photogenic, but tends to turn brown before I get it photographed).

Loved the movie the second time around just as much.

According to a family member who accompanies me to local farmer’s markets, fellow customers are frequently puzzled by my shopping style. I will root through an entire pile of pears, kiwis, squash, plums, tomatoes - what have you in order to find the perfectly photogenic item. Sometimes the person behind me will politely ask what’s wrong with all the others, and then I tell them.

Many times they think I know what to look for regarding taste. At the Palo Alto market Saturday, I leaned over the crate of mixed pears. The lady across the box was also picking through, and as I began my typical culling, she handed me a large Bosc pear. ‘Is good’, she said. ‘You eat.’

I nodded, but she was persistent. She pressed it in my hand. ‘Taste good, fruit salad I make. Some better than apple. Cream.’ I smiled and held on to it while I looked at the red ones.

‘Red good too?’ she asked. I looked kind of blank. What usually happens is, I get the fruit home where it might sit for a few days, depending on how many things I’m photographing. Lots of times, fruits get dark spots or worse, and they are relegated to the compost heap before I have a taste. So I hated to tell her I didn’t know what these were like.

At this particular market, I run into elderly ladies who seem more in need of conversation than food. At times, I need the dialog just as much too.

I did indeed buy the pear, even though it failed my picturesque test. But I think I will take a photo now that it has a personality, so to speak, attached.

All this time, as scientists tried to devise ways to kill the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA, the solution was simple and close at hand. Thousands have died when they encountered MRSA in hospitals, especially the elderly and others with suppressed immune systems.

Garlic is powerful medicine.

Yesterday I went to the neighborhood chain grocery because oxtails were on sale. I refuse to pay $5/lb, which seems to be the going price elsewhere. Before chefs and foodies made them trendy, oxtails were considered offal by many. Here they were $2.99/lb, a veritable bargain. I generally toss them in a big pot, and simmer for about four hours. The meat takes on a silky texture, there’s nothing else like it, especially when there’s a chill in the night air.

Trouble arose at the meat counter when I could only find one package. Summoning the butcher, I told him I needed more. He scratched his head, always a bad sign.

Butcher: I think that was the last one.
Me: When will you have more?
Butcher (looking sheepish): I really don’t know. Not today.
Me: I guess I should get a raincheck?
Butcher: Sure, ask at the checkout.

The checkout woman was a kindly sort, pointing out that I neglected to get the free 12-pack of Coke since I bought four. Wow, free Coke. The bagging clerk seemed to take his job seriously.

Bagging clerk: Paper or plastic?
Me: Plastic.
Bagging clerk: Hmmm. Oxtails. What part of the cow does that come from?
Me: (Silence. Restrain from the first impulse, which was to slap him silly.)
Awkward pause on all sides.
Me (peering carefully at the clerk): Uh, the rear part, the tail.
Clerk: Oh, really? You can eat that?
Me: You cook it a long time, yeah.
Checkout clerk: Soup. In soup, right?
Me: Yes.

See, vegans miss this kind of fun.

Among the words during the competition won by Paul Allan: fatwa, valerian, sporidia, genii.

Having succumbed to the Scrabulous mania, all I can say is kex, suqs, and jo.

Images using polaroids and other photos, influenced by the likes of Corot, Titian, Vermeer, Caravaggio and Picasso.

About 2/3 of the way in, I started saying this was another movie that was never going to end, but it was meant in a positive way. We didn’t want it to stop till there was proper closure. One of the most entertaining movies I’ve seen this year, going to watch it again in a day or so.

Dinner was pulled pork (homecooked for 4+ hours in a
slow oven) on white. I really should cook a veggie sometimes, but thought the bag of salad would be okay. It turned out to be brown from a long stint in the crisper. No, I wasn’t that desperate.

From his series: ‘Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of America’s Mass Consumption’: Cell Phones.

Some of her work can be seen here.

After a session at the dentist, I was sedated and in no mood to cook. Luckily my teeth were functional, so we dined on the Colonel’s finest, and watched the movie till I fell asleep at 7:00 p.m, maybe before.

Ryan Gosling more than holds his own against Anthony Hopkins, and I’m looking forward to the conclusion this evening.

Tonight, there might be chicken pot pie, depending on how my workload goes. Not from KFC leftovers, but from a Costco chicken.

According to the local paper, those of us with oak trees are not going crazy. Acorns in vast numbers are raining down on roofs and yards, and if you have skylights, it is particularly noisy. Such an abundance is known as ‘mast’.

This only happens every few years, and the current opinion is that the last one was in ‘89.

That would have been the year that Tollund Man made an appearance in our front and backyards. My boys would have been 6 and 8, and decided the gazillion acorns were nothing more than a multitude of well-preserved corpses.

I never quizzed them about the details of their play. But when I step out in the yard and see all those capped acorns now, I remember the man preserved in peat. And the little guys who suddenly had a ton of action (inaction) figures to play with.

So-so movie, really awful dialog.

Excellent dinner, steak with chanterelles, potatoes au gratin, cantaloupe. For dessert there was coconut cream pie because there was a birthday this weekend.

It happened last year. The UK businessman was on vacation in Spain. Thanks to the pricey security system (16 CCTV cameras), he found out via a text message that a robbery was in progress back in his very expensive house. He watched the drama unfold on his laptop after calling the cops.

The only thing better would have been The Tick answering the call, and pounding the burglars before they were carted away.

When a patient tried to commit suicide via antifreeze (the ethylene glycol in it being the culprit), Australian doctors ran out of the antidote - medicinal alcohol. They improvised a drip of vodka to the comatose man, and he survived.

Sometimes there is no decent chocolate in the house. A family member is between residences, so to speak, and boxes full of ramen, cup o’ noodles, macaroni and cheese and assorted collegiate goodies are stored in the garage. I threw out most of last Halloween’s candy that had accumulated in his apartment from parental supply runs.

But I couldn’t bring myself to toss out the bags of Turtles. Year-old candy isn’t that bad, it lacks something, true, but doesn’t go stale like chips. Kind of loses its sparkle though.

When I was very young, maybe four or five, my dad took me to the huge fish market where he bought his shrimp. It was a cavernous warehouse full of men wearing bloody aprons and wielding very large knives. The floor was slippery with viscera. I did what any self-respecting little girl would do, I threw up on the spot.

When I go to the fish market now, I’m usually looking for a good specimen to photograph, and if I manage to refrigerate it in time, to eat. There was a very clear-eyed, fresh fish from Australia on the ice yesterday, and as I leaned in to look at it more closely, the remaining dregs of pistachio in my system nudged my gastrointestinal tract in a very unpleasant manner.

I backed away. Today I took pictures of pieces of paper.

You probably thought I killed it after taking pictures last week. That’s what any sensible tomato grower would have done.

None of the pictures came out well because it never stopped moving its mouth parts. It was late afternoon, and where I was shooting, it was not very bright. I didn’t want to turn on the lights, which might have made it twitch. Not only did it move more than I thought it would, it produced an enormous amount of droppings. No doubt because of its nonstop eating. Didn’t the plant-eating dinosaurs do this?

So I put it under a plastic dome, actually the lid of a spindle of CD-Rs. Left it with plenty of fresh tomato leaves, courtesy of a lush patch of cherry tomatoes. Plus the half-eaten green tomato.

The next day, I didn’t want to face the subject, which seemed quite active, moving around its pen on top of an outdoor table. I could see it out of the corner of my eye as I worked. The leaves were wilted.

I still wasn’t up to it the following day, or the next. But I kept feeding it. It kept crawling around the perimeter, kind of like a fat green train.

Before I knew it, almost a week had passed. Normally tomato worms don’t bother me, although they must be one of the most repulsive-looking creatures, especially when you find them on your healthiest tomato plant. But my previous episode with the pistachios left me a little more squeamish than usual. Perhaps there is a little pistachio left in my system still.

A family member remarked that the worm looked less than happy. Perhaps, I suggested, it was preparing for its next stage of development. He couldn’t find a suitable container for it (although he didn’t look very hard).

I am very relieved. Sometime I will discuss the writhing mass of larvae in the compost heap, but not today.

I heard it was funny via a source that will be regarded in future as being somewhat unreliable. In other words, what he says about a movie must be weighed against what he doesn’t say. Which can get tricky. But the only other option was The Lives of Others, deemed not a better choice to dine by.

So I didn’t expect the heavy weaponry and elaborate bloodshed, but then it was a parody, so it should have been okay. Who seemed to have the most fun? A tossup between Timothy Dalton and Jim Broadbent.

The steaks, hash brown patties and broccoli were mostly eaten by the time the mayhem began.

Is Nick Frost related to Maggie Gyllenhaal?

Human leg, that is. As I understand it, the owner became separated from it in after a plane crash. Then he put it in the freezer. Then he hung it on a fence. (I sense that he had a problem finding eligible women.) Then he kept it in his barbecue. Along came financial difficulties. The barbecue was auctioned off. The new owner was horrified at the bonus inside. However. He knew a money-making (Halloween) scheme when he saw it.

However. Word got to the previous owner, who demanded it back.

Nowhere in this story is there a hint of how the leg is being preserved.* I got the freezer part. But afterward, was he smoking it in the barbecue? Doesn’t a leg get an ick factor with time? Is that where the Halloween part occurs, and what is that awful stench?

* Ah yes, it’s currently in the local morgue.

I don’t see many, thank goodness, but the few that show up are unique. This morning, I had living proof that Maytag repairmen, are a breed unto themselves, and must spend a lot of time with not much to do, as the ads said. I’ve never met one that was less than extremely competent.

First, he called to ask if the appointment really was necessary. This took me aback. The machine was producing hot water when we selected cold wash. Patiently, he asked if someone had been messing with the back of the machine, as in pulling it out to clean, disconnecting the cables, and then putting them back wrong. Well, no.

He did show up, first call of the day, he said, 8: 00 a.m. Not three minutes after he looked at the machine, he called out, ‘You aren’t going to like this.’

I had visions of a $500 service bill. But no. He shook his head sadly, and regretted that he had to come all the way out just to tell me the machine worked just fine. Apparently, the sensors can tell if the water is too cold, and add hot water till the ideal ‘cold’ temp is reached.

He was so sincere, and kept referring to the manual, which I really, really should read (I did not go and find it because he would just turn to the right page that I didn’t read). It was all I could do not to laugh. This situations always strike me as being less tragic than repairmen make them out to be. Then he launched into a lecture on why the hot and cold cables are hard to distinguish, and the ways in which people forget which is which.

The family member who complained of the hot water was pretending to be asleep. The machine is in the hall right outside his door , so I knew the commentary was heard.

He is the one who explained the curious appearance of the last memorable repairman, the guy who fixed the dishwasher. I had great difficulty not staring at the man’s chin, which had the curious braid of facial hair. And the usual suppression of giggles.

Now, of course, I know that some people who favor metal music go for a look that must involve a lot of time in front of a well-lit mirror.

But yeah, next time I pull out the washing machine to confront the surely gross mass of dust back there, I’ll be able to put the cables where they belong, now that I know that the h and the c are indicated by little holes.

The photographer was taking photos of soldiers and protesters when he was shot. Footage can be seen here.

Is it furry with mold? Maybe two or three shades of sliminess? Does it move of its own accord? There is time lapse viewing here.

He sculpted children in various poses - reading, crying, playing - and then he took photographs of the sculptures. When the works became public, the artist was overwhelmed by the praise and attention, and packed the sculptures away for 30 years.

Through the efforts of an art dealer, they were found again in 1993. But Bartlett was primarily a photographer. A dedicated collector set about trying to locate slides of the sculptures, and found them via eBay.

A NY Times article examines possible reasons why Bartlett chose to sculpt such lifelike children, and in the process, compares him to Lewis Carroll, Joseph Cornell and a group of photographers who specialized in setup photography.

Stuffed works you probably don’t want your kids to see. But ones that family members and I appreciate.