This picture is up for two reasons.  First, I gotta drive out to the Santa Cruz area today, and then back, a six hour trip.

And second, it's up because it's Friday!

Here is the first snow of the year.  I heard that the time between the last snow from the spring and this first snow of the fall is one of the shortest on record.   

Things I'm liking right now.

Spooky

Smarter: cats or dogs?

                                                                         Open wider!

Freckles: they bring teh cuteness!

This is the picture that goes in the DSM IV right next to the clinical definition of "Narcissism, severe."

A few pictures from around the homestead.

Heck, that was the look on my face too when I first heard the news.

Some odds and ends from a morning jaunt to the small valley towns of Lockford and Clements, as well as a stop at a forlorn pioneer cemetery.  

First, a fine front porch in the little burg of Lockford.

A reflection in front of the liquor store.

This is the Clements Bait, Tackle, Deli and Thrift store in the even smaller town of Clements.   It is where you go in Clements if you need bait, tackle, food, or someone else's junk.

Below is an interesting study of fence work we noticed on our way through Lockford.

There was a lonely and tiny pioneer cemetery we happened across, but unfortunately most of the headstones had disappeared, with one monumental exception.  The spire stone above and farther below memorializes a fellow from Ireland who was killed at age 27 by the fall of a steep riverbank during the gold rush.  This fellow, James Sheran, must have had a lot of friends, as he had an epic tombstone put up in 1851, which still stands today to tell us of his untimely demise in what was then a wild and untamed California.

Old iron is the best iron.

Nothing like slowly drinking a hot cup of ambition while watching the late autumn sun come up.

Saturday porch pictures

Progressive wanna be hippies without real jobs decided to protest the NYPD, are fooled into thinking an English rock band would be attending in support, and then get lost trying to find the NYPD headquarters building.  

There is a reason fools like this can't hold down a job.   Their parents must be so proud.