March into Spring

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day. I took a stroll in the gorgeous fresh air. By the cemetery.

Presently I came upon this:

On closer inspection, I saw it was this:

A motorized, bipedal...thing. Two spindly aluminum legs attached to a sort of mechanical pelvis, apparently powered by an electric drill. This robotic hind-end was strapped to a pivoting, horizontal flagpole so that when it's turned on it walks in a circle, like maybe a steampunk horse mill.

It was then I realized I was in the backyard of the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition and I thought, jeez, with such a spiffy name you'd think they could build a better robot than this half-assed model.

Still, for something without a head I think it has personality.

Directly beyond sat this quonset hut.

I love the shabby, rusty, tropicality of it. It puts me in mind of some WWII film set in the South Pacific. Cue Patty, Maxine, and LaVerne.

I can also see the potential of quonset as loft-type dwelling space.


On my way home, I pulled over to take a phone call. In a tree by the parking lot I spied this pair of bluebirds engaged in a feathery flurry of activity. Sorry for the quality of the photo. They were far away and in the shade. I was shooting blindly and had to crop a lot and over-tweak to make them show up at all.

Weatherwise, things are looking up.

new pod, er, cell phone

First photos from my new cell phone. The McDonald's where I decompress some mornings before work -- reading, writing, surfing the Internet, chatting with the other regulars.

And the cemetery where I parked to eat my lunch yesterday. I didn't have time to read any of the headstones, had to get back, but I think it's an historic African-Amercian cemetery. Will research and explore later.

The cell phone camera will be fun. Not great quality but can do in a pinch if, for instance, I bump into Bob Dylan or President Obama. Unexpectedly.