Category: photography

Genetics are an odd thing

A couple weeks ago, my best friend came out for a visit. As chronicled in these pages, we had a really nice time.

While out and about at the Japanese Tea Garden, I took quite a few photos. Beautiful trees, swimming Koi, flowing water.

Near the fabulous barrel bridge we stopped, and The Good Man took a photo of my friend and I.

I won’t publish it here since I haven’t asked permission, but seeing the photo doesn’t actually matter to the discussion.

Here’s the point: Later, when I downloaded the photo and took a look at it on my computer screen, I looked at my own visage and was a bit surprised.

You know who I look like?

My father.

Um. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean…as a woman, I think it might not be preferable to, you know, as you age…start to look like your *male* parent.

Growing up, I always favored my mom’s side of the family. I have the distinctive pointy chin. I have the body shape. Yeah, ok, so I’d given over to my genetics and was ok looking like my mom.

The first time I noticed I was starting to favor my dad was when viewing the proofs from my wedding photos. There is one photo where I have an expression on my face that is *exactly* my dad. In fact, The Good Man often teases me, “Don’t give me the dad look!”

It’s a sort of squinty eyed skeptical look, and I’d copied it to perfection. I remember the moment, the photographer was doing something weird, kind of annoying me, and I gave her that vintage dad look and click went the shutter.

Ok, so I own that. I was making the face.

In this recent photo, I wasn’t making a face! I was simply standing with my beautiful friend in a beautiful setting smiling at my husband taking a photo.

Something around the eyes, I think. And my nose. But damnit, I look like my dad! Ok, sure, I’m sure the faint whiskers now growing around my chin aren’t helping my “I don’t want to look like a man” cause, but sheesh!

I even sent it to my sister who confirmed that yes, around the eyes, I’m starting to resemble dear old pops. She said, “have you ever noticed you do that one eyed squinty thing?’

Gah!

It’s not that my dad wasn’t an attractive person, it’s just…..that he was a MAN.

Gah!

Genetics are weird.

Your Moment of Zen

Because I feel I cheated my ownself by writing a blogpost today derivative of one of my own from just three months ago, I decided to round out the day with a peaceful thing.

This photo was taken at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. It was late in the day after we’d been to the King Tut exhibit and then the Japanese Tea Garden.

It was about 6:00, the fog was in heavy which makes for AWESOME photography. The colors just pop.

This was done on a point and shoot Sony Cybershot. The photo is in no way profound from a photographic standpoint. It’s even a little out of focus. Who cares….

Someone fashioned a simple little sailboat with a bit of bark, a large leaf, and some masking tape. It worked too, that little guy zipped nicely along the water.

It was a sweet surprise in a day full of fun.

Click image for larger version.

Want some cheese to go with that whine?

Lord knows, I’ve been prone to giving over to a deep, hearty kvetch about living here in the Bay Area, and these marine layer weather patterns this Flower of the Desert must face.

Ok, fine, I own it.

However, today, I’m here to say that all the wet weather actually *does* have some benefits. Occasionally even *I* can find a place of gratitude for all of that goddamn rattin’ smattin’ essential rain.

See, The Good Man and I are renters, and as such, aren’t required to take care of our yard. Good thing, too…cuz we’d have grass a mile high.

My landlord and his son do yard work that’s mainly limited to cutting the grass every few weeks and chopping down nice trees that never did nothing to nobody. But that’s another story.

So over on the side of our humble abode, we have this:

It may be hard to see, but that’s a little spindly tree.

I mean…it’s pretty sad. Look at this puny little trunk:

What you should know about that little tree is that no one really does much of anything with it. We don’t water it. We don’t prune it. We hardly look at it. It’s just “that tree” over by where we store the trashcans.

I’ve occasionally photographed the tree when it puts on white flowers, working on my macro skills. But other than that, it goes totally ignored.

Well. This year, the little tree that decided to get noticed.

This year, that son-of-a-gun put on a crapload of fruit. Apricots.

I’ve lived here five years. That tree has never, not once, put on fruit. It would flower, halfheartedly, but that’s it.

For some reason, even in a fairly dry Bay Area winter, that little spindly tree got enough water and sun and nutrients to fill its skinny little boughs with fruit.

Wow.

And it’s tasty fruit too! VERY delicious. Boy, I do love a good juicy and tart apricot in the summertime.

I remember my college roommate’s mom would put up a fantastic apricot jam…that she’d serve on top of homemade biscuits. Oh my.

So ok, I whine. I jump up and down. I tantrum. I complain that I am a convection-cooled device (a human swamp cooler) finely tuned to the high desert and cannot possibly be expected to properly function in this humidity.

Then I bite into a ripe, juicy apricot and I think, “Hey, all that rain is not so bad!”

Office Archeology

You know, you work in an office environment for forty hours (or more) a week, and you start to become immune to your surroundings. Same gray walls, same tan carpet, same beige cubicle wall fabric.

However, when you are new, you tend to notice the odd stuff laying about, but being new, you don’t say anything for fear of sticking out like a sore thumb.

So you go along to get along…but you wonder. Oh you wonder.

Today, I had all my afternoon meetings wiped off the ol’ calendar, and found myself with some time on my hands (a very dangerous thing for a mind such as mine).

So I went on a walkabout to document some of the more puzzling items I find about my new office environment.

Put on your Indiana Jones hat and join me, won’t you, as we engage in an office archeology and sociology expedition.

Let’s just begin with the number one item that perplexes me on a daily basis.

It’s a pair of keys that go to a cable that secures a laptop against theft.

They are lying atop of a bank of filing cabinets that line a well-traveled thoroughfare at work. Meaning, these aren’t in a cube, they are actually far from anyone’s cube home, laying by the main doors to our floor.

I always ponder…WHO owns these? Do they know they are missing? Is there a laptop somewhere that is forever shackled to a piece of modular furniture with no means of escape? OH THE FUTILITY!

Seven months I’ve been here and these keys haven’t moved a centimeter. I often wonder how long they were there before I found them. Every day, there they sit.

Along the same lines of “something left on a bank of filing cabinets”, we have this:

I hear you saying, “What’s weird about that, Karen? It’s a stapler!”

Yes. Yes it is. A high capacity stapler. Yup. You could affix about 50 to 75 pages together with that big guy.

It’s sitting on a public thoroughfare, on top of cabinets that are at least chest high (and I’m fairly tall), so you can’t even get good leverage to push the handle to make the staple.

And the location is very, very far away from any copy room, copy machine, printer or other such device (it is right outside of a conference room, actually).

I mean, one of these high capacity staplers sits in every copy room. I’ve checked all the copy rooms on the floor, they all have one, so this guy isn’t lost or misplaced.

I have never seen a single person use this nice stapler.

There it sits. Lost and forlorn, unable to be useful for anyone’s stapling needs.

All alone. Maybe I should introduce it to the keys?

Ok, on to the stairwell. I happen to sit a floor above my boss and the rest of my team, so this stairwell is very, very well traveled.

Wait, what’s this?

Let’s go in a little closer, shall we?

Oh, it’s just a bit of rubbish, right? A bit of a Heath bar wrapper. Yup. What’s odd there?

One of our coworkers had a bag of mini-Heath bars in his office that was descended upon by office vultures. Sure, no biggie. Janitorial will just get that when they sweep the stairwell.

Trouble is…we haven’t had Heath bars in the office for TWO months. At least. Maybe longer. And I guess janitorial doesn’t sweep the stairwell because that bit of wrapper has been there for those two months, not moving a hair’s breadth to the left or the right.

Plus, I think it might have been me that dropped it, I’m not sure. I do remember a bad day where I was madly unwrapping and gobbling mini-Heaths as I stomped up the stairs, mad at my boss.

I keep thinking this wrapper will go away, but no, it’s become part of the landscape. (I know, I know…I *could* pick the damn thing up myself)

Ok, from the stairwell, let’s move on to the copy/supply room. Nothing odd there right? Paper products, binder clips, sticky notes, highlighters, and these:

Big deal, right? Simply those Vis a Vis dry erase pens that you use for overhead transparencies. No big deal, an office necessity, right?

Well…except that every conference room in the building has the kind of overhead projector where you hook up a laptop, not the old fashioned push a slide on there and write on it kind.

No one uses clear transparent slides anymore. As far as I can tell, they haven’t for some time here.

And we have a full stock of pens.

So you say, “oh fine, those are just leftovers”. Sure, I agree. No big deal. I took a couple packs for use at home (nice fine point pens! Yes!).

And this week, I notice the stock has been replenished.

For pens that no one uses.

Hmm.

Ok, big finish.

Despite the fact there is MUCH more that I could document here, I’ll draw to a close with the piece de resistance, the coup de gras, and some other French phrases I can’t think of but are probably fitting….

We have to go to the thirteenth floor for this one.

Here we go:

It is probably hard to see from the crappy iPhone photo, but that there is your standard office environment exit sign. But on the left of the sign is a clingy sticker thing that portrays…the bones of the human foot.

Now sure, we are a biotech company and interested in medical things…but we don’t do anything that involves feet. At all.

I have NO idea why the foot is on the exit sign or what it means? Is this some puzzle from employees past? Are they telling me to beat feet for the exit? Are they saying, “walk on!” Am I being told to think on my feet or I’ll be made to exit?

WHAT!?! What are you telling me? Speak to me, wise ancestors! I have to knooooooow!

Ok, I’m getting whipped up, so that must mean that’s enough for today’s scientific analysis.

Join us next time when we’ll explore “that stain on the cube wall” and “storage room, from dust bunnies to gold”.

Thank you, and good night.