Meet Clark

We took a trip to San-Francisco last month to meet 2 month old Grandson Clark:

Turns out we both like food, of various degrees of healthy-ness-es:

Aya, Zach, and Emma also flew in for a visit:

On a few occasions, I would share Clark with others:

We explored various attractions, including a security robot that wandered about a parking garage:

Max is growing up, over 2 now. He hitches an unconventional ride to his daycare with with Daddy:

His alternate Uber driver uses a more conventional transport (I would self destruct on that electric Boosted Board):

We took Clark on a 7 mile hike to Chinatown, thinking we could catch a Lyft ride back if needed, but forgetting we would have needed car seat. Those front baby carriers are a comfy places to sleep:

One of these is a baby silhouette, the other is a dog. Both have a Bruce with out of control hair:

Back in Alabama, we had a visit with our friends from Germany:

We spent a few days in Seaside Florida. It was where ‘The Truman Show’ movie was filmed in 1998:

Seaside, built in the ’80s, pioneered the idea of “New Urbanism”, which encourages walking and biking instead of cars:

Unfortunately, Helen got stung by enough ‘Sea Lice’ (baby jellyfish) that she developed a hives reaction, which wreaked a couple of her days there:

But she enjoyed the last day:

House renovations continue. I got the bathroom and laundry room painted:

Ripped up 3 flights of old dirty stair carpet (and about 3 billion staples), then puttied, sanded and primed the 2x12 pine boards, finishing them with a couple of coats of black floor paint:

Sanding was pretty messy, but now that it is done, the stairs are so much easier to clean! If and when the paint wears thin, should be easy to simply put another layer on:

The geek video this month had a bear sleeping in our bed:

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Closing with a couple of photos you Arachnophobes will want to skip. Helen got friendly with a spider:

Bruce

A Black and White issue

I finally convinced Helen that our dark red and brown kitchen would be better in white. A mid-project photo:

Rather than go all white, we gambled a bit and decided to be Panda-fie it with a black trim.

Left photos are before, middle photos are the left photos magically gimp-ed white to see what it would look like, the right photo is the after:

Turned out great! So much brighter now:

Next up was the renovated bedroom:

Last was the living room:

I got lazy and hire some pros. Those tall ladders are scary:

Bottom 2 photos are the after. Is interesting to see the ‘Alabaster White’ color changes under different lighting conditions:

I also hired pros to fix a couple of leaks in slate roof. That roofer on the left is likely the only slate certified roofer in the state. His hammer is a 80 years old!

Speaking of scary projects, we re-potted our 30 year old bonsai tree, fingers crossed for a recovery:

Trying to be true Alabaman’s, we went to a college football game:

Had a dinner party. Easy to spot the dog lovers:

Did a video on how to display videos:

Went to a Florida beach the weekend of hurricane Irma. Doggies swam for their lives:

Actually, we had great weather and left just before the storm landed:

Enjoyed the white sand beaches:

We met Bantik’s twin sister, another 4 year old black and white Coton-de-Tulear:

These bugs somehow defy the laws of physics and have sex while flying around stuck together butt-to-butt:

Found the perfect spider to complement our new black and white paint schemes, the spiny-backed orb-weaver.

Closing with a backyard snake, the Black Speckled King. He is giving me that ‘better stay back, I am poisonous’ look, but I found out later he is not supposed to be. I didn’t test it.

Bruce