Vacation, Unused Pix

This is the first official day of my vacation week. Normally I would be in at work today, but here I sit at home. We just watched the last of our Netflix movies for the week ("The Bucket List") and are upstairs doing office type things like paying bills. I downloaded variouos pictures from my iPhone that I had taken and meant to use in blogs, but never got around to writing them. This first one is a shot of jacaranda. Did you know they have bipinnate leaves and panicles of showy usually blue flowers? It's true; Merriam-Webster says so.

Tomorrow (Monday) I will be meeting my brother Steve and his wife Pam, daughter Emily (and maybe other-daughter Amanda) at Union Station. They're coming into LAX from Wisconsin, and we will all be taking the train up to Arroyo Grande for a visit. Hopefully, I'll remember to take lots of pictures to share here. If I'm true to form, though, I'll probably forget to until the last 20 minutes of the visit, and everything will be posed. I come back on Tuesday to get ready Wednesday to go to West Hollywood on Thursday to get the marriage license for the ceremony on Friday. (Am I obsessed with this or what?) On Saturday we'll all get together at Olvera Street for a reception/goodbye dinner for Steve and I and Steve and Pam and the girl(s).

Okay. Here's another picture; an interior of the Red Line subway train (well, actually, the Purple Line subway train, but they're all the same color. I know it's confusing, which is why a lot of people who want to go to North Hollywood on the Red Line end up at Wilshire and Western, the terminus of the Purple Line). This is the the subway I take to work every morning (except when I'm on vacation, like now). It seems very empty but that's because I had just gotten on at Wilshire and Western. Within a few stops, the train was packed with people. During rush hours, all trains and buses are pretty much standing room only, and it's not unusual to have to wait for the next bus or train to even get on.

And finally, a shot of the headquarters of IndyMac Bank, which was recently taken over by the government because of insolvency. It's just a couple blocks from our house here in Pasadena. Who says you have to go to Wall Street in New York City to see the failure of the American economy?

I'm starting to get excited because I just realized that I'm going to have to pack a bag for tomorrow, and that I'll be seeing the Wisconsin quarter of the clan very soon. Whenever I visit with my brother Steve (who is a political science professor), we talk about very complex and profound things, and I always end up feeling terribly intelligent just being able to keep up; it I make a joke he likes, I feel like an insightful genius.

I'd better sign off: my Steve is sitting at his computer playing Super Collapse, which means he's probably bored and waiting for me to finish, and so I shall.