Met some friends last night for a beer. Their house northeast of San Diego had a very close call; fire came all the way into their backyard and burned down a gazebo (that they were planning on getting rid of anyway), but they suffered no damage otherwise. Two nearby neighbors weren’t so lucky. The firefighters left a note that they were there, probably saved their house. I have a feeling they’ll be receiving lots of cookies soon.
The UT put together a pretty nice fire map here that shows the location of many of the destroyed houses. Rancho Bernardo was hit really hard.
Air quality is pretty bad here, but other than that, it seems like the county has made it through the worst of it.
Yesterday I spotted a Rover 75 driving through downtown San Diego. I’m not sure that Rover has every sold anything but SUVs in the US. From what I’ve read, the model was discontinued in 2005 after the company went bankrupt. The Chinese apparently bought some rights to manufacturer a few Rover models, and a few days ago, Ford bought the rights to the Rover name from BMW.
That still doesn’t explain why I saw one in San Diego. It’s supposedly a pretty sweet car; maybe an British expat decided it was worth the hassle to import one here?
I’ve remained a fan of Google, despite their transformation into a behemoth. Picassa, which Google distributes for free, is easily my favorite image manager (much better than the last version of Adobe’s Photoshop Album). Sadly, I think I have to admit that Microsoft’s Live Local is a bit cooler than Google maps. I say this largely because of the birdseye function on local live. Initially, it was limited to a few areas, but as you can see above, they’ve expanded it to include my little neighborhood as well.
I can tell that this image was taken on a Wednesday before noon within the last few months, maybe May. I say that because my old Maxima is parked across the street; I didn’t start parking there until I bought my GS 400 in April, and I sold the Maxima last month (farewell, faithful friend).
Trash day is Wednesday, and the lack of a car in the driveway indicates we are both at work. Watch out, Sherlock Holmes.
Find the blueish swimming pool (the rest look green) and go slightly northwest; that’s my house. You can see the Impala and Toronado parked in front. (I only drive them once a week or so).
You can also see how a few of the neighbors behind ourselves pimped out their houses. The one to the right of the blue-pool house looks like it could’ve been airlifted in from La Jolla. I’d love to put a second story on our house; we’ve have a smokin’ view of the mountains to the east if we did. Sadly, I don’t have a 100k burning a hole in my pocket.
(Right click on the picture
We have a beautiful Weeping Fig (aka Ficus Benjamina) in our backyard. Aside from looking nice, it provides some shade on one side of the house (though the Ficus Elastica next door towers over it). It also drops a lot of leaves that I have to sweep up and worse, it drops bean-like inedible figs. Lots of them. And those little mini-figs attract scores of flies.
A neighbor also warned me that they have an invasive, wide-reaching root system and should never be planted close to a house (the Western Garden Book confirms this). Ours is fairly close to the house, though it is up a bit on a terraced section. There aren’t any pipes that I know of near that corner of the house anyway.
So if you’re thinking about planting one in your yard, don’t do it unless you really really like flies.
How many birds can you name? Hopefully more than the developers of the “El Dorado” development back in the early sixties.
We live in a small neighborhood nestled in the southwest corner of Serra Mesa. The neighorhood is known locally as Birdland. I suppose the reason is because all of the street names are named after birds. You’d think that would be a theme you could easily apply to a massive neighborhood; bird names are not in short supply. Nonetheless, the individuals tasked with naming our streets seemed to have run out of real bird names rapidly. Coming into Birdland, we have Cardinal Road. A small cul-de-sac attaches to Cardinal Road named Cardinal Place. Cardinal Road the splits, with one side designated Cardinal Lane (which leads back to some storage facillities owned by the San Diego School District) and the other is named Cardinal Drive. This is not looking good already.
Let’s keep going. We have Finch, Bobolink (yes, that’s a real bird), Seagull, Whinchat, Hornbill,Goshawk, Redbird (which is actually a common name for a cardinal), Macaw, Blue Jay, Meadowlark, Peacock, Canary, Hummingbird, Nightingale, Teal, Kiwi, Pheasant, Starling, Teebird- wait, that’s not a real bird. As far as I can tell, the only thing named “Teebird” is a frisbe model. Talon? Yes, after twenty birds, we’ve apparently run out of real bird names. And how about “Sprig Place.” I’m not sure what “Sprig” has to do with birds.
If I had to pick one restuarant in San Diego that I would eat at exclusively, Mama’s Bakery & Lebanese Deli would be a top contender. I was preparing to write a review, and decided to find a link first (entertainment pages of local site, etc) when I came across this review by a San Diego food-oriented blogger. A flogger?
mmm-yoso sums it up pretty well (with lots more pictures than I have). I agree that the garlic chicken wrap is a big draw, though the chicken shwarma and manakeesh ultimate are exceptional as well. Note: you must really like garlic to enjoy the chicken wrap. I love it, but then again, I thought that my meal at The Stinking Rose didn’t have enough garlic.
Here’s a picture of Poncho hanging out at Mama’s.
When you say “dog beach” in San Diego, most people immediately think of the one at Ocean Beach. While there are a lot of nice folks in OB, there’s also a trashy element that I can do without. Coronado Dog Beach is much cleaner, more picturesqe, and the sand! Oh, the sand. It’s nice. Folks there are pretty nice as well (actually, the majority of people are pretty friendly at all of the dog parks I’ve been to).
Poncho’s play behavior is different at the beach than at non-beach parks. He wants to play keep-away/wide-receiver coverage with dogs who are trying to play catch in the water. Many dogs do not enjoy this sort of thing; they are there to get that ball, damnit, and don’t need some other dog chasing them and yapping at them while engaged in that mission. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some dogs who don’t mind the barking and interference, and everyone is happy.
