March 3, 2016

At the Late Night Café...

IMG_1036

... you can talk about everything you want... except presidential politics, which I think was the subject of every other post today. I wish I'd run across something else during the day, but let this post stand as my apology for not ranging beyond the campaign.

The photograph was taken with my iPhone from the passenger seat of a moving car, driving into a nice sunset after class today.

23 comments:

Original Mike said...

Our sun, the heating system.

mccullough said...

Pretty excited about baseball starting up again. Listened to a spring training game on the radio today.

Bay Area Guy said...

I had lunch today with a friend of mine at the Olympic Club in San Francisco - great old place, delicious food, lotta bigwigs there. I'm not a bigwig, but my pal is - Army Intelligence in Vietnam, and then FBI for 25 years. He's pure old school.

The O Club is pretty much the last bastion of Alpha maleness in SF. No Beta males allowed.

mccullough said...

Bay,

Great golf course. Hosted the 1966 US Open, which was one of the few meltdowns of Palmer's career.

Phil 314 said...

Nice shot

William said...

I was reading about Philby and the Cambridge Apostle spy ring. Liberals here talk about the hysteria of MCCarthyism. You know what's worse? Insufficient McCarthysm. Philby and his well bred band of traitors got away with it. Blunt even got knighted........After MacLean and Burgess fled to Russia, Philby fell under suspicion. He was investigated by the kind of men who understood what a Cambridge education and a distinguished family truly meant. He was completely cleared and eventually reinstated to MI6. Low class Yanks like J Edgar Hoover thought he was guilty, but Britons and educated Americans who weren't caught up in all that anti-commie hysteria knew him to be innocent........Eventually another Soviet defector came along, and Philby had to defect to Russia. Even here they gave him a break. The Brits gave him a break and allowed him to defect......Philby and his group were probably the most successful spy ring of the Cold War, but what was most amazing was that even after being caught, they got away with it.......I guess if you can implicate Queen Elizabeth, the Prime Minister, Graham Greene, and the future director of the CIA in your crimes, then your chances of success and/or flight increase exponentially........I get the sense that not all the crimes of this group nor all their members have been discovered or revealed. Nor is there much desire on anyone's part to do so.

SteveR said...

I am going, with my wife of almost 30 years, to Spring Training next week and I will be at the wedding of my favorite cousin on the same trip, a very happy occasion. These are things that matter for me.

Lewis Wetzel said...

That is a beautiful picture. I was raised in the upper Midwest, but I've lived in the tropics since the late 1980s. The sunsets are fast here. The sun goes straight down. I miss the Midwestern sunsets, especially the winter sunsets, where the sun kinds of slides along the horizon and takes forever to go down.

David said...

Looks like Trump nuked Spring Green.

Etienne said...

I got to sit in the passenger seat today also. We went out to eat dinner, and I just had some no-name table wine with the meal. I don't know if it was just me, but it was very good. I'm thinking it was just some Gallo, but maybe they gave me something that had a real cork in it.

Anyway, after three glasses, my wife took the car keys away, and that was that.

But I enjoy not driving. I mean, my wife is a great driver. She's not like most women who don't understand hydraulics, and how you don't have to press hard on the brakes, or steer the wheel like a Boeing 707. She has a feather touch.

I was a bit startled when she shook me to wake up when we got home.

Alas, it's 1am and I'm wide awake, and Toto wants to play tug of war. I hope I don't wake up the wife though, because she gets mad if she doesn't get her beauty sleep.

J. Farmer said...

Between Trump and Hillary, Trump must be chosen. Clinton is such a foot soldier for the elite establishment. What's her visionary proposal for social mobilty and economic progress? A universal, state-subsidized universal pre-k program. More deckchair arranging on the TitanicOf course parents handing over their children to paid supervisors provides incalculably benefits to the child. You see, the biological mother and father are really just tangential. A woman making near the minimum wage (illustrious of her skill set) is assuming responsibility for supervising and monitoring small strange children.

Admittedly, I have never had any children of my own, bit I find the whole "universal pre-k" movement a little worrisome. I get the sense that the parents are jumping an opportunity to unload their children on someone else for a period of time, even if that person is basically a stranger to you.

jaydub said...

The wife and I are heading back to the states soon for a wedding and to visit the kids/grandkids. I have to admit I'm a little apprehensive about dealing with the poltical climate among the the relatives. I've "unfollowed" several of them thus far on FB because I can't put up with constant barrage of political proselytizing from either side. I suppose I'm fortunate to be living in Spain right now as that will probably keep me out of jail, if of course I can just get through the visit without committing a felony.

David Begley said...

I think the MSM should do a Cosby-like investigation on Trump with all of the women he's had sex with. "Mr. Trump brags about his penis size. How does he rate?"

High level discourse interjected into the campaign by the vulgarian Trump.

tim in vermont said...

The O Club is pretty much the last bastion of Alpha maleness in SF. No Beta males allowed.

Then how did you get in? ... I kid, I kid....


..I guess if you can implicate Queen Elizabeth, the Prime Minister, Graham Greene, and the future director of the CIA in your crimes, then your chances of success and/or flight increase exponentially....

Don't tell me Graham Greene was a commie... I don't know anything about him but I am reading "The End of the Affair" and I can see it coming, I guess. It went from an intense drama to center around a mysterious character who it turns out is utterly predictable, in a fuck the west sort of way. But I could be wrong, so I will keep reading on the strength of what has gone before. Maybe he wasn't predictable then when people hand read hundreds of thousands of blog comments.

Anyway, in that scene at the end of Burn After Reading,(<-- That's what's known as a spoiler alert) when they catch the bumbling spy at the airport on is way to Venezuela where there is no extradition treaty, and they call the really big spy and he tells them to "get him on that plane!" It was a great scene because there was a lot of truth to it.

Original Mike said...

Terry said......"That is a beautiful picture. I was raised in the upper Midwest, but I've lived in the tropics since the late 1980s. The sunsets are fast here. The sun goes straight down. I miss the Midwestern sunsets, especially the winter sunsets, where the sun kinds of slides along the horizon and takes forever to go down."

As you know, the sun slants to the right (north) as it sets here. I'm heading soon to the Southern Hemisphere, where the setting sun slants to the left (south). Blows my mind every time I watch it.

Tank said...

coupe said...

I got to sit in the passenger seat today also. We went out to eat dinner, and I just had some no-name table wine with the meal. I don't know if it was just me, but it was very good. I'm thinking it was just some Gallo, but maybe they gave me something that had a real cork in it.

Anyway, after three glasses, my wife took the car keys away, and that was that.


I don't even wait. I just throw the keys on the table after drink #3. Mrs. Tank is only good for one drink and is the perfect designee. I would always rather be in the driver seat, but ... Rule #1 ----> Don't be a dead dope.

MountainMan said...

I retired this past Monday after a wonderful 41 year career with the same company. So far this week I have begun to work on a daily routine (my wife is still working). I have been cooking myself a good breakfast every morning followed by a couple of cups of coffee while I scan the local papers and WSJ and check on the blogs and all the political stuff. Started going back to the local YMCA each morning and getting back into some cardio workouts to get ready for bike riding this spring and summer.. Going to get some personal training in a couple of weeks to set up some strength training. Tomorrow I am driving down from my home here in the east TN mountains to my new second home north of Atlanta (minus my wife, who will be working next week) to visit with family and take a 2 1/2 day Civil War tour with a local historical preservation group covering Sherman's advance on Kennesaw Mountain and Atlanta. Sunday I will have my younger daughter and her family over and I will cook dinner for them for the first time in the new home and then play with my adorable 20 month old grandson

I think this retirement thing is going to be OK.

Tank said...

Went to The Garden last night to see The Who. Of course, The Garden is Madison Square Garden, which is the center of the universe for big concert acts. They may play your Podunk town while passing through, but it's all ... on the way to the big city and MSG. I have been lucky to live just outside of NY my whole life to see all the great acts come through and play at the great smaller venues, MSG, and the stadiums. Don't think the acts, big and small, don't appreciate that they are in NYC. They know this is the big stage, and they act like it. Almost always get a good show here (unless drugs or alcohol get in the way, as they sometimes did, particularly long ago).

Joan Jett opened and was lots of fun. Then The Who came on and they were great too. I only wish I had seen them with the original lineup. Oh well. They were entertaining in between songs too. When they played "I can see for miles" it brought me back to my days in high school, when I played the drums, and cranking up the stereo to 10, and playing along. I had a monster drum set. God, that was fun.

Original Mike said...

"I think this retirement thing is going to be OK."

Retirement is grand. Congrats!

Tank said...

Congrats MM

Fernandinande said...

Don't click this click-bait unless you want to see a chimp toss a rock.

Mysterious chimpanzee behaviour[sic] could be 'sacred rituals' and show that chimps believe in god

Heretic: "They're not inventing religion, they're inventing basketball."

MadisonMan said...

What?

Oh. Never mind.

Fly into Madison any Thursday night and feel really old, because the plane is full of young things working at Epic.

Fabi said...

I have a question, Ann: when I Google search for this blog, the return always shows a block frame about you containing a brief bio and a photo -- did you sign up for that type of result or is it something that's automatically generated by Google? I've noticed that the photo changes, too. Just curious.