More livestock, no pictures

Dolphins were gamboling about a house lot's length offshore this afternoon at It's Beach, and sooty shearwaters had arrived from New Zealand, and back up at Lighthouse Field a bitty bitty kestrel was harrying that huge hawk I identified as a redtail (with the help of all my online friends). There are green aphids on the backyard lemon tree, and black aphids on the quince bush (but the quince bush is much bigger than the lemon tree), and bright golden aphids on the milkweed plant I grow for the Monarch butterflies (except they don't actually lay their eggs on it. Oh, well).

My card reader has given up the ghost and Smart Disk won't answer my email. So I can't actually process my pictures. I could, except in my propensity for losing everything I have lost the highly specific USB cable that fits into the camera.

Having decided a couple of weeks ago to query other publishers on The Conduit since the first choice one has not acknowledged my existence in nine months, not even to two polite queries a month and two months ago, I have almost finished writing a query letter. I have a draft lacking in a concluding sentence which needs to be shortened by half. I'll be finishing chapter six of The Donor and posting it in a couple of days.

I have had worsening laryngitis for about three weeks, and I have bright red, swollen patches on my tongue, palate, and uvula, and the back of my throat, and now I'm kind of tireder than usual and I'm going to see the doctor in the morning. I am not frightened. I am only concerned.

Oh, and something I ought to have mentioned in the "life on the Central Coast" entry -- Santa Cruz and Huntington Beach are duking it out in the legislature and courts as to which one is the real Surf City. Like anybody cares? Though the scoop is Huntington Beach doesn't have very good waves, and well, the wetsuit was invented here . . . they should just call themselves "Surf City North" and "Surf City South." Or not.

comic relief: new salvos in the "Surf CIty" battle

There's going to be a "charity surf off" next weekend. I don't know -- surfers from Huntington Beach and surfers from Santa Cruz surfing for the title?

The Huntington Beach people seem kind of more serious about it, though it was a local legislator (Joe Simitian, who I voted for) who took it to the floor last week.

Best note of all, though: in the San Francisco Chronicle today there's a letter saying neither town deserves the title, because the writer had been to both towns and neither had "two girls for every boy."

On other fronts: the conures are still flocking in the big cedar tree on Telegraph Hill. I'm still out of shape and I suffer going up to the top where Coit Tower and the statue of Christopher Columbus is.

For the next few months it is verboten to bring apple products to my father's house, though he made an exception for my applesauce because he hadn't made any yet. Anyway, I have Pippins and he has Gravensteins, which are different.


And the thing with my larynx and mouth parts? I have thrush.