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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Sunday, February 2, 2003
03:26 - A-suh-puh-ring is here

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Today was probably the clearest, most gorgeous day I've seen all year-- possibly for a couple of years now. Around lunchtime I went up Quimby Road to get the lay of the land, and I found to my pleasant surprise that I could see Mt. Tamalpais quite sharply from my vantage point in the East San Jose hills. I didn't have my camera with me, but-- well, here's a photo from last year, so you can get an idea of the view I'm talking about:


Today was like this, only-- see that faint mountain line along the horizon? See how it's all sort of hazy and vague? Well, pretend instead that it's as vivid and clear a panorama as anything you've seen from 30,000 feet over New Mexico. See that lump of heights over at the right, just above the house with the kickass view but the awful commute? That's Mt. Tam, and it's north of San Francisco. Today, not only could I make out the striations of treelines on the mountain's slopes; I could see individual buildings in downtown San Francisco, right in front of the mountain from my perspective. I could see where Pac Bell Park was. I could see individual neighborhoods. At sixty or seventy miles' distance as I was, I couldn't identify any particular buildings; but I'd know there was a city there, and if I were an alien visitor with the power of unassisted bodily flight, I'd beeline straight for it.

If you follow the mountain line toward the left, southward along the Peninsula, you see a couple of lowish rises-- the hills in the middle of the City, Twin Peaks and the one Sutro Tower is on-- and further left still are the San Bruno Mountains, the line of hills that form the southern boundary of the City, the bulwark that separates SF from South San Francisco: THE INDUSTRIAL CITY. Today, I could see the green of the grass on those hills. I could see the transmission towers on top of them.

I could almost see the Cow Palace, down at the foot of that ridge on the northern side, tucked away into a little sheltered valley-- a Mediterranean seaport town with rich folks living on perches overlooking the Bay from a thousand feet up, minutes from the airport (just head south around the foot of the San Brunos) and just out of reach of the bleak sprawl of the South-of-Market freeway portal that leads into the City's southern quarter. You can take a road up from the Cow Palace into the hillside balcony rows of tract homes, then let the road take you down the ridge of the foothills, aiming you eastward right across the Bay, with its blue water and the houses clinging to the steep hillsides ringing the little cove region south of Candlestick Point and north of the San Brunos. I was just up there yesterday, listening somberly to the ongoing coverage of the Shuttle cleanup and damage-control effort with Lance as we drove home from the Golden Gate Kennel Club show at the Cow Palace. (We'd been there out of more or less idle curiosity-- what with the new house and all, and the marked lack of a landlord other than myself to forbid such things, we've been thinking of getting a dog or two to add to the household. Fun show, indeed-- got to meet a lot of interesting breeds. I nearly got adopted by a Borzoi in the benching area, where he was standing up on two feet so he could match me in height, and he decided my hand was just the thing to lean his head against and force me to plant my feet under his weight like some macho guy on the subway who refuses to grab a handle when the train jolts to a stop.)

So, yeah. It's been a beautiful weekend, with skies of clearest blue, hills of lush springtime green, and trees flowering in the grocery store parking lot. There was a brisk wind blowing all day, which I'm sure is what contributed most to the clarity of the air; that's fine with me, but I wish we could have it more throughout the year, or at least to predict when it'll happen. 'Cause though the fog-rolling-over-the-Peninsula-ridgeline summertime weather patterns play a strong hand, I'm leaning like a Borzoi toward this time of year being my favorite around here.

I've got to stop leaving my camera at work.


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