Driving through beautiful Highlandtown this weekend, I was interested to see a pile of burned-out drum equipment laying outside the pawn shop on the corner. Seems the whole second floor started burning and when the firemen showed up, they pitched all the burning debris out the window. The owners took the time to board up all the second-floor windows, but left all the crap on the sidewalk.

I am shocked, amazed, and happy to find a website with my old amigo Pat Finlay online; it’s through his old art collective SimpArch (and the contact information is very old.) I have to get some kind of contact info for him that is newer and better (he’s at a boatbuilding school in Berkeley right now, and I don’t have current contact information.)

I’m not going to post any new photos online yet, but I got the gravel into the planters this weekend, the PVC cut and installed for the lighting, and the brick over the outflow pipe by the back gate put in. I also have a plan for the pergola roof, but I need to get permission from Dick, my neighbor, to drill into his wall in order to install the bases. It will be a much easier solution than digging holes, leveling posts, pouring concrete, and topping them from there… I hope he’s cool with it.

As perfect a two and a half-minute long song could be: a shimmering, beautiful, melancholy paean to growing older: Mermaid Smiled, by XTC.