Just Back...

... in Los Angeles after two weeks in Laguna Beach. We enjoyed a good deal of wet weather over Christmas and the New Year, significantly wetter than usual for our climate. I have no idea whether it all makes a dent in our long-standing drought. Perhaps it helps to replenish the water table we hear so much about in Southern California. I have been watching news reports from Australia, where there are floods "of Biblical proportions." Perhaps they should be building that Kentucky Noah's Ark theme park there instead. (My apologies to Australia: this is clearly no joking matter. And I do very much appreciate my readers Down Under--I know there are a good few of you, and it means a great deal to me to know that what I write is read regularly so far away.) That area, I understand, has been as drought-ridden over the past several years as our own, and now the heavens open and dump an ocean the size of France and Germany combined. Nature sure does play some cruel jokes. Our family in England report to us on the worst winter in memory...

Meantime, here in Southern California, it is cold but bright. This morning Ellie and I were out for our usual walk around the hill. In anticipation of our trip to the rain forest in Costa Rica, we invested in a new camera--my standard was to be able to take a picture of a bird in a tree, something the zoom in our Canon Powershot would not allow. So today's walk offered the opportunity to give the new one a test run. Here are some views from the hill where we live, at the east end of Hollywood:

These two are taken from our balcony:

And this one from my study window:

I note that these took significantly longer to upload than the Canon pictures. Am I right in guessing that they have a larger number of pixels? Or what? They look to me like pretty nice pictures, with sharper detail than before. I must now study the manual, in order to understand a little better how to work the thing. Wish me luck...

(Oh, I also don't understand why, once the blog entry is published, some of the pictures enlarge beautifully when clicked, while other refuse to enlarge at all. Can anyone explain?)