Sad news for fellow Berkeley alums of my vintage

Party Sushi is no more. I mean, it's still there, but not as we know it... Godzilla is gone, as are all of the blow-up beer mascots and hanging and wall-mounted miscellany that comprise their own miniature, stationary, and alcoholic-beverage-sponsored Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The place is still called Party Sushi, but it's now decorated, like, tastefully. Would you believe that?

Cuteness

This is my mother's neighborhood acquaintance.



She feeds him, evidently a lot. Skwerls in the Bay Area are barely wild animals. They are more like aggressive panhandlers, but they are so cute you can hardly be annoyed. They are the most presumptuous in Berkeley, where you cannot sit down on a piece of grass for your lunch without being joined by one of the little fuzzmonsters, who will sit right with you, rummage through your bag, and help themselves to whatever they find.

Hiatus

I'll be gone next week to attend my friend Tim's wedding and to meet my new niece! Yay! She's fuzzy and squidgy! Yay!

Raven funeral

Hundreds of ravens gathered to mourn two that got electrocuted.

Warm fuzzies

If you slept in between these two, you'd take half an hour to get out of bed, too:


I love Bunn's leeps:


Edited to add: Bunn was on Cute Overload, a few years back. He's a bunny of world renown.

Misc

My infatuation with the new axe has already dampened. I still think it's an awesome axe, and yes, it does go through large logs like a hot knife through butter. But it's a one-trick pony, and is no good for either smaller logs or making kindling. It's like using a hammer as a thimble or a log as a toothpick... it's way more force than necessary, and it doesnt worry about details! And considering how many of my logs are small, seeing as they came from permafrost-stunted trees, my smaller axe is still the optimal tool for them. But I'm still happy with my new axe and think it's great to be able to bust open large logs and gloat over them!

In other news, we are having the first cold temps of the year. It is currently -18F/-28C. But did that dampen the girls' enthusiasm? Nnnnooooo... I bundled up and took them for our regular run. It's nice to have such well-adapted dogs. We went skiing with four other dogs yesterday, and only Chewie and my girls did not have to wear a jacket or booties.

Edit: Here we have technical definitions of "very cold" and "extremely cold". In case you were wondering.

Axe, and ye shall receive

A dear friend gave me a gift certificate to amazon.com for my birthday. I figured, a birthday gift should be somewhat indulgent and not practical, so I looked at some earrings and silk pajamas and fuzzy sweaters. My amazon wish list is several pages long, but it contains mostly books, and I use it mostly as a convenient memory jog before I head to the library or to Gulliver's, and rarely purchase from it. Finally, I used my gift to purchase a splitting axe. So much for my attempt at asserting my femininity through retail therapy.

My very well-made and very beloved Estwing axe feels like it was made for me. It's the perfect length, the perfect weight, and the perfect balance. It's also beautifully forged of one piece of steel. I used it to remove half the tree stumps from my front yard this Summer. But alas, my axe is just not the optimal tool for splitting wood. The blade is too narrow, and makes more work out of wedging a log open than I would put in with a tool designed specifically for the purpose. Typically, people use a maul, or a wedge and sledge for the tough (very large, knotty, and/or twisted) logs. But I don't think I'm big or strong enough to use a maul effectively and safely. Enter my birthday present, Fiskars 7854 Super Splitting Axe. It's the same length as my beloved axe, only with a head that looks like a wedge! And check out those reviews! How could I resist?

Well, it arrived this week, and it cuts like a dream. Seriously, one whack from that thing splits a log open like... well... I can't think of a simile because there really aren't too many things in life that you split deliberately, but some of the amazon reviews say that it goes through wood "like a hot knife through butter", and that isn't too far off. It was light work to take apart logs I had struggled with before, and I even whacked apart some logs I had given up on and had put in the "when I rent a chain saw" pile.

Amazing. I now count it among my prized possessions (along with my Estwing axe, my Wusthof kitchen knives, my jade pendant from my mother, and my copy of Shigley). :)