WELDON

My current abode is on Weldon Ave. And I must say, I like it quite a bit. The house is mostly small, but the rooms that need to be bigger are. The bathrooms are miniscule, the kitchen requires strategic movements if more than one person is in it at once, but the bedrooms are both well sized, and the living room is livable. My favorite part of the propery is the rear yard. The yard is rather large for Fresno. There is a gnarly looking plum tree in the center separated from the rest of the yard with circular strip of concrete. It blooms in early spring and drops a thin carpet of white blossoms to the ground. To the left of the tree there is another area sectioned off by a concrete ribbon, which houses a small fountain. There is a plethera of vegetation along the fence of the property, and it seems that the plantstake turns blooming, allowing each other a time stand out, within the yard. Underneath the patio there is a small pond where I have deposited several goldfish. Above and around the pond ivy flourishes and creates a safe environment for hummingbirds to live and nest. Strings of "fairy" lights are strung across the patio rafters and there is an old picnic table where sometimes we sit and dine or drink. The patio is the perfect spot to relax or hang out and listen to the passing traffic, or more frequently, the Mariachi music that hops the fence to dance all over the yard.

Below is the GIS for weldon, The first result creeped me out so I perused the results and thought this one was fun. I hope you like it.

All Hail King and Queen Weldon!

BACKER

My stint as a resident of North Park apartments, on Backer (st. rd. ln. blvd.?) is the longest period of time I have lived anywhere on my own. I lived on the second floor of the complex, which has pretty much relieved me of the deisre to ever live in a two story house. When you move out of a 2nd story apartment into a second story apartment, you realize that carrying all of your belongings up and down a flight of stairs is very not fun.
The roommate my roommate R had before me was a student mechanic, and the walls in the room that I was moving into were a light shade of motor oil with a hint of axle grease...needless to say, i put my bed against a different wal...cleaning and scrubbing it made little difference and so I ended up covering it with a bookshelf.
The apartment was generally in poor shape. The shower had some serious water damage, it seemed like the tiles were about ready to fall off of the walls. The carpets were as old as the building, and the stove in the kitchen was avacado green. At least the linoleum was new...unfortunately there was a slight mishap involving a t-shirt and a hot sheet of cookes that caused damage to the linoleum. Other than that life was fairly tame on Backer.
I did a GIS for backer and the picture below was my favorite result of that search. I think I like the guys steamboat hat, it says to me "come ride the steamboat!" that is all.

State Representative Terry Backer, Assistant Majority Leader, Stratford CT

BULLDOG LANE

I have lived at two addresses on Bulldog lane. After I moved out of the dorms after my senior year, right before my super-senior year, I found a cheap, small studio at the east end of the street. Now, the east end of the street is the "Ghetto" side of the street, and apparently there was a lot of drug activity there, and I think there was at least one night with strange people screaming in the night. The funniest thing that I remember was that on my first night sleeping there, I woke up in the middle of the night, unsure of my surrounding, I turned slightly and saw something move out of the corner of my eye, it scared the kim-che out of me and I jerked up in bed and when I jerked up in bed the other thing moved sharply too, It was at that moment that I realized I was seeing my own reflection in the mirrored closets. I laughed nervously to myself and talked myself into going back to sleep. I was still a little creeped out.

After six months I moved down the street to another apartment complex, to a second floor apartment. One morning while I was cutting something in the kitchen I looked up to see someone jump up on the balcony, to steal my roommates bicycle...I walked up to the patio door and argued with the guy to go away, he wanted me to let him out my front door, I told him to get down the way he came up, I wasn't having any, he finally left. I wonder how daunting I looked holding that kitchen knife, wearing my boxers, yeah, real tough.

Bulldog pups aka Bullpups

BIRDLAND

If someone were emotionaly on a level between elated and ecstatic, are they elastic??

So, I grew up in a part of town the Nortenos (i don't know how to make an enye or umlao) liked to call "El Lando de Bird-o" which when translated into Enlgish means "The Place where those of avian ancestry reside" which has been shortened over the years to be known as "The land of birds" or as some say "Birdland" Growing up in birdland was kind of fun. Where else in town were the roads themes, I mean, there were some dumb parts of town where the names were just all jumbled together, like Cambridge, Princton, Vassar, Harvard, and several other meaningless made up names. In Birdland we had streets that were named after Birds, like Oriole, Wren, Robin, Giddings, Lark, Dove, Quail, and Divisadero. My favorite of all the streets in Birdland is and was my very own street, Canary. I liked the Canary because it was bright yellow, and people seem to like the song of a canary much better then those of the other birds, especially those warbling birds, like the Northern two fisted redbellied Warbler of San Antonio. The funny thing, or at least funny to me, is how many people spelled it or pronunciated it incorrectly. Several people, mainly the people who answer phones at the local pizza delivery place, said "Cannery"... Actually I guess it isn't really that funny after all... So anyway, I posted a picture of a Canary for you to look at.

The street I grew up on was associated with this bird...well not this bird in particular, but with its species, or order, or phylum or whatever!

IT'S RAINING IT'S POURING

Thats right kids, its raining like lions and pandas outside. I don't remember it raining so hard since I was in sixth grade and over at my friend J's house. His dog ran off in the middle of the rain and we had to go find her....ohhh its thundering outside...ok, anyhow i remember it came down incredibly hard, I stuck my head under the rain gutter spout, but it didn't matter because it was raining just as hard. I remember B's streed used to flood, one time I ran over a gutter grate that I didn't know was there and it knocked me over and I jumped off the bike into a good foot of water. Then there was the time I was riding my bike in "THE HOLE" which was one of those water runoff ponds, after a rain and didnt realize my brakes were completely engulfed in mud, which made them work not so well, which I discovered while zooming downhill towards the large pond area. I managed to stop before the pond, but fell over into some realy good mud. It felt absolutely disgusting. But I had a good laugh at myself and hosed off at home. Ah, the rain. The water is starting to come up the pathway now, I am sure we will be getting some calls about roof leaks in the next couple days. ok, take off aye. ya hosers.

Note the lack of the curb, the water is curb level all the way across the street.

A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL. PANAMA!

Hello everybody. Sorry that I have not blogged much in the last couple weeks. Work has been keeping me busy, and not much has been going on. I finished up a book by Wendell Berry called The Memory of Old Jack, and started The Centaur...which I don't quite get yet, but I am only two chapters into it as of yet. So far it seems like all of the gods of Mt. Olympus have come down and entered the teaching profession. Zeus is the principal, Venus is the PE teacher...The centaur Chiron, teaches science.

So the other week I had a party and invited my entire class. When I got home from school that day I was a bit suprised to find a rooster (below) running around the backyard...I really didn't feel like having a rooster at my party so I went next door and asked if they had a rooster, they said "yes" and I told them it was in my backyard. So my neighbor A came and got it. We cornered it, in the corner, and it jumped up on the fence and was threatening to jump over, which would have been bad news as the people behind me have large rooster eating dogs, but I ran a distraction white A snuck up beneath out fine feathered friend and captured him without further incident. The party was a little bit of a dissapointment, as only one of my classmates and her husband, showed up but they were really quite fun, and my roommate invited a couple people over and we ended up having a decent time. Still trying to get rid of about 10 gallons of beer though. Drop by for a pint will ya?

Yeah, here comes the rooster, you know he aint gonna die