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Today was not quite as warm, with quite a few clouds during the day. But every cloud has a sliver lining, as they say, and those clouds turned in a pretty good display at the end of the day, once again at the Lafayette reservoir!
Click here for a larger version, sized to fit larger monitors
Another perfect day – 67 degrees, clear blue skies. Caught this bird in flight at the reservoir today.
Here’s a couple of similar shots from last month (click for larger version) …
and …
With 99% of all Americans (I would guess!) planning to sit down to a traditional Turkey dinner, we headed into San Francisco for our annual ‘Thanksgiving, Chinatown style’. But first, a quick stop at the Lafayette reservoir, to get in a bit of exercise!
Arriving in San Franciso at around 4pm, it was a perfect 65 degrees. The Pyramid building rose above the other buildings with the Chinatown Hilton hotel to the left.
Dinner Consisted of a variety of unusual and delicious items, such as pea-leaf in garlic sauce, Squab, and … the signature dish of R & G Lounge, ‘salt and pepper crab’ – battered, deep fried, totally delicious crab! Beats turkey any day in my book!
Leaving the restaurant at around 5:30pm, the setting sun cast an unusual light on the Pyramid building, with a near-full moon setting to it’s right.
Here’s another shot of the pyramid, with the moon to it’s left, taken from Grant Avenue in Chinatown.
Walking down Grant Ave, we came across my favorite bakery; always a long line outside, best pastries you could ever hope for!
And here’s my favorite tea store – Vital Leaf, a place where you can sample all kinds of teas, ranging in prices up to hundreds of dollars a pound. I picked up a refill of my favorite.
With the sky almost totally dark, the lights of Grant Ave started to shine.
And here’s a final look at the moon, sitting above another interesting San Francisco building, with the lights of the Embarcadero Center in the background.
All in all, a great way to spend Thanksgiving!
… a day makes! One of the best things about the bay area is that, even in the rainy season, we get crystal-clear blue skies much of the time. This is the same view from the deck 24 hours after the previous picture:
Here’s a rudimentary animated gif showing the transition from cloudy sky to blue sky. I’ve done these before using actual time-lapse photography (eg, one frame every hour or so), but for this I simply took the original frame (cloudy) then in photoshop, blended the second frame (blue sky) as a layer with an opacity of, say, 10%, then created another frame with opacity of 20%, etc, then created an animated gif from the frames (layers). Tedious but fun – I’m going to try to perfect and streamline the process!
After what seems to be the longest, driest summer in memory, we had a full day of rain yesterday and it was quite attractive in its own way! Can’t complain when it’s dry until mid-November (though it does drive home why we are having major fires all over the place). View from the deck on this damp day:
Not much chance of a walk in the park this day, but good opportunity to go to San Francisco and check out Japan Town! Sounded like a great idea, so jumped in the car, but fantasy turned into reality at the Bay Bridge …
Japantown was hopping, though – full of local teenagers, tourists, you name it! Good antidote to a rainy day.