Monday, July 3, 2017

Windows and visitors



This sweet kitty was keeping me company while I washed windows. She was especially keen to hang around when I opened the windows in order to clean the sills. I had one arm blocking her hasty escape attempts & the other arm stuck out the window in order to clean the muck off. The novelty wore thin fairly quickly.


We cleaned the one-room guest house which I saw was reserved for the, I'm assuming, 'revolving door' au pair who lives there. The children had their own individualized welcome mats at their back bedroom doors. Even the pet had a mat. But the au pair? Nah. Too many must come through.

We have had house guests here from London for the past week. -an old uni friend, her wife & their son. It was great to have them. I even managed to find a box of Tetley tea at a somewhat local market to give them a taste of home. PG Tips are easy to come by, but they don't fancy that brand. Fair enough, I prefer Tetley as well.

I ferried the Londoners up to Twin Peaks for the grand view of SF. I don't think they realized how great the view was going to be. I sort of had to convince my friend to go, her wife was keen for whatever. They all seemed duly impressed once we were up atop the peaks.

Partial view from atop Twin Peaks

The wide boulevard bisecting downtown and beyond is Market St. At its base is the Ferry Building(2). One can sort of make out a sliver of it way off in the background. Market extends up toward Twin Peaks, but the main portion of the commercial bit ends at Eureka Valley aka The Castro. 

Other points of possible interest are: the San Francisco Mint(1), the western span of the Bay Bridge(3), and the somewhat obscured Transamerica building(4).

The mint no longer produces coins for general circulation, but instead focuses on producing commemorative sets. -wonder if they were also responsible for producing this monstrosity? 

Philly Mint coins


The image of the Transamerica Pyramid, or as I called it when I was a child, the 'upside-down ice-cream cone', was used by beloved local writer, Herb Caen, in his column header. Herb's header would look a wee bit different today what with all the massive skyscrapers now being built downtown. The Transamerica probably wouldn't even rate, sadly. 

-had a laugh at the column snippet below. Keane's paintings, whatever one thinks of them, were painted by the wife, as we now know. 



8 comments:

  1. That commemorative coin? Monstrosity indeed.
    Love the view you shared with your guests (and us). And have a huge weakness for black moggies.

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  2. What a view. Showing the sights to a tourist can be fun, so long as you don't get stuck going to places you hate.

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    1. They were keen on riding a cable car & going to Pier 39. I was going to meet up with them later, frankly, but that plan, somehow, fell by the wayside. Alas, I couldn't get them to go to on the newly reinstated street car system running up and down Market St. My friend had rented a car, so was adamant on driving everywhere. Parking turned out to be not too bad!

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  3. Can't believe he's on a coin. I keep thinking, every time he does something moronic, that someone somewhere will help us get him out of there. I am not even sure who has the authority to get it started. It's going to be a long nightmare. What a view. I can't imagine trying to keep kitty inside. Tell them you have to charge extra for that.

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    1. Ha! Kitty-surcharge. :) She was a love-bug though. Felt guilty for petting her so much while I was supposed to be working!

      Did you see the latest weirdo short vid that Trump posted? It would seem he was intimating that it would be okay to physically hurt (CNN) reporters. Grim.

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  4. The Trump coin looks like Burt Lancaster pretending to be Donald. You didn't say what building number 2 is!

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  5. The Ferry Building is no. 2. It sort of begins Market St. -sort of hard to make out...

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