Disneyland 2015

Another awesome trip to Disneyland with Kim and Aiden.  I find this photograph to be so awesome and amazing and emotional and memorable.  Possible reasons:  The son I never had?  Disneyland really is the happiest place on earth?  We really were the two coolest dudes at Disney that day?  All the above?  None of the above?

Regardless, I love this pic and even though it has little or nothing to do with the "Natural Catharsis" premise for posts on this blog I'm posting it anyways.  Because I can.  And the blog is half mine.  So there.  Enjoy!

Sky Art

So far in this otherwise amazing New Year I have found my mobility somewhat constrained by recovery from some necessary surgery (with another surgery scheduled for later this month), a ludicrous bout with some insane flu virus and...wait for it....drumroll please: RAIN and MONSOON LIKE CONDITIONS.  Rain in Northern California? What's next?  Dogs sleeping with cats?  Lol....

Also, there's been a bit of a cultural drought in the Bay Area so far this year.  There are absolutely no interesting museum shows or retrospectives at any of the local art centers and there is a real shortage of anything interesting or creative coming out of any of the San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley or Palo Alto art galleries and alternative creative spaces. Btw, in all fairness to the Bay Area creative and art gods, it does look like this dearth of artistic and visual stimuli will be ending come early Spring.  Yeah!

The result of these two phenomena - my constrained mobility and lack of cool stuff to look at or engage with - has left me with few postable blog entry choices.  

But then I discovered this:

And then this:

These last couple of weeks, somebody's been putting gorgeous art up in the sky out over the Pacific Ocean just outside my apartment windows!  The secret curator in me wants to call it "My Higher Power's Retrospective of Celestial Artworks."  We can probably refer to it simply as "Sky Art."

I hope you enjoy this true gift from the gods as much as I have.  It's slightly more impressive viewed in real time in it's natural state but these pics do it a fair amount of justice.  Here's a few more!  Enjoy!

California Academy of Sciences

Yup, that expression on Aiden's face pretty much reflects our overall reaction to everything we saw on our recent visit to the California Academy of Sciences nestled in Golden Gate Park.  Oh the wonder! We spent the entire morning wandering around in awe.   One minute we were smack dab in  the middle of their hermetically sealed, very moist, very hot rainforest microcosm seeing all sorts of unusual reptiles and birds and insects with real live brilliantly colored butterflies landing all over us.  In fact, one large, bright blue butterfly seemed particularly attracted to Aiden's blue shirt and kept stalking him as we meandered through the rainforest.  It freaked him out a little as it kept chasing and landing on him but it was pretty fun to watch. 

Then the next minute we were whisked away by a special elevator down several levels, through their shark tank, eventually finding ourselves weaving our way through their labyrinthine collection of aquariums looking at sea creatures we never dreamt existed.

This place was truly astounding and we can't wait to go back next year when Aiden is old enough to take in their special planetarium show and go in the earthquake shake house which simulates what it would be like to be in a house during the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  A few more pics to enjoy: