donnunn.com

Woo new local coffeehouse (and crepes! beer! wine!) opening soon just down the street.

UPDATE: Targeted for opening Sep 01, woo!

Scene-stealing squirrel crashes Banff tourist photo.

“We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intrigued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot!” she wrote.

Such a great shot—squirrel looks totally at home there, POOF hey camera here I am! Click through for the story, the photo is priceless.

UPDATE: I nabbed the pic and put it after the jump, in case it disappears from the CBC link.

Via news.bbc.co.uk:

A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.

The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.

Fascinating. Also: Now I can never go anywhere near the central Philippine highlands—in fact, I’m a bit leery of their existence with us ON THE SAME PLANET.

I loves me a vacation, but I hates me the return to every-day life.

To wit:

I had 2,231 unread email messages in my work account. My “delete unnecessary mail” rules killed 825 of them, leaving 1,406 for me to review in some manner. The vast majority of these were threaded replies, so I knocked out a couple hundred more in short order by reading the newest messages first, but still. 1,406 unread messages over five workdays? Blargh.

I spent much of Sunday in a bleary-eyed fog of sorts. The flight back from Kaua‘i was a red-eye, Saturday at 22:30 HST to Sunday 07:10 PDT, and in my usual fashion I managed not to sleep a wink on the plane. But I didn’t want to muck up the days and nights by sleeping before Sunday night, so the day flashed by in this welter of confused imagery and sounds and unpacking and tripping over cats and trying very hard not to have to go to the grocery store because I was in no condition to drive.

Ended up sleeping about an hour midday, just enough to knock out the fuzzy feeling until it was time to retire for the night. But I was still on Kaua‘i time anyway—my brain wasn’t ready for bed at midnight because it was only 21:00 HST. Silly brain.

But now I’m back in the office, back to the usual daily bits of life, and it feels like the week I was in the tropics was maybe 17 minutes long. Except for the flights, which were each 3.5 years, give or take a month. Travelogue to come.

So how was your first week of August?

Blowhole of the Pacific on Kaua‘i’s south shore.

Po‘ipu Beach on Kaua‘i’s south shore.

Accent wallpaper pays amusing homage to the ubiquitous fowl at Kountry Kitchen in Kapa‘a.

The view from our 3rd-floor lanai on the east side of Kaua‘i.

For a few months you’re only one year younger than I am.

Our proper upbringing prevents us from disclosing a lady’s age, but we’re under no such restrictions on divulging a man’s age: I’m 37. (Bwahahahahaha)

So there! ;-)

Everyone, go wish Julie Anne happy birthday on one (or all!) of her many online haunts:

• Her blog
• Facebook
• Twitter