Today I bookmarked this site : Alaskan Wild Flowers. Enjoy!

It’s winter, it’s the Bay Area, so that means the apartment is overrun with ants. Oh brrrrrr! It’s so cold outside! they squeal. But not cold enough to freeze us! So we’ll just come inside for a while if you don’t mind! Oh but I DO mind! I mind very much! DIE!!!

We got a letter from our car insurance agent today soliciting us for life insurance. I am going to recycle it, but I did find this description of the policy kind of funny: “Premier Non-Nicotine Level Term Life Insurance Policy.”

Is there an non-alcoholic policy? You know, like O’Douls?

Sasha has to go to the vet tomorrow morning. Two of his claws have overgrown into his paw pad. We trim his claws regularly and he always scratches his scratcher, but he has always had these mutant claws that don’t fall out when they should. Poor baby.

Yesterday I went to see “The Pursuit of Happyness.” It was part of a work outing, even though I’m on vacation. But I like my coworkers, so I joined them. I liked the movie too. I thought it was really well-directed and acted, and the true story angle was good. Also, as a long time resident of San Francisco, I kind of enjoyed all the local sets and how they filmed on BART etc, but made everything all retro-early 1980s. They even dug up one of those old BART maps that I remember from the old days, when the trains only went as far as Daly City and Concord.

But as always happens when a movie is shot in a real city, there were certain anachronisms. Remember back in September of 2005 when a fake BART station entrance was erected in Duboce Park (at first I thought it was real, and I don’t think I was alone in that)? It went up for a few weeks, and then it was taken apart and re-sod. I soon realized it was for a movie, but I thought it was for the Zodiac.

ANYHOO, halfway through the film, Will Smith is in a cab, ostensibly in “Noe Valley,” though clearly, he was nowhere near Church or 24th. He gets out of the cab and is running through some grass. I looked at the scenery passing by, trying to figure out where he was supposed to be. Then it hit me. Duboce Park! Nowhere near Noe Valley! I bet he’s about to run into a BART station! And then he did!

That fake BART entrance was worth about five seconds of screen time.

People in the audience chuckled knowingly.

Also there’s a scene where a Chinese guy says a few things to Will Smith in Mandarin (or Cantonese, I donut know), and since this is SF, half the audience understood, and laughed.

It was a good movie; see it.