Random thoughts

For those of you in the US, happy Independence Day. To everyone else, happy Wednesday. That said, today is actually Monday in my world. Since I have the late-late evening shift tonight, I'll take a few minutes to post a little something before heading to the tower.

For those of you residing outside the US of A, the 4th of July is a national holiday that is generally observed by going to the beach/river/lake/pool/campground, having barbeques, drinking beer, eating watermelon and/or making ice cream, and fireworks. Even though fireworks were not invented in this country, we Americans really love our fireworks. Legal, smegal, who cares - everyone (it seems) sets off fireworks. My neighbors certainly have a fascination with fireworks, so even though it's not yet really hot enough to necessitate running the air conditioning, for the sake of the critters the house is closed up with the a/c going and the radio playing just to shelter them from the worst of the noise.

Here are a couple of interesting things I've learned about this blog lately:

This blog pretty much fails the xkcd Simple Writer test:  https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

On the up side, however, this blog seems to pass the Great Firewall of China test

Now for a little consumer advice. If you like chocolate, avoid these:

I sampled these so that you don't have to. Trust me, they're horrible. The things I do for you guys . . . 

And now, a gardening tip. If you don't harvest your artichokes, this happens:

This artichoke flower bears an amazing similarity to a sea anemone

More on the subject of gardening: Over the last year or so, I've converted my front lawn into drought-resistant, all California native (except for the awful palm tree) plants. So have some gratuitous flower photos:

Aromas Cleveland Sage

Trish Monkeyflower

Shasta Sulphur Buckwheat

Apache Plume

White California Fuchsia

San Luis Obispo Coyote Mint

White Sage

Coast Sunflower

Red Buckwheat

Conejo Buckwheat

St. Catherine's Lace

California Buckwheat

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be a blog about airplanes at LAX. So for those of you who've made it all the way down to here, a shot of one of our recent airline additions at LAX. VivaAerobus (callsign: Aeroenlaces) operates one flight a day at Terminal 6 in the late afternoons: