... because the last time my mom visited, she was wondering about the city's wild parrots.

(Photographed this morning at Fort Mason.)

I was checking Joshua Kosman's blog to see if he'd posted anything lately (alas, he has not), and I was stumped by the phrase "the tentative Alphonse-and-Gaston footwork between Nelsons and the string players " in his entry about hearing the BSO perform Mahler's Ninth.

I've been trying to reinvigorate my language skills, so I've started reviewing some of the languages I've studied, switching to a different one (Spanish, French, German, Italian) each week.

I thought music might help reinforce the vocabulary I was picking up, so I trawled the library for pop CDs in other languages. I had no idea what any of these bands would sound like; I figured I'd just check them out and give a few repeat listens to anything I enjoyed.

Thanks to Google for informing me that today is Alexander Calder's birthday, via a beautiful Google doodle on their home page. I love the shadows.

I was lucky enough to grow up near Chicago, where I got to see the Calder Flamingo every time I went downtown. I've always especially loved his mobiles.

The American Masters episode on Calder was marvellous.

Yesterday a Wonderboy song came up on random play, and I got a great big grin.

For about a decade, I ran a little independent record label, Racer Records. I got to work with artists I really loved, putting out their records and trying to build a bigger audience for them.

Wonderboy was the first band I signed, and I love them as much today as I did back in 1993.

Hearing a Wonderboy tune just makes me indescribably happy.

I am dismayed (I wrote "abashed," then looked it up, and decided that was wrong) that I have gone more than three months without blogging.

I have a half-written post about the Big Book Sale, the San Francisco Public Library's annual event, a personal holiday for me, where I spent a happy afternoon wandering among tables filled with books, piling dozens of them onto my cart and smiling, looking forward to reading them all. One of these days I'll clean that up and post it.

So I clicked a Making Light link to read Rehab Nation, about Nixon and politics and power, and came across the unfamiliar word "comity" - which I want to pronounse "KOH-mih-tee", but while that's legal, the preferred pronunciation is apparently "KAH-mih-tee" - and it means

"social harmony"

according to Merriam-Webster.

... but look at that etymology:

"akin to Sanskrit smayate he smiles".

Wow.

A year ago, I was explaining blogs to a friend, and I wrote an example blog entry to show the sort of thing I would write, if I had a blog.

Herewith, then, that blog entry, from February 2006:

Decided to go to one of the noontime concerts today -

I'm posting this so I can claim this blog on Technorati.

I actually have no idea what this entails.

However, this should link to my brand new Technorati Profile.

As they say in programming books, "Hello, world."