What happened was, my Mum is here visiting and she wanted to buy an Apple Watch. So the extremely helpful chaps at the Apple store made it so easy.

But you see, that also meant I tried on a thing. Dear Santa.

At Pappadeaux for the best Alligator & stuffed Crab anywhere.

Also nice surprise to find this shot included in Flickr's Explore.

Where did she go?

I mean, these should have probably been tweets.

How can you be from England and not drink Tea? I was asked. And it's true – I'm on team Coffee 100%. But a funny thing happened, I actually had a cup of tea today and it was pretty great.

I've been running 4 miles about 3 or 4 times a week pretty consistently. But thanks to the great Phoenix desert summer, it's been indoors on a treadmill. It's the time of year where I can start doing that outside again.

I've been listening to a lot of Korine this week. Synthwave goodness.

If you go looking in this fair City of ours, there's a lot of fantastic street art.

We live across the street from a mountain. That I've not hiked in the 4 years we've been here. What the hell?

I haven't read any books since the great reading re-awakening of Dec 2021, Jan 2022. What the hell?

In about a month I will be 49 years old. Turning 50 next year. What the hell?

After 147 continuous months of Summer, it's finally nice enough in the mornings to open the windows again. I have missed the fresh air blowing around the house. There's just something about that brewing coffee smell with the sounds of birds singing.

The Westward Ho in downtown Phoenix. A familiar local landmark originally opened as a Hotel in 1928. The tower mast added in 1949 to broadcast Phoenix's first television station. These days, after undergoing restoration, the building serves as residential space.

I've always loved the architecture and have shot it quite a few times. This particular one taken of its backside after wandering down a dodgy alley on a photo walk in 100° heat.

What happened was, I read an article about Reeder and remembered how much I loved it. You may recall a couple years ago I decided to go solo with Tiny Tiny RSS. And it was mostly fine, just not great.

So I changed things up today. I'm back to using Reeder full time, with iCloud sync, and it really is great.

Except for one thing. Where is everybody?

It's only when you import your ancient OPML file from the olden times that you realize just how many great bloggers there were. And how few still remain. Man, I really miss blogging. I hope independent publishing comes back in fashion some day.

I guess I'm just old.

What happened was, I learned Sam Neill owns a winery. And not just that, a purveyor of Pinot Noir, my favorite tipple.

The vines at actor Sam Neill’s original, organically farmed vineyard in Gibbston Valley are now over 25 years old, and the resulting wines are better than ever. The color of raspberry juice, this vintage is, to put it bluntly, sexy as hell.

I do like wines that are sexy as hell.

I've not been able to find it sold locally but they ship worldwide. I priced out a single bottle; $225 to ship to the USA from New Zealand 😳

The adventure continues then. Look for anywhere in the US that imports it. Or the real answer, take a holiday to New Zealand and pick up a couple bottles in person.

What happened was, inspired by the recent watching of Prey, we were talking about Predator movies at work. And so begins the team watch of all of them in order. I'm this far in:

Predator
Predator 2
Alien vs Predator
Aliens vs Predator Requiem

Thus far they have gotten progressively less good as they go. But still all entertaining nonetheless.

Three left to go, one I've not seen before (Predators), the likely worst one of them all (The Predator), and then ending on a high note with Prey.

Downtown Phoenix, there are some incredible decaying buildings.