[sactown] State Capitol Building

State Capital

So, I’ve promised a friend I would start taking pictures of Sactown to show her. It gets me out of the office at lunch — most of these will be walking distance from work — and it lets me see a bit more of the city I live in. I’ll start the series with this shot, from last Friday, of the State Capitol building here in Sacramento.

I joke Sacramento is a company town. People look at me strange until I point out that the company is the State of California, and when the state hurts, everybody hurts. And it’s been really bad times for the State of California for years. We papered over a lot of it with the housing bubble, but eventually those things come back to haunt you.

That said, I love our state capitol building, and I especially love it this time of year with the Christmas tree in front.

This is my pocket knife

image

Went to run a few items to the post office. Now, the post office in Sacramento is in the federal building, mere feet from the security guards manning the metal detector.

They wouldn’t let me take the knife in. I guess I could use it to go postal on the postal employees, but why?  Hell, my keys (which I am allowed to take in the federal building) would probably do more damage.

So I had to put it outside.  Also, their metal detector is sensitive enough to detect glasses.  Meh.

Security theatre sucks, as does paranoia.

fogtown

Skyscraper in fog Fog town

The first fog of the year has come to Sacramento, shrouding the skyscrapers in mystery. I had to get to work early, so I managed to catch them in that peaceful moment when it’s not night anymore, but it’s not really day yet either. It’s perfect.

[tftc] Attack of the Quack

[Fifth in an occassional series about things I see on my commute.]

Today, on my way home, I get up on the freeway, and a couple vehicles in front of me, I see a truck. It looked like this:

Quack!

Hmmm, says I, it’s a Duck truck. Now, I don’t root for the Oregon Ducks, but they play in the same league as my beloved Cal Bears, so it’s still nifty to see. I begin to wonder if it might be the equipment truck. I decide to overtake and I snap one more picture of the side of the truck as I go by:

Keep on Duckin'!

It made me laugh. So I asked over on Addicted to Quack, an Oregon sports blog, about what that truck was. And sure enough, my guess was right. You see, the Ducks played Tennessee in Knoxville on Saturday night, and the afternoon commute hours today were just right for the Ducks’ equipment truck to be passing through Sacramento on its way home to Eugene from that game.

I wonder if Cal has a similar truck?

Apocalypse Sacramento

Apocalypse Sacramento

Greetings from Sacramento, where the apocalypse seems to have begun…

(No, not really. Just playing around with the solarize feature on my phone. And yes, I like that skyscraper a lot. And yes, one of these days I’ll have something substantial to say that isn’t a post with a picture.)

majestic

Skyscraper and clouds

Fiddling around this morning with the phone and discovered how to set the camera in black and white mode. I kinda like this — there’s a solemn majesty in it.

As an interesting compare and contrast, here’s a color photo of approximately the same scene I took just prior:
Skyscraper in color

Yah, I think I like the black and white one better.

baseball and a status update

God, has it been nearly two weeks since I bothered to update my blog?

Ah, here, have a picture:
Take me out to the ball game

I took this at the Rivercats game last night. It’s the first time I’ve been out to Raley Field, and, while the Cats sucked rocks through a bendy straw last night, it was a perfect night for baseball, especially as the sun started to set. For those of you who don’t know, the Rivercats are the Triple-A affiliate of the Oakland A’s, and the stadium is just across the river from downtown Sacramento. (That gold bridge on the left? That’s the Tower Bridge, which crosses the Sacramento River, and is generally one of the two things used to as icons to identify Sacramento. The other is, of course, the State Capitol building.

Anyway, just letting folks know I live. I’ll have more to say later.

The day I was a superhero

Yesterday, on my walk between the parking garage and work, I found the following juxtaposition of signage:

Warning signs

The chalked message up close, so you can read it:
What the chalked message said...

It was one of those moments where I just had to pause for a moment and laugh (and of course, take a picture). Somebody has a sense of humor in this town, and it’s those sort of wonderful serendipitous moments that I love very dearly. So yesterday, I walked past the message, head held high, as I obviously was a superhero. Only superheroes may pass. The sign said so. Thus, by passing it, I must have been a superhero, no?

I wasn’t a superhero today. We had a spectacular light show and plenty of rain last night, and the chalk was washed away. Mundanity returns. So sad.

dangerously cute

oh hai there

The nice people at the county remind us that it’s time to get Stormycat her rabies shot and license again. They sent us a postcard. It contained the following vitals:

Name: Stormy
Sex: F
Color: Calico
Breed: Pitbull

I guess that’s dangerously cute for you.

Bad Air.

bad air

It’s ugly out there. This is a picture I just took about fifteen minutes ago, as the sun was going down here in Antelope, which is roughly twenty miles northeast of Sacramento proper. (I’m near Roseville, for those familiar with Sactown geography.)

The air’s been nasty all day. Every night, we hope it’ll get better as it clears enough to see stars in the sky. But the daytimes are just nasty. I had to take my mom into Roseville this afternoon, and our car doesn’t have air conditioning. My lungs are still feeling it. Every time I step out into the murky, ugly air, it starts to hurt to breathe. And I’m not in any sensitive group.

I’m in Sacramento. I can only imagine how bad it is in my old stomping grounds up in Redding, where there’s fires burning all around. I have vague memories of 1987, and stepping outside to see a blood red sun hanging in the air. My dad still has pictures somewhere.

Never expected I’d be snapping my own in Sactown, though.

A thousand fires. My lovely state is burning. And more dry lightning predicted.

And it’s only June.

That’s the scariest part.

(More sunset pictures on Flicker here.)