Happy Friday everyone. As always, post whatever you got.

Well, winter has arrived in southern Ca. We got about an inch of rain on Tuesday, and it was cold enough Wednesday night to freeze the water in the birdbath. Hope everyone is staying warm and dry.

A few reflection shots from a much warmer and drier day. Okay, drier for me, not so much for the birds.

Growing up in a small northern Illinois town, at age 13, with several school-free months ahead, I was often creative in time wasting activities. A favorite was drowning some of my dad's bass lures in the local lake. On my bike ride back home, over my left shoulder, I spotted some kind of action in the shallow stream of water below. Hmmmm, that was interesting I thought as I peddled faster to beat the dark sky that was coming on fast. Tomorrow.

For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that every dollar of the enormous, bloated, military budget that the Pentagon requests is completely justified.

Today always seems unique and in many ways every day is totally different from every other "day" since the Big Bang. But there are similarities as history repeats itself as farce over and over again.

California's Lost Coast Redwood Forests are still largely privately owned. Save the Redwoods League has a shot at buying and preserving a chunk of them. From their donation page:

This is an Australian documentary about the US.

There is a horrible world out there for children who get thrown into this barbaric system.

Experiences when one is a child leave a huge imprint on peoples later lives.

Children are unable to live independently so they are dependent on adults and often exploited. How did this world get like this?

Christmas is similar to what we had in the US and different.

A German court has accused the Kremlin of assassinating a man in broad daylight in Berlin a few years ago.