Okay, here are some pictures of me holding my new baby cousin…

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I am skipping ahead to the end of my adventure, just to make sure that you stick around for it. The thing is… (and if you know me at all, you know this is an unusual thing)… but I didn’t take any selfies on my adventure. There are no pictures of me at all, as far as I can remember. It might be because my new, good camera is not easy to take selfies with. But my cousin Mallorie took these with her phone, and put them on Facebook… with a caption that said something like: ‘Everybody needs an Arthur Browne postpartum’… awwwww…

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Now hold your horses, and we will get to more cute kid pics as soon as we can.

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Some cute dogs I met on my adventure…

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Look at that little face. The thing is… (you should have been expecting a thing right about now)… that I just used that cute puppy that I met to lure you into looking at some more pictures of…

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The Bay Area! Okay, you might think these were taken on my first day at my mom’s house, because, once again, the tops of the Golden Gate bridge are shrouded in fog. But it isn’t… or wasn’t… this is day two. It just happens that this is a fairly common occurrence in the summer, when the warm air inland pulls the fog into the bay.

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But there will be some more cute animals in this post, so don’t panic. And we will get to other stuff… lots of other stuff…

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See, I always go down to Point Isabel when I am visiting my mom for two reasons. First of all, it is a great place to view the bay from. But the real reason is that it is a great place to meet dogs… because that is where people walk their dogs…

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So I get to meet cool dogs… like that guy up there… and pet them…

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And I get to take pictures of San Francisco… to share with you.

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We call that a win/win situation.

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At least I hope we do.

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The thing is… (hey, double bonus thing score!)… that when I travel, by the second day, I am really missing my dog. So I need to meet some dogs… (If you haven’t read my post about the day I set the record for petting the most dogs in one day, you should really type something in the search bar relating to ‘dogs-pet-record’ and see if you can find it…HA!)

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Look at the colors in that sky… oh, yeah.

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Now that pictures there is awesome! It shows one of my favorite things about the Bay Area, when the fog rolls over the headlands beside the Golden Gate like a slow-motion tidal wave. It is particularly cool when you are driving on the roads or freeway that parallel those hills, and the fog looms over you, slowly lowering down on you to enshroud you in its mysterious moistness.

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When I got back to my mom’s house, I spotted another baby deer. He still has his spots. I saw more baby deer this trip than I ever have in my life, all right outside my mom’s house.

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And then I walked a little way up the street where I grew up… and took a few more pictures… of San Francisco…

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Let’s use that zoom lens, shall we?

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Oh yeah!

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One more picture of my new friend, just to wash the taste of fog out of your mouth.

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San Francisco…

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Whenever I go to the Bay Area, I take a lot of pictures of the city…

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I miss that crazy fog-shrouded city.

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Hey, that last picture was pretty good, considering how far away I was… I love that crazy zoom lens!

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There is the Golden Gate, its tops vanishing into the fog…

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And then, bam, like magic, you can almost reach out and touch it…

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I can even zoom in on Alcatraz.

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Or on some windsurfers…

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How cool is that?

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I hope you aren’t getting sick of these…

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Because I have more of them…

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A Bay Area sunset…

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On the first night at my mom’s house, I took a few pictures of the sunset from her balcony. And after I dropped the kid off the following morning, I had nothing to do for like eight days… but run around and take pictures for you to look at… did you spot the bird in the tree in that photo?

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Nothing like a Bay Area sunset, as it lights a fogbank on its way down.

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A little earlier, I took that picture from the same spot… (See, I said that I might mix the order of the pictures up just a bit)… I also like mountains in the mist.

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Oh yeah, zoom lens…

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Gotta love that zoom lens…

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Ha… did you spot the flying crow in that picture?

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Doh! A deer, a female… wait… is that a bone in her mouth???

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Uh… well… I was going to start telling you about my adventure, and where I went… and why… but the crack squirrels in my head told me to just do the whole thing in order from start to finish, and the fist picture to pop up is of a carnivorous deer…

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Awwww… at least she has a baby with her… that sort of… seriously, why are you chewing on a bone? I hope there are just trace elements in there that she needs for her diet.

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Is there anything cuter than a baby deer? You can still see the little spots under the new growth of fur.
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So, anyway, we went to my mom’s house in the hills just North of Berkeley to…

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There are two of them!!! What was I saying… oh, yeah… Mollie, our 17-year-old, got accepted to a youth leadership pre-med camp! She lived in the dorms at UC Berkeley for 9 days, and got to dissect cow eyeballs and drill holes in skulls and practice sutures on chicken breasts… (Ironically, the ‘healers’ in my new novel practice sutures by sewing up dead fish… I didn’t know it was a real thing)… And Mollie was fascinated by a video and lecture given by a world-class neural surgeon, where the video showed him operating on a brain aneurism. That’s my kid! Some of the other kids passed out…

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Look at the baby deer… hi, baby deer!

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Oh… please tell me you aren’t going to let the baby chew on that bone…

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I… gulp… don’t feel well all of a sudden… I mean, I’m sure this wouldn’t bother Mollie… but…

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Okay… that’s better… this is too much to deal with, as the first thing I saw after unpacking at my mom’s house, where I waited for Mollie. And look, I have hundreds of photos. I will try to delete a few bad ones, and not put too many words on each post… but you might as well deal with the fact that this will take a while. The good news is that there are some awesome pictures, and I do tell a good story… so…

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Baby deer!

 

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Arrrgh, mateys! Are you ready to set sail on my newest adventure?

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Ahoy, lubbers! I’m back… and I have tales to tell and pictures to share… (for some reason, the crack squirrels decided that it would be funny to do this adventure in the order that it actually happened… I mean, we might move a few pictures around a little, just to group stuff together)… belay that! It doesn’t matter. Now, if you are finished with your chores… if the decks have been swabbed, the main’s’l raised, and all the barnacles have been scrapped off the hull, then let’s get to it!

We have to go back to the 4th of July, because that is where our tale truly began… (because we left really early the next morning)…

My adventure… (like all the best adventures do)… both began and ended with adorable children…

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Avast, me hearties… there she is, my little babysitting buddy, Olivia, with her daddy.

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And there is our godson, Willie, with his daddy… buck up, little shipmate! A true pirate flinches from neither shot nor shell… nor camera!

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Brave lad!

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And yes, Olivia, we should all bolt down some hardtack and grog, to fortify us for things to come.

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Now shiver me timbers and let’s prepare to set sail!

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And seriously, you should try making some corn in the husk on your barbeque… just soak the ears in water for ten minutes and then burn the outsides… they steam inside the husks… you can’t go wrong… just a tip from your captain.

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It’ll build your swabbing muscles.

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Oh, and this adventure will be chock full of animals… you know how the captain loves his animals…

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Alright… who did this… I keep telling you… that isn’t why it’s called the poop deck… Freshwater pirates! I’ll have the lot of you keelhauled and strung from the yardarm! Now you will have to swab the decks again… sigh…

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While I was playing with my new baby cousin…

…my wife and Mollie, back in San Diego, took my little buddy, Olivia, to the zoo. I guess I missed my next scheduled babysitting day. I am a little bummed, but then again, I have two kids to play with… So…

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I am surrounded by too much cuteness right now…

Just wait for the pictures… I will be home this weekend.

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Well, I thought I was going to be home tomorrow… But something came up…

It is a family emergency of sorts… But don’t worry, it involves a new four-week-old baby cousin… And I will have even more awesome pictures, after I finish this new part of my little adventure… It is the good kind of family emergency.

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Why do fools fall in love…

… and more importantly, why do they breed so fast???

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