Am I the only one...

Who actually prefers seeds in his watermelon?

via Houstonist

Watermelon grows here locally and plentifully. It's available most of the year and I eat more than my share of it. Increasingly though, all I've been finding are the boring seedless ones.

I'll go out on a limb here and admit that I eat watermelon seeds. They add a shot of texture to watermelon that makes it watermelon in my mind. Beyond that, watermelon seeds actually taste good.

So is this a me and me alone thing?

My shower? Why yes, it's a Speakman

Until a month ago, my shower life looked like this.

via

But in early May, the Speakman Company sent me this chrome beauty,

And now my shower life looks something more like this.

via

That's a bit of an exaggeration but not really.

My new shower head is Speakman's Neo, model S-3010, and I've enjoyed my test drive with it for the last couple of weeks so much that I'm going to keep it.

Speakman's Neo features five adjustable stream nozzles and 12 massage jets in a standard size, 2gpm shower head. At two gallons per minute, it's considered to be a low-flow fixture. Low-flow fixture used to be a kiss of death but Speakman's technology harnesses those two gallons for all they're worth. If I didn't know it were a low-flow head I'd never believe it.

My Neo has another Speakman innovation that I'm quite impressed with. Normally, a shower head has a series of flow settings that you click through one by one. All Speakman shower heads feature something called Anystream. Anystream is a 360 degree adjuster that allows the spray settings to flow into each other infinitely. This allows for a perfectly adjusted shower and because there are no locking parts, virtually assures a long life.

Add to all of that this shower resists sediment build up and clogs all by itself and I'm sold.

You can find Speakman shower products, faucets, valves, safety products and HVAC solutions at better dealers just about everywhere and you can also buy a Speakman Neo just like mine on their website.

It's live! My Destinations Magazine debut

The new issue of Destinations Magazine came out yesterday and my article and photography are featured in it. Ever wonder about Zaragoza, Spain? Read my article and learn all about it.

You can read the whole piece by following this link. Thanks Destinations!

It's official

As of today I am now closer to 50 than 40. That's such a disconnect I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

How did this kid in 1969

turn into this guy in 2011 and where the hell did the last 46 years go?

I keep reminding myself that I enjoy getting older but it's a hard sell today.

At least 50's an event.




But this late 40s stuff is a strange holding pattern. I'm glad to be here, it's just odd.

What's my favorite color: a Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What's your favorite color?"

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I may have put away my designer shingle these days, but some things never really go away. One of those things in my case is how deeply affected by color I am. The topic today asks me to pick a favorite color and I can't just pick one. I can't imagine ever having to pick just one favorite color.

When I look over my long list of favorite colors, every one of them is based on an experience I've had or a place I've been. As I go through my day to day life I'm struck by the memories certain colors trigger. I cannot imagine myself ever saying something like, "my favorite color is blue." Rather, I'm a lot more apt to say something along the lines of "That color blue reminds me of the color of the water on the northern end of Cat Island on an August afternoon." It's sounds kind of strange, but that's just how I operate. I have a hard time taking colors out of context.

Said beach on Cat Island

So here's a collection of some of my favorite colors and the places where I saw them.

Some of the most beautiful scenery in the entire US is in the hills of Northern California. Every September, those hills turn the most amazing color of gold I've ever seen.

I love combinations of purple, red and green. This is a bromeliad on my patio with a visitor on Christmas Eve two years ago.

Despite the bad mouthing they get, I love the color yellow dandelions are, especially in the spring when the rest of the earth is still half-asleep. They don't grow in Florida, so I took this photo in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.

The ochre colors of the Spanish countryside look like something from another planet. I'm not at all accustomed to seeing cliffs and hillsides that appear to be painted, but even if I were, Spain would still stand out.

I love the emerald-turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I am not a native to these parts, but the Gulf of Mexico exerts a pull on me I have a hard time articulating. When seen from above I fall in love with it all over again.

These are the winter blossoms of a tree called a Tabebuia, and they're scattered like lilac confetti on a street in my neighborhood. I'm not usually a purple person but spent Tabebuia flowers on a brick street in January are almost enough to convert me.

When the sun sets every evening, the Sorrentine peninsula looks like it's on fire. If only those colors could be put in a can.

I love the colors of patina-d metals. My great-great-great-grandfather's monument is made from cast zinc and it's the most striking gray-blue I can think of.

As I mentioned before, I am not a native to the part of the world where I live now. Though I may hang my hat in a tropical climate, in my heart of hearts I remain a Yankee's Yankee. The only time I really miss the Northeast is toward the end of October when the maple trees start to turn. This was my back to school back drop every year as a kid and no matter how far away I go, I'm always drawn back when I know the leaves up there are turning.

So what are my favorite colors? Well, this morning they are Bahamas Afternoon Blue, September Rolling Hills Gold, Christmas Eve Bromeliad, Brooklyn Dandelion, Spanish Hillside Ochre, Gulf of Mexico March Turquoise, Tabebuia on a Brick Street Lilac, Cliffs on Fire Orange-Red, Ancestral Grave Marker Blue-Gray and Pennsylvania Autumn Riot.

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's postss. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.