Hooray, we’re having the first thunderstorm since I arrived! I miss those. Nothing like a big roll of thunder coming at you from across a field.
Today’s weather has been really strange, and this thunderstorm is in that category…no rain at the moment, and a grey sky, but bright sunlight at the same time:
Still, I’ll take what I can get!
Nice photo!
Lovely photo. Makes you want to be there.
Makes me glad I wimped out on the cycling today! 
I wish I’d had more time there to see the famous “East End”
Those houses along the A40 are a ghost of what will happen to other parts of Ealing if “Mad Red” Ken Livignstone has his way with the proposed tram route.
Never let it be supposed that town planners learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.
That’s (part of) the view out my bedroom window. I particularly enjoy the row of chimney-pots.
There’s a black and white cat that wanders around this area, and occassionally he’ll pick his way across the top of the high stone wall covered in vines. Whenever I spot him I have to watch until he makes it to the other end. I’m convinced he’s going to fall, but he’s obviously been doing it for some time. I’m also convinced he is flexible in directions other cats aren’t, with some of the manoeuvres he does.
This has got to be the most awsomist factory in the world.
I never knew this was real building.
Where are the pigs?
Battersea Power Station, as was. Can you believe there was once a plan to knock it down?
in case someone didn’t understand..
incredibly good album..
edited to add a link that does work
Thanks. Now I’m going to have Learning to Fly playing in my head all day! 
In case Amar’s link doesn’t work
It’s from the album cover to Pink Floyd’s “Animals”
That pic reminds me of Dartmoor Prison, near Tintagel (if memory serves me correctly) as a monument to 19th century something. A different looking building but one that conveys its purpose very well. And being situated so near the legendary castle is just damn odd.
Having lived the first third of my life in Texas and on the Gulf Coast, I know how you feel. In my 23 years on the California Central Coast, I think the only time I was actually in a thunderstorm was when I was driving in the hills near San Juan Bautista. Beyond that, I saw hints of one or two a year on the horizon.
I’ve only been back in Texas for a bit over three months, and we’ve already had several nice ones, though, so far, nothing that measured up to the best of the Houston area, where we once had glasses knocked off of shelves (and this in a brick house).
I think a lot of what I missed was the ozone rush. My father and I used to stand under the eaves of the house and watch the show.
Oh, neat! Thanks for sharing those! The power plant/factory is wonderful. We would have converted it into a craft mall long ago . . . spinners, weavers, painters, an orange shop . . . we turn everything that isn’t nailed down into something that will facilitate tourism.
I just love architecture. So, your buildings date from, what, 1600? Maybe a little later?
I have no way to judge . . . the oldest you get here is circa 1920. We consider them historic–they could date from the iron age for all we know.
This is one of my favorites, “Little St. Mary’s.” (And, yes, the sky really can be that blue.) Built in 1927, it is on the waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg. It is octagonal capped with a red tile roof and a copper cupola and finial. The octagonal shape stems from the Greek cross shape used in early Roman churches . . . constructed of several colors of brick . . . lines of deeply recessed, rounded arched windows. The exterior is adorned with stone carved title panels and stone carved columns and columnettes.
Really quite nice. Nice size, lovely landscaping. Palms, oaks, azaleas, and green grass all year round (the city owns it, so they get to water whenever they want, I suppose).
It is a near-match for St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, built by the same architect two years earlier in 1925. A miniature, so to speak. A tiny version of the big, lovely old church. Certainly not any sort of coincidence, you think when you see it up close. No, not a coincidence at all. No accidental resemblance, there. Itis clearly, intentionally a miniature of that church.
A church outpost, perhaps? A chapel? Or, at least, a welcome station? “Glad you’re visiting, stop in for some tourist brochures!” That’s what I believed as a child.
Nope, not a chapel. Not a welcome station.
It’s a public loo. A public toilet that is a clear miniature of a Catholic church. 
Wasn’t part of Full Metal Jacket filmed there?
Back in 1995, My wife Laurie and I took a trip to the Black Hills in S. Dakota, when we ran into this hovering over the town of Chamberlin S. Dakota.
We drove under it, and parked at the rest stop on the top of the hill to watch it move along.
We later heard, while watching the news in a motel room that evening, that this storm went on to produce no less than 13 tornados, unfortunately resulting in the death of one person.