You know you live in Berkeley when a pro-immigration rally has nearly as many huge Palestinian flags as Mexican ones.

Aaron Seymour and his girlfriend Nami visited on Saturday from Nagoya. Last time he and I met, I was living in Japan, and he was living in the Bay Area. It was great to see Aaron, and good to meet Nami for the first time as well. I live two blocks from Telegraph, but Aaron and Nami took me into clothing stores I had never entered, and in some cases never even noticed. Last time we saw each other, he made sure to take me around a department store in Osaka Station. Both times, I managed to avoid buying anything. :) No pictures yet, but I'm sure Aaron will send some to me when he reads this.

I'm going to French Polynesia, for real this time, in late May. That's less than three weeks away!

Finally, photos from the California beetles and spiders field trip I took the weekend before last to Hastings.

Shooting stars (Primulaceae: Dodecatheon). There were whole fields of these.

There were some fantastically huge rotten oak logs filled with huge black darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae: Eleodes), spiders, and western fence lizards.

Cleaning out pitfall traps, filled with antifreeze, to collect beetles. We mostly got snail-eating ground beetles (Carabidae: Scaphinotus) and black tiger beetles (Carabidae: Omus). After this trip, I decided it was time to get my hair cut.