Something different this week: post-worthy pictures that’ve been taking up hard drive space unseen, some of them for several years.

To wit, this picture of my brother’s daughter Hannah, at my Mom’s place on Christmas Day 1998:

I had just bought my first digital camera a few months before so this counts as one of the first digital pictures I ever took. Kids this cute can overcome extraordinary expressions of photographic ineptitude.

The rest of this week’s pictures are quite a bit newer: late 2003 to late 2005. I think a large number of the pictures I took with my old camera got either erased or misplaced, an error for which ensuing generations of humans will be genuinely thankful.

Here’s a picture of one of our late great cats, Eldridge, who thoughtfully posed with a pumpkin for Halloween in October of 2003.

I’ve got about a dozen other shots of him not posing. He does have the expression which says we oughta be damn grateful for his cooperation.

Next up, a tail light from an early ’50s Cadillac, seen at an antique-car show in Pleasanton in March 2004.

Caddy tail fins got to be so much more expressive as the decade wore on.

Here’s a shot from one of my first walks on dirt, at Ed Levin County Park in the summer of 2004:

I wouldn’t have much of a portfolio if it weren’t for California’s golden hills and blue skies.

If you ever walk through downtown San Jose, this is a sight you’ll see every 20 minutes or so:

These jets fly incredibly close to the buildings downtown. I’m guessing the people flying in on the jets wave to their co-workers in their cubicles. This one’s from September of 2004.

Falling water at Uvas Canyon County Park in January 2005.

Uvas Canyon is the best place in Santa Clara County to see waterfalls.

Something I’m also thankful for: expressive, though expired, trees.

This one’s at Del Valle Regional Park in Livermore, early spring 2005.

Here’s a shot along the trail at Pinnacles National Monument later in the spring of 2005:

The Pinnacles are an impressive rock formation, but there’s quite a bit of non-rock things to see. The wildflowers go crazy every spring.

Next up: The beach at Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur, south of Carmel, where I camped out in the summer of 2005.

The ocean’s blue is sublime down this way.

Speaking of sublime, it’s an apt adjective for the view of San Francisco Bay from Angel Island State Park, seen here in the summer of 2005.

While we’re on the subject of San Francisco, here’s a shot of the downtown as seen through a chain-link fence on a crystal-clear late-autumn day in the fall of 2005.

I couldn’t help thinking this must be what the Financial District always looks like to the homeless who sleep on the city’s sidewalks.

Plucking these pix from the archives was no small task — I had to give myself credit for having already posted most of the good ones.