Stand Off - Sunday 7/27/2008

Technically, this is Dodger's playset.

But sometimes Nick likes to pretend he's the big cheese.

Salivating Army - Saturday 7/26/2008

It took a considerable force of will--or no, maybe that was just a sense of impending guilt--for me to get up Saturday morning and get these bags loaded up with clothing and linens and put them on the curb.

I wasn't thinking when I received a call on Thursday saying the Salvation Army would be picking up in our neighborhood and would I like to contribute. They were driving all the way from Bakersfield, so I said yes. They were looking mostly for clothes.

Of course, they said they'd arrive between 8am and 4pm and they showed around 2:45 pm.

In the meantime, we put together a bunch of other stuff to give to our favorite local charity, Valley Oasis Thrift Shop in Palmdale. They provide safe haven for battered women and children.

Friday in L.A. - Friday 7/25/2008

I looove the Internet. I do, I do!

Needed to meet Braveheart in Hollywood. I got off work at 3:30 and didn't need to meet her till 7-ish. So I Googled the area where she was doing some counseling (she's going to be an amazing therapist, without a doubt) and searched for coffee in the area, and found Caffe, etc.

Quiet and unassuming coffee house with a big rack of magazines and newspapers to peruse. I read from Details and Esquire, a couple of mags I don't usually spend time with. Wrote about all the people I saw heading home or meeting people after work. Sipped an iced coffee. Aaah.


I parked my car a few blocks away and left it there when Braveheart picked me up and whisked me off to...


...the Hollywood Bowl!

You have to relax at The Bowl. People meet to picnic ahead of time at the tables or, like us, bring sandwiches and wine to their seats. You get to sit and watch the sun go down and feel the air cool, and check out people scaling the concrete steps.



And then, if you're lucky, you get to see Diana Ross! Great concert, really. She had us all singing along (as if you could have stopped some of us) and at a couple of points, she shielded her eyes and said, "I can't see you!"

So they upped the house lights and we all waved, and stood, and swayed. She did lots of Supremes hits, and a little something from Majogany and from The Wiz and from Lady Sings the Blues.

Fun night.

I Seeeee Into Your Future - Thursday 7/24/2008

And if you live in Los Angeles, it includes using your own reusable shopping bags by summer 2010!

Yes!

This week the Los Angeles City Council passed a ban on plastic bags (if the state doesn't make good on its threat to require a 25 cent charge for each plastic bag.) This is really great news.

Those flimsy plastic bags are a nightmare. They're manufactured using petroleum products, they don't decompose, they get caught in fences and on bushes. They pile up in my pantry because I feel guilty about just throwing them away.

Today I sent emails to each of the 15 L.A. City Council members thanking them for passing the ban. It's wonderful that they are taking the lead in changing the way we do things, and it'l hopefully support the state in passing its own legislation.

All those tote bags you've gotten as gifts or as rewards for joining book clubs? Dig 'em out and use 'em!

Here's the L.A. City Council's homepage, in case you want to write and thank them too. I just wrote up a little form letter and cut and pasted it, changing the name of the councilmember.

The automatic replies I received from each were really interesting too. A different tone and a different amount of information in each.

I just went and read a few of the bills regarding plastic bags and recycling of various plastic products that are in the California Senate and Assembly right now. What's disturbing about the one that I think the Los Angeles ban would defer to(AB 2058) is that it bans only non-reusable bags. It actually says that heavier plastic bags are okay to provide because they're meant to be reused. Aren't those also harder to break down in landfills!?

If you want to see the various bills in play right now, click here and do a keyword search on plastic and/or recycling.

To find your California State Assembly and Senate representatives by zip code, click here.

To find your state legislature in whatever state you're in, go to the National Conference of State Legislatures, highlight your state in one box and legislature in the other, and click on Get Legislature Links.

You can contact your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives, too.

Odd Job Seeker - Wednesday 7/23/2008

Because our little town goes through growth spurts every so often, you see a lot of these group mailboxes around. It saves the post office sending someone around to each and every house in our 154-house complex.

People post notices on the mailboxes. Usually advertisements for the Homeowners' Association meetings or for Bingo night at the club house. (Yes, I'm serious.)

The middle one, hoping for the return of a darling lost cat has been there the longest. I hope they find her. Odds are not good out here in coyote country.

The top one gave me a laugh because I misread it as "Lost Bed" when I first saw it. I'm thinking how the heck do you lose a bed!?

Ah...loft bed. I see!



This one showed up yesterday. It made me smile for so many reasons.

Sneaking Out - Tuesday 7/22/2008

Stone steps outside Braveheart's house.



There is so much unexpected beauty in the world.

Sometimes it just stops me in my tracks.


The stone dove checks me out.

Made Me Look - Monday 7/21/2007

Okay, they got me.

I snapped this while waiting in traffic on southbound Highland in Hollywood. It seems just tasteless enough to be real.

In fact, it's a viral marketing campaign for a new HBO vampire-centric television series called TruBlood. It's not quite as good as the amazing video that every one was forwarding when Dexter was gearing up, but it's pretty good.

Viral marketing? The goal is to create something so interesting that we will do the ad company's evil bidding and spread the word for them.

Yes, that makes me a dupe.

If you're curious, click here to see for yourself.

Yet Another Hike! - Sunday 7/20/2008

Our goal, should we choose to accept it, is to scale Sundry's Mountain. We started off earlier today and it was curiously overcast and cool throughout our entire hour and forty-five minute hike.

If you click on the photo and make it bigger, you may be able to see the moon above the mountain and a little to the right of center.


We can only assume that Hydra is doing his Rocky routine at the top of Sundry's Mountain.

Hey, somebody has to lag behind and document events like this. Not everybody who flew up there got to walk on the moon, you know.

But I did eventually make it to the top of my own mountain.



The diffused light was really wonderful. Made these dried out flower bases just glow.


HydraSquatch offers up the pod of friendship.

I took a cactus pine out of his paw once, and he's been bringing me stuff like this ever since.

(That's a yucca flower pod...pretty neat!)


This shows most of our little development. See all that stuff on the other side of Hydra's Mountain? 99.5% of it wasn't there when we arrived.


The yucca rises from the ashes. This area burned in March 2007.

Long time readers will recall that this was our personal brush with that powerful and famous California icon, the wildfire.


Looking back at Sundry's Mountain from atop Hydra's Mountain.

I know, I know. Another weekend hike...yada yada!

Just to spice it up, here's a not very good video of some finches eating the seeds out of the Indian Blanket flowers in our front yard. This was shot with my Canon point and shoot digital camera, not even a real videocam.

I Don't Know Scat - Saturday 7/19/2008

There have been mountain lion sightings in Acton this summer. One even took a goat from a place about a mile and a half away, as the crow flies.

We thought maybe this was mountain lion scat, but it's not. When we got home and looked it up online, we found out that real cougar scat looks like this.

Oh! We saw that all over the ridges around our neighborhood. Seriously!

Still not sure what this is. It's disturbingly large and full of juniper berries. Like bear scat, kind of. Hmm. There are bears way over on the other side of the valley, but I can't imagine one wandering all the way over here. It's very exposed.




I don't know exactly what this is, either. Maybe it had something to do with surveying the area? It looks like they mounded dirt up an poured the concrete into the bowl to make this base.


We've decided that the best place to eat is usually at our house. We went to a restaurant that was well-reviewed online yesterday and it wasn't as good as these chicken sausages and onions I cooked up for lunch.


Let's see... What goes with that?

What do I have in the fridge? Persian cucumbers. There's a ripe tomato on the patio, and basil growing on the front porch and, hmm, the plumbs I picked from the branch of the neighbor's tree that hangs into our yard.

My instincts are getting better. This was amazing together, dressed with my favorite taragon white wine vinegar and the wonderful olive oil Tomasina gave me for Christmas.

Plumbs and fresh basil. So good. I'm going to try more pairings of fruit and herbs.

The Whole World In Her Hand - Friday 7/18/2008

The one on the left holds just most of my typed up writing for the past year or more.

The one on the right holds all the documents I've created at my job for the past two years.

You never really know how cold a room can feel until you try to access your USB drives only to repeatedly receive the message "Drive unformatted. Do you want to format now?"

Noooooo. No, I don't.

These little guys are really wonderful. I don't absolutely trust my hard drives. I figure it's better to save to these (infinitely losable) little darlings. I do also have an external 250 gig hard drive that I save photos and personal documents to, but it doesn't really get updated as often as it should.

As it turns out, there's something wrong with the USB ports in my desk top computer. Thank goodness I was able to move the USB drive to my laptop and send my last report of the day. (Working from home, saving gas money, tra-la!)

I would much much rather have a problem that money can solve than lose all that data.

Whew!

I'll be backing up to that external drive this weekend, you betcha.

P.S. When the heck did I get shar pei wrists?!

Is this some kind of cruel instant-karmic retaliation for making fun of The Hoffmeister yesterday?

I swear to you, it's the awkward angle, standing over a table with my hand lying flat. My wrists are not always this baggy!

Rumors of Sundry's Low Sense of Humor - Thursday 7/17/2008

have not been exaggerated.

Yeah, I admit it, this made me laugh out loud when I saw it!

Couldn't believe my good fortune when he actually pulled from the left lane to the right, right in front of me. There's a huge bundle of t.p. under the trailer, which you can't really see from this angle.

It's a good thing I'm easily amused. I may never win ten million dollars.

P.S. Happy Birthday to the stunning KittyW! Sorry you had to share the day with this image and with David Hasselhoff. It's his birthday too.


What were he and his handlers thinking when they agreed to this?

The puppies received therapy and are reportedly living fairly well adjusted lives.

In & Out - Wednesday 7/16/2008

6:27 a.m.

The way into work is clear.



3:34 p.m.

The way out of work.

Also clear.

Although this is clearly not a high-traffic area, it's pretty hard to lurk here.

P.S. Apologies to any Southern Californians who were hoping for commentary on the fabulous In-N-Out Burger.

Fruitful Morning - Tuesday 7/15/2008

I stood here framing a couple of shots of these--I think they're maybe an uncultivated kind of date?--until a squirrel up there pitched a fit.

It suddenly began racing around up there, chirping and chattering and rustling the fronds. Then it jumped to a neighboring tree, in a huff!


The fruit, after having been run over by a car.

Meanwhile, in the Yard - Monday 7/14/2008

Okay, thanks. I feel a little better now.

Back to the yard where the tomatoes kept ripening while we were gone.


And the sunflower developed a couple more heads.

In the Shadow of the Mallard - Sunday 7/13/2008

GuitarDaddy whipped us up a mighty fine breakfast!



We ate in the shadow of the mallard. I did mention that I'd had a mallard for a pet when I was in middle school.

His name was Wolfie, because when I got him from the incubator in the science lab at school he was black and gold, the school colors of Wolf Lake High School where my dad and brother went. (Before Evil Consolidation.)


A lingering look back up at our bedroom window. It was a great weekend to be at 5000+ feet, since it was about 20 degrees cooler up here.


Heidi sees us off.

Bye! Thanks!

It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend, and it was great to get to know these two terrific musicians better.



On the way back, we stopped to take photos around the ruins of the Llano del Rio commune, which opened in 1914. We walked around speculating, and I just found that link above which tells the history of the place.


Here's a photo I found online! Apparently the hotel burned down in 1920!

How much do I love the Internet? This much [holds arms as far apart as possible.]


The back of one of the big old fireplaces.

I've been wanting to stop here for a long time, but not quite enough to actually pause in our travels. Now they're in the process of widening parts of the 138 and I figured I'd better do it sooner than later.



An old cistern.



I suspect that this was the base of a water tank. You can see some other remains in the background. This place was much bigger than it looked from the road, with traces of what looked like a dozen or so dormitory style rooms in one area, and lots of less-identifiable foundations.


Looking through what was once a window. As Hydra commented, it's amazing how much of the rock wall is missing. He theorizes that what didn't burn was scavenged to build other structures elsewhere. Nicely collected rock.


And here's my theory...that this duel track of stone was once an aqueduct. It runs from up near the big lodge house to the furthest structure on the property...probably a distance of a couple of hundred feet.


Not sure if you remember, but a while back Hydra and I stopped at the Pines Cafe. It had been operating on the same site for decades and had a very good local reputation.

So glad we stopped there the two times we did! It's no longer there!

Now it's Habanero Grill.

Ideal Wild - Saturday 7/12/2008

Yeah, not that wild. I admit it.

We started the day as we love to start a day, lying abed for a while reading and eventually writing.

Dodger's happy to sit on my shoulder as I read in bed. But he's not comfortable with the way I cradle a pen in my hand. Too much competition.

Also, he needed to check out that side of the bed.


The view from "our" upstairs window. Dodger likes it too!


It's really lovely to be amongst tall trees.

After a lovely breakfast of waffles and sausage whipped up by GuitarDaddy, we visited their favorite thrift shops around town.

Ooh, we found some good stuff. Like a medicine cabinet with a wonderful beveled glass mirror that I discovered leaning against a fence behind a cork board. For five dollars! It has a nice pair of geometric lines etched in it. I'm hoping to remove the mirror and frame.



We liked this giant wooden squirrel, but no one took it home. This was being sold at a restaurant that was going out of business. GD and MM had eaten there and knew the owners. We picked up some DVDs and some other good stuff here.

Sad to see someone going out of business though.




The view from downtown Idyllwild. We had lunch there and walked around a little. There were a bunch of very tame Harley riders there.

Really had a terrific day hanging out with MandolinMama and GuitarDaddy. She made a lovely dish of pasta with rolled stuffed flank steak for dinner and we talked into the night again. Never quite got to playing music, but it we were enjoying the conversation.