How Clean Was My Cupboard?

I was in the midst of reorganizing my kitchen cabinets when Dodger went missing. Where could he be?

Turns out, he'd claimed this one as his own. He's swinging his head back and forth in full on defensive mode.

I meant to take a photo of this cabinet post-reorg, but haven't gotten around to it. It's so much less cluttered now.

Oh, and the parrot infestation has been taken care of.

Finally!

It's been hot hot hot for far too long.

This morning we finally had some cool weather and clouds. Even a little smattering of rain.

I love the way the clouds play hide and seek around the mountains across the valley.

Palm Wednesday

Just because I thought you needed to see this.

Those are palm trees reclining on a trailer. You can understand why I didn't frame the picture a little better.

Figgy Wonders!

When's the last time you found a surprise in your lunch?

For me it was today!

Braveheart packed up some of the lovely curried chicken and rice that she made for our writing group last night and put the containers in a nice little bag for me. When I unloaded it this morning, I found an extra container with these excruciatingly yummy little figgy pastries she made.

Heavenly with coffee.

Thanks, Braveheart

Water from the Sky! - Monday 9/29/2008

I was sitting in Starbucks on Pass Avenue when the news first reached me. Water was falling from the sky!

Lest you think I'm kidding you, here's how it went.

Barrista: "How'd you get that water on your shirt."

Customer: "It's raining!"

In September. In L.A. county.

By the time I got to a television in anticipation of Drizzle Watch '08, it was all over.

But oh, what a time it was while it lasted. (And little did we know that the sky was about to fall on Wall Street.)

Stencil Art in L.A.

Found in a Starbuck's parking lot on La Brea.

A Few Words About Ironing - Sunday 9/28/2009

I am not much of an ironer. If it has to be ironed, it probably doesn't belong in my closet. I have to like something an awful lot--like this lightweight cotton blouse--to put myself through the pain and humiliation of ironing.

Really. I'm one of those people who irons one side of the shirt sleeve only to press creases into the other side. I get done and it hardly looks any better than when I started.

Sometimes people say they think I have great patience and concentration to be able to write, but honestly they would not admire me in the least if they saw me ironing.



I guess I knew when I bought it that the light cotton shirt might bring me grief. But I think that the capri pants in the foreground here really sent the wrong message. I mean, honestly, with a pattern like that and little ties at the waist and cuff, they absolutely coo that they'll be fun.

If they'd given me the slightest hint that they would require that I iron all four cute little pocket flaps every time I wash them, they'd still be hanging on the rack at Kohl's.

You know what really busts my chops? Napkins that need to be ironed!

I guess most people don't use them every day, so they don't need to be ironed that often. But I switched to cloth napkins a long time ago. I reuse them for a few days, reducing paper waste.

The ones that are the most absorbant tend to need ironing to keep the seams straight. Usually I don't bother, but since the ironing board was out of its hiding place, I thought I'd give them the Ritz treatment.

Do you iron? Does it make you happy?

Oh...I ironed because my friend A&E invited me to see House of Blue Leaves with him at the Mark Taper Forum. It was a fun evening. We started with French dips at Philippe's.

Cool Thing: Philippe's is the birthplace of the French Dip Sandwich, and they're turning 100 in October. To celebrate they're turning prices back to 1908. This means 5 cent coffee and 10 cent sandwiches after 4pm. Wow! Click here for info, videos, etc.

Littlerock, CA - Saturday 9/27/2008

No, this abandoned house isn't exactly typical of the homes in Littlerock, California. But dang, the town is gasping. It's only a couple hundred people smaller than Lone Pine at 1450, but it doesn't have the tourist draw of Mount Whitney or trout fishing.

Although it lies along the currently expanding Highway 138, it's reminiscent of Route 66 after it's heyday. Permanent fruit stands and the old-style roadside gift shop Charlie Brown Farms (which serves barbecue and sandwiches and dozens of types of shakes) line the main drag.

We went out this way to check out yard sales. There's a festival at Saint Andrew's Abbey every fall, and the locals know that thousands of Los Angelinos head this way to buy up the monks' ceramic angels.

We didn't find anything we wanted, which was okay. But it was also a little sad. Not everyone's up against it, but a lot of people in Littlerock seem to be hurting financially. At least they can grow chickens in their yards. (Wish I could!)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes - Wednesday 9/24/2008

Or, Here Are Some Pretty Flowers for You.

See? Even I am getting bored with this posting a photo every day thing.

Or, not really so much bored as frustrated that I sometimes get behind in posting due to lack of time to post or to delays in Blogger uploading photos. And then the pix are old and the news is old.

And, truthfully, you are missing out on the pithiest of pith because often when I actually have something to say, the looming aspect of the posts I have not gotten to stifles me. So I go back and fill in, and by that time I have forgotten my Most Amazing Thoughts.


Like this one: That Henry Paulson looks way too much like one of the super-creepy gentlemen from the "Hush" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for comfort.








See? Wouldn't you rather have amazingly pertinent and important comments like that when the mood hits me than a photo a day? Especially when it gets to the point that I am taking photos of each and every flowering thing in my yard.

I've taken a photo a days and blogged about it since September 21, 2005. Three years!

So spooky as it feels, I'm going to change that now and just cool it a bit. Probably will still post very frequently.

Make It Stop! - Tuesday 9/23/2008

"Oh my gosh. It's 9:50 in the morning and we are still in Lone Pine!" is the post I started to write this morning.

We went into town to gas up the Tahoe before heading out across the desert, get a last cup of coffee at the coffee house and give in to the the simple lure of McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with egg. Thus one last photo of a nice sign in Lone Pine.

Back to the campground, finished packing up. Hooked up the trailer (which in itself takes about 15-20 minutes.) I took one last walk around the rig to make sure the windows were closed, steps were folded up, brake lights are working...and discovered that the Tahoe's back right tire was visibly flat.

We unhooked the trailer and tried to change the tire ourselves. The jack comes in about 12 pieces stored in a compartment of the truck. You have to unlock the spare tire with a key. Then the diagram didn't look anything like the way our tire was suspended between the back wheels.

So we called AA and settled in for a wait.

The guy came (from the same place with the Angry Mechanic) right away and fixed us up.

We just have to be really really glad that neither of these things happened when we were in the middle of the Mojave, which would have just complicated everything. A lot.

Dodger said "Home" for the first time this evening when we were done unpacking and I was working for my job. (From 4-10 p.m. Sigh.)

So we have two weeks to get the catalytic converters replaced... Is what I'm pretty sure I was going to say!

This One's for El Gallo! - Monday 9/22/2008

So, yeah, maybe it's a good thing that we're still here on Monday, a day after we expected to be back home. Because it gave me time to remember one of my goals for this visit. To bring Faygo Redpop to the Owens Valley.

If it's rare in California, then it probably isn't sold up here. This may very well be the first Faygo in the Owens Valley!! (Or anyway, the first documented.)

So. Witness history in the making, friends.

This is also quite possibly the first Faygo Redpop consumed in the Owens Valley, too.

Today I used the campground's wonderful WiFi to work at my job. Whee. I had reports on episodes of all four of my shows due on Wednesday, so it really needed to be done.

We found out that the catalytic converters had melted down inside due to clogging that was going to become critical at some point, but which was put over the edge by our descent from Whitney Portal using 2nd gear to help slow the truck and save the brakes.

Rather than wait 4 days to 2 weeks for a replacement part, we opted to have them bore out the catalytic converters for a $412.00 temporary fix. Hydra had called our dealership and I'd done some research online, so we knew that this wasn't a crazy temporary solution.

Sigh.

By the time we got the car back in the late afternoon, we thought it best to set off for home first thing in the morning.

Hanging Out at Boulder Creek - Sunday 9/21/2008

We spent last night sitting outside the trailer singing to Hydra's guitar playing. The neighbors were really friendly and even came over to tell us how much they enjoyed it.

I went out again in the morning with Dodger. He likes watching what's going on. He was out here in the dark last night, too.



How do you get nice trees like these next to our campsite in the desert? By irrigating twice a day, in summer.


I chatted with the camp's owner in the morning when we indulged in the free muffins and coffee, and told her we were a bit stranded. She offered us the use of a loaner car that they keep here, at Lone Pine's little airport.

"Just go in and let Red know you need the car," she told us, and got one of her employees to take us the couple of miles over there. She didn't have much nice to say about the Angry Mechanic, either.

In Which Sundry & Hydra are Ferried About Town - Saturday 9/20/2008 (Part Three)

Also in which Sundry and Hydra never make it to Hydra's birthday lunch in Indepedence, opting to have their Tahoe slowly lose power and die in a red zone at the edge of Lone Pine, CA. Pop. 1665, elevation 3733.

We met a nice man who stopped to see if he could help. And a nice sheriff who looked about 26 years old checked to make sure we were okay while we waited for the AAA tow back to the garage we'd already talked to.

They'd have to do a bunch of work, and they were about to close until Monday. I don't want to go into the gory details of the difficult conversations with the angry mechanic, who is the only mechanic in town, who everyone says overcharges.

Also in which we find out how a photographer entertains herself while waiting for a tow.

This is outside one of the public buildings in Lone Pine, across from the film museum. You're instructed to look through the pipe to see Mount Whitney on a clear day.

See it?



View of Mount Whitney on a cloudy day.

We heard several people look through this and laugh as we sat there...waiting.


Dee dee dum. Oh, look at the cool thing that has fallen from the tree overhead!





Our ride arrives.

We are simultaneously thrilled and frightened to find that we have to ride inside the Tahoe while it's being transported on the back of the truck!

We've never been down this road before! (Neither has the Joy Luck Duck, seen here hanging on for dear life.


Hydra waves like the queen as we are carried past the homes of those who have to actually drive their vehicles from one place to the other.


Our destination for the time being. Sigh.

We got a ride back to the campground, about five miles away, with a woman associated with the shop somehow. Maybe angry guy's wife.

She said her great grandpa Bill built the shack on top of Mount Whitney.

Whitney Portal Hike - Saturday 9/20/2008 (Part 2)

We ventured up to Whitney Portal, the place where fearless mortals begin their climb to the top of the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., Mount Whitney. So cool that WPA workers built this trail for us in the 1930s. What a great thing the WPA was.


Hydra enters the breach. The big rocks make me feel like a little kid!


Hydra overcomes his usual shyness and busts loose with some melodrama.


Falls at Whitney Portal.



Here we go, about to drop about 5000 feet in 13 miles. This is the road that is going to put the Tahoe in the hospital.


A view of the Alabama Hills from Whitney Portal Road.

Return to Manzanar - Saturday 9/20/2008 (Part 1)

We visit the Manzanar National Historic Site every time we're in the Owens Valley, which is once or twice a year for the past eight years or more. They've been slowing adding information and restorations, including a really wonderful interpretive center.

If you're traveling through you really must stop and explore.

This is the entrance to the graveyard. People have hung origami figures all around it.


The central monument in the graveyard.


People put mementos on the monument. This apple came from one of the trees in the orchard here. Manzanar means orchard in Spanish. There was a very small town here by that name around the turn of the 19th Century.


One of the baby graves.


The ranger at the interpretive center told us that they'd made progress in excavating Peace Park, one of several gardens built by the Japanese-American internees during their time at Manzanar. We'd seen the standing stones before, but the painted writing had worn away.

This is amazing! This was taken from the newly excavated basin of one of the intricately constructed ponds. Dirt used to come almost all the way up to the rocks and covered many of them. The site's much bigger than we realized from what used to protrude.

The ranger told us they'd removed as much as four feet of sand!


Elk tracks near Peace Park. They have the run of the place and it seemd like they might actually have been frolicking here earlier in the day!

Cultural Lone Pine - Friday 9/19/2008

Hydra went out to the Alabama Hills--where lots and lots of movies were filmed, including Iron Man--to scan the dirt with his metal detector while I hung out at the coffee house in town and started reading Braveheart's fab new novel.

After a few hours, I wandered over to the Southern Inyo Museum and struck up a conversation with the volunteer there.



Most of the stuff in the museum started out in the now defunct Darwin Museum. But Darwin's pretty isolated and dwindling.

Lots of locals have donated personal histories and collections, like the one that includes some pretty cool skeletons and bugs. From talking to the volunteer, it seems like lots of people stop in and tell him bits and pieces of history. I hope he writes them down.


These are books that contain images of livestock brands that were in use in California. I was surprised at the number of them in the book from 1926, which is on top. There are 2 or three columns on each page.

Oh, the book underneath it? California Brands in 1980!



In the evening, we went to the film museum for a screening of Mule Train (1950) starring Gene Autry. The big Lone Pine film festival is held the second week of October every year, so they are gearing up and there are some interesting new exhibits. We didn't get there early enough to see much, so we missed the Iron Man exhibit


I'd like to see this movie here sometime. I've seen it several times, of course. Gene Autry is really no Gary Cooper!

Upward and Onward! - 9/18/2008

My tribute to John Ford.

The view from our camper around six a.m. Wow, are we glad we took off last night. There's no water or electricity at the campsites, but the refrigerator actually can run on gas so our yogurt was fine.


Gorgeous morning and we're here for it! See the moon over the rock?

Don't worry, no encounters of the third kind were in the offing.



We decided to take a different approach to this cliff than we did last year at this time. There's a photo on this post that shows Hyrda at the top of this cliff.



Yeah, okay, I'll admit it. There was a point shortly after Hydra scaled this rock and jumped over a two-foot gap between boulders when I froze up for a little bit. I had gotten us into this, but I couldn't quite hoist myself up to the next level (which would still require me to leap a veritable gorge of some 24 inches.)

My legs are not as long as Hydra's. I couldn't quite get a knee under myself to move up his route. And there was a nasty space between the rocks on my optional path that really looked like a great place to break an ankle.

Mind you, I had a hiking stick in one hand and a water bottle and a camera hanging from a strap slung over my shoulder as I was attempting this. Hydra came my way and took the stick and the strap and sort of talked me through it. "You can do it!"

Yes. I can.

We really pushed our boundaries on this hike, both of us. Big rock climbing, thinking our way through the tumble of boulders, pushing past fear.

Heh... Hydra was a little shocked when he saw the photo above... "That's not me!?"



We took a nice calm dry creek bed back toward the campsite. I think we deserved it!



This was the view from our campsite at Boulder Creek. We had a nice day of walking around nearby Lone Pine, CA, reading and relaxing. Bought some groceries at Joseph's Market (established 1895!)

Red Rock at Night, Camper's Delight - Wednesday 9/17/2008

After work on Wednesday, we tossed what we needed for the night and the next morning, and the birds, and clothes in to the Tahoe and hooked up the trailer and took off.

It's only about an hour and fifteen minutes to Red Rock Canyon, and that gets us 1/3 of the way to our destination for the weekend : Lone Pine, CA in the Owens Valley.

We arrived at the campground just before dark. There's no water or electric, so we didn't even unhook the camper. We had propane, so I heated up some hot dogs.

If you'd told me when I was in high school that I'd be living in California and I'd have a parrot for a pet, I might have asked for my fortune-telling money back.

But if you'd told me that I would lie on my back one evening and watch a million stars ease into view while my darling played guitar to the rocks, I would probably have bought that.