"All these things I should keep to myself
But I feel somehow strangely compelled...."

- Neil Finn, Sinner

I like Green Day, and have a few of their albums, but recently Gareth has become a rabid fan. He was on their website the other day, and found out about a free concert they're doing in Nokia Plaza (across the street from the Convention/Staples Center) on Monday. It's free but you still needed a ticket to get in. By the time we found out about it, the tickets were already gone, but we were thinking maybe we could just take the Blue Line up there from Long Beach, walk over to the area an hour or so early, and just listen, since it's outdoors; actually seeing not necessary. That way we wouldn't have to worry about parking or fighting traffic.

Probably absolutely nuts, but I think this is the closest we're going to come to actually getting to a concert (with the kids anyway) anytime soon.

It's funny. It's been a little worrying to me, as Gareth's dream right now is to be an astronaut, and he's thinking right now the best route to being a pilot first is by joining the military. I've been trying to get him to think of other options. And now, his favorite Green Day song is Holiday, from American Idiot, which is pretty anti-war, anti-adminstration (for the time it came out). He was asking me what all the lyrics meant the other day. Granted, lines in a song can be somewhat cryptic, and it's hard to explain exactly what they mean, but most of that song is pretty clear. I have hopes that it gets him to think. He's only 10, but I decided what I wanted to be when I was in fifth grade, too.

Had to take an online ethics training course for work today. Some of the people's pictures they used just made me shake my head. This woman is supposed to be congratulating a co-workers retirement, but then finds out what he's planning after the big day. So glad most of the situations in the training I will never be in, as I'm hourly and not elected.

Ethics training
Los Alamitos CA
Canon EOS 1000D
04 August 2009

Out to do some fun stuff with the fry today; I had the bright idea of showing them the Point Fermin Lighthouse, but unfortunately there was some fair going on, and you couldn't get near it. So we just went up the hill a little bit to the Korean Friendship Bell, a gift to the city of Los Angeles from the people of Korea in 1976.

Korean Friendship Bell
Angel's Gate Park, San Pedro CA
Caonon EOS 1000D
02 August 2009

( +2 )<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3494/3785070133_cc32fc305b.jpg" width="500" height="333"

I'm sorry but the subtitle for the Monitor's review of New Moon, just made me laugh.

"The latest in the 'Twilight' series, 'New Moon' follows a moping Bella who continues to have poor choice in men."

As much as I used to be a big fan of vampires (is Fred Saberhagen's The Dracula Tapes still in print?), the more I hear of the Twilight series, the less I think I would like it. I know I'm totally NOT the demographic this is aimed at, and I've never been a huge fan of the romance genre anyway, but teenage romance stories have been grating on me lately. For cripes sake, how many people are with the same person they dated in high school - and I qualify that with the fact that, yes, I do know of a few personally, but as a whole it's pretty rare. My own high school love life was, if not a disaster, fairly bleak. That continued until I was in college - mostly due to my own social ineptness, I'm now seeing.

And I'm probably missing a major plot point here because I haven't read the books or seen the movie, but - whatinhell's a more than a century old vampire doing cruising the local high school for underage chicks anyway? Makes the typical Hollywood age difference pairing thing (i.e. Catherine Zeta-Jones/Sean Connery) seem positively appropriate.

WHERE ARE THE KICK ASS MIDDLE-AGED FAT HEROINES WITH GRAYING HAIR DAMMIT?!

Oh, that's right. They all became moms, or priestesses, or nuns or something. Not that those aren't worthy worthwhile things, but not the stuff that sells a lot of books or summerblockbuster movies, unless they've become the aging revenge-driven head of an evil corporation/religion/empire that has to be destroyed before the epilogue.

*Grumps *

getoffamylawnyadamnkids...

Home from work today, as Gareth's been sick all week, with runsamuck following suit shortly after. Gareth started feeling poorly on Saturday, then on Sunday he had a temperature of 103.4°F. We kept pushing the fluids and ibuprofen, and made him take a tepid shower to cool down. It started coming down later that evening, enough that after he was asleep, John and I went up to Dismalland for about an hour for my birthday. The fever was mostly gone the next day, except for about a degree higher in the evening, but he was still pretty miserable with the cough and aches that remained. We kept him home Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was a holiday, and we were going to try going back today, but he's still a bit out of it. I figured he was going to need a doctor's note to go back to school anyway, so I took him to get checked out today. After examining him, and listening to his symptoms, the doctor told he probably did have H1N1, but he was on the tail end of it - a lot of kids are getting it but don't seem affected too severely. He still has quite a bit of lung congestion and coughing, and started getting a runny nose today, so he told him to take tomorrow off, too. While that seems to be a free week off school, he's probably going to have a lot of homework to make up on the weekend.

runsamuck has it now too, . Dammit, I really wanted him to get a vaccination, but he didn't ask his doctor about it last time he went in. When I called to make Gareth's appointment, I unintentially got that medical office's H1N1 update, which said they'd ordered 2500 vaccinations, but only received 100 so far. Those were given to high risk patients and are all gone already. He can't get one now being ill. So if that's what he has, should he bother now? Apparently, they're not testing for it, they're just assuming everthing is. Anyway, John's weird - he always acts like he has a fever - constant alternating chills/burning up - but he only rarely has a temperature. And every time he's sick he starts having nightmares.

Angus is ok; Avalon has the sniffles but no fever, she might be staying home tomorrow, too. As for myself, I had a bit of a tickly throat and dry cough earlier in the week (I didn't really feel sick, but I did try to be careful to wash hands often and smother any coughs on a closed mouth), but it seems to have gone now. I dunno, can one virus affect everyone in different ways like this? If you've had one, but you don't know for sure which one it was, should you still get the other or both?

I asked Dad to check with his doctor before he catches something - has he yet? No. Gonna have to keep bugging him.

Somewhat related - Ran across this blog post today; silly person is trying to blame his athlete's foot on getting a flu vaccine. Idiot.

Made trip down to San Diego today, ostensibly for a project staff meeting and to deliver things from our office to theirs, but also to take Bob, who is retiring, out to lunch. The Karl Straus Brewery there is situated right next to a beautiful Japanese garden. This was part of the view from our table. Good food, too - I heard the beer was great as well, but I'm not a beer drinker, so I'm no judge. Supposedly, Sony was supposed to move some corporate offices here and installed the garden in the office park, then backed out of the deal.

Karl Straus Brewery
Sorrento Mesa CA
Canon EOS 1000D
30 July 2009

( +2 )

Gods (insert your pantheon here), it's November already. My Inuyasha calendar at the office has Naraku leveling a malignant smirk at me; boy, I would've thought he would have been more appropriate for October, evil demon that he is. I'm not sure I really want him looking this direction all month. So if Billy Joe Armstrong and Peter Gabriel wear guyliner and manscara (thanks a_hollow_year, I did not know those were the correct terms), what do you call eyeshadow on males? I'd say guyshadow but that's a bit repetitive. What did Spock call it? 'Cause dammit, he wore a ton of it. Yes, Lord Naraku, the purple looks good on you, meant no disrespect...

Anyways...

I've been reminded that I haven't really made a proper post in awhile. ;) So, what's the haps?

• School - the kids started 3rd, 5th, and 6th grade. Strangely enough, while Angus isn't real fond of school, he seemed to kind of be looking forward to middle school. One, it's back in a familiar neighborhood, next door to his old elementary school, and two, there are old friends there, his friend Connor from 1st thru 3rd grade for one. He's having to get used to doing homework every night, though, which his 4th-5th grade teacher didn't seem to require, and that's a little tough for him, and us. Changing for PE also required some getting used to, as well as the requirement that he needs to start wearing deodorant every day. Gareth somehow got placed in a GATE class - he hasn't taken that test, but apparently, if there are spaces, they will put kids in if they think they can do the work. He's there for everything but math, which he has with a teacher who weirdly enough was my brother's 5th grade teacher (my brothers turned 45 in August). I'm not sure, but I think she's the only one still there from our years at that school. Avalon is starting 3rd grade, despite her 2nd grade teacher's trepidation, and it turns out she got a 100% on her first math test (adding triple digit numbers) and despite low test scores in reading last year, she is reading chapter books on her own at home. Her teacher agrees with us that it's more a matter of finding the right motivation for her, which seems to be easier said than done.



• Health - at the beginning of October, I was getting ready to head to the docks at 5 am one morning, when John sat up in bed and told me his chest hurt, as if someone were trying to shove their fist through it somewhere between his sternum and his clavicle. He aslo felt extremely anxious, like if I left something horrible was going to happen, and clammy all over (not uncommon - he sweats like crazy in his sleep). I thought about Beth, who narrowly averted her brother's heart attack by calling 911 when he thought he was fine, and my grandpa - who complained of just feeling mucky and heartburny all afternoon and passed away on the couch watching TV with my grandma. I looked up symptoms and he had several on the list - in addition, he's gained quite a bit of weight recently and was recently prescribed high blood pressure medication - so I insisted we go to the emergency room. They checked him out and gave him an EKG and a few other emergency room tests - then said everything appeared normal, but they couldn't rule it out completely on the basis of emergency room tests. So they admitted him overnight. They gave him blood thinners among other meds, which left huge black bruises on his stomach, then a stress test the following morning - turned out his heart is fine, but they had to call the respiratory therapist because he started wheezing so bad.
  
  They'd put him in a room with two other people - one was a younger guy suffering from what we normally wind up there for - asthma. He'd tried to walk to the pharmacy to refill his inhaler and wound up collapsing on the street. He'd recovered and left the same afternoon. The other guy was older, but not so old as we originnally thought. He was quite clearly delerious; kept trying to get out of bed when he wasn't supposed to, talking and moaning, and kicking the covers off. Social workers and doctors kept trying to talk to him, but couldn't get much sense out of him -I did hear once "And how long have you been doing the heavy drinking?" Made it a little difficult for John to sleep, hospitals not being the easiest places to sleep in any case. The nurses only tried once to wake him up by shaking his shoulder - he has a rather violent way of waking up, especially in an unfamiliar place - and from then on woke him from three feet away, calling "Mr. Walton..."
  
  Anyway, he finally got in to see his own doctor, who did a bunch of bloodwork and gave him some Nexxium for his near constant heartburn (caused by other meds). We haven't heard back about any results yet - I need to get on him about that because he WILL NOT do it himself. It also made him angry that the blood thinners he was given caused the Red Cross to defer him donating blood for a year.



• Work - not hugely busy since the Management Team finished the SAFE document, and another Council meeting behind us. This time it took place at a hotel in Costa Mesa, the next town over from me, so I didn't really have to travel. I was especially grateful for this as it turned out to be over Halloween/Gareth's birthday. I guess the Council hasn't gotten the message CalCOFI did, when so many people complained that it was scheduled over Halloween, they finally stopped and moved it to the first week of December. Another issue coming up, that of Annual Catch Limits, promises to wind up being way more complicated than it should be, especially since the US only catches a fraction of HMS species in the Pacific and management is actually handled by international agencies. Eh, I still have problems getting my head around it, sometimes.
  
  I need to get the desk cleaned up -I tend to let things pile up when I'm working on a particular project. Also need to get started on mackerel otoliths for the year. The fishery's been pretty slow for them, partly because of a lowered Harvest Guideline, but also because the larger fish that are mostly in demand are just not coming close enough to shore, or shallow enough, that the boats can target them. There's only a about 2 dozen samples for the entire year, divided between the three of us who read mackerel, so that's not too big of a burden. I kind of enjoy it anyway.



• Home - ech. Must get areas cleaned up - my dad called and ordered FIOS installation, and I've put off the appointment a couple of times already, because I wasn't ready. Need to get back on the FlyLady track (I haven't found anything else quite comparable, and I have to have an outside kick in the butt apparently) - but it's also frustrating when the other person doing housework has his own method and refuses to listen to anyone else's. Also that the third adult does absolutely nothing. I would excuse him for being 84, but he didn't help much long before that.
  
  Avalon is out of the bedroom with the boys now - we set up my old twin bed for her in a corner of the living room. We're not quite done making a "room" for her - involving moving some of the larger furniture around so she has "walls" - a disadvantage of six people in a 3-bedroom house, but that's the goal in the next couple of weeks. John's looked into getting something like cubicle dividers, but they're just too expensive, but we do have a tall hutch and an upright grand piano to be moved around.



• Other - I've been hauling my camera around religiously although I haven't been keeping up quite with the mylife_onceaday thing. I have been wanting to do something creative other than photography, but just totally lacking in the inspiration department. Somebody give me an idea for a holiday card and you get a free one. Well, you would, anyway. Just send me your address. What, do I have to smack you upside the head with a hint? ;p

So there's a nutshell. Long stretches of fairly boring punctuated by a few moments of high anxiety. Rather like real life, I suppose.

Time to plug in the pod and get something done...

We went for a walk downtown after the US Open of Surfing was done for the day. Lots of people watching still be had and we cooled off with some Dairy Queen, strolling around as we ate. These old beach bungalows down there are getting fewer and farther between.

Sunflowers and prayer flags
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
25 July 2009

( +2 )

There has been an awful lot of pain, sorrow, and worry lately, both on my friend's list and outside of it. If I haven't commented directly on it, please know that I'm thinking about you. Sometimes I get a little overwhelmed, vicariously, and I can't come up with the words.

My thoughts and my hope. I don't know if it helps, but there it is.

Another Waymark; I noticed there was a category for "Lion statues" so I thought I'd enter the one at the top of the auditorium of my old high school, since he's a bit high up and I'm not sure anyone notices him all that much. The buildings were just recently renovated; although, apparently, he was in fine shape and didn't need anything. These buildings are about 84 years old.

Darryl Stilwagon Auditorium and Tower
Huntington Beach High School
Canon EOS 1000D
22 July 2009

( entire building, which I've probably posted before... )

When you're a warden, you can park right the hell in front of the office door. The rest of us have to carry everything out to the parking lot.

(I should give him a break - it was very heavy and breakable computer equipment, but still...)

Work
Los Alamitos CA
Canon 1000D
20 July 2009

A pot I like on a neighbor's porch. Although I think it needs something else in it.

Lips
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
19 July 2009

There's been very little Waymarking (the alternative to Geocaching, finding places and objects instead of containers, that people otherwise might not see) in Huntington Beach, so I thought I would enter some from around me that hadn't been done yet. This is one of a set of tile murals up at the Civic Center that I entered as a waymark - they came from a shopping center that was kitty-corner across the street. You can find a bit of the history where I entered it - I might've mentioned some of them before. Trying to get them all Waymarked as a series.

Pelican Dive Mural
Huntington Beach Civic Center
Canon EOS 1000D
15 July 2009

( construction... )

Trip to AOP today; this was a new resident I had not seen before. This is a ribbon seadragon.

Ribbon seadragon
Aquarium of the Pacific
Long Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
12 July 2009

Bowtie for woodworkers
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
10 July 2009

Maybe runsamuck should start selling them...

Am I the only one who sees the irony?

The culprits are black phoebes; they use the sign for perching while hunting insects. 

All Pets must be Leashed
Los Alamitos CA
Canon EOS 1000D
7 July 2009

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Kitteh bettur nawt tri 2 eats teh gooses; dose r NENEs!

(Huhwai-ee stait burd. vurrah endanjurred)

Since I have a prior committment and can't attend the planning commission meeting tonight (well, if I get home early enough, I may walk up there and at least sign in, so the opposers at least get credit for another body being there...

Dear Ms. Wine,

I have lived in Downtown Huntington Beach, only two blocks away from the Civic Center, off and on since my parents moved here in 1968. I attended Smith Elementary, Dwyer Middle School and HBHS (graduated 1980), and now my kids are following the same path.

I am increasingly concerned that the City of Huntington Beach seems to be in a mad rush to cover any remaining open space with buildings and seems, to me, to consider developers wishes over any other parties'. First the undeveloped part of Central Park for a huge senior center, now this unneeded "Cultural Center." We don't need any more restaurants downtown - they seem to go out of business quite regularly down there.

Apparently, the planned library space is only half as big as the current building. Yes, the Central Library is not that far away, but this one is within walking distance of my kids, and current state budget battles mean their school libraries are not available nearly as much, making this library that much more important to area school children. The building itself is representative of a part of Huntington Beach's history; I cannot understand why this city feels it has to make every part of itself new and eradicate anything from earlier eras. Building trends in all parts of downtown show this; the house across the street from me, which was a historical Standard oil building and older than other buildings nearby which are on the National Historic Register was recently torn down to put an an enormous ugly So Cal Pseudo-Spanish Generic house that takes up the entire lot. The town I grew up in is becoming unrecognizable.

Green spaces are few and far between in this city. Let's not cover up one that already exists. The statement I heard by a city council member saying "It's just something for neighborhood dogs to pee on," really rankles me. If you don't want grass, which I agree, consumes a lot of water, has to be mowed regularly and is a bit boring, put in a xeric garden, or native plants. Make something interesting. Or even open it up to public gardens open to nearby apartment dwellers (even more needed, since those at GoldenWest College closed). But don't build on what little open space remains.

Thank you,

Leeanne Laughlin
Huntington Beach resident

I knew this was coming, but the confirmation makes me sad still. I have many pleasant memories of being aboard the MAKO (such as this cruise here, which I need to post some pictures of), some anxious ones as well. This comes after getting our hopes up for the previous year; we were told the MAKO was coming out being mothballed and we were hopefully going to be able to use her to help with NOAA - SWFSC's juvenile shark survey/tagging program. I was rather excited about this as I'd been in charge of similar cruise when I was first hired. Then the whole budget situation collapsed and it turns out the Department can no longer afford her. At least she's going to another state agency which will hopefully make better use of her - the longer a boat is mothballed, the more expensive it is to get her going again.

NOAA's R/V DAVID STARR JORDAN (the one I went out on a couple of summers ago) has also gone away; she's in Seattle now, awaiting replacement by a newer, more fuel-efficient ship.

State Research Vessel Begins Second Life...