Visit the kelpforest....

senoritafish @ 2009-12-07T17:19:00

2009-12-08T01:19:35Z

In front of a furniture store having an outdoor sale. It has lobster claws but I swear that's the face of a spot prawn.

Giant prawn
Fountain Valley CA
Canon EOS 1000D
05 September 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-12-07T17:10:00

2009-12-08T01:10:22Z

So, first rain we've had in awhile, and of course I had to go run errands at lunchtime, no stamps and something had to be mailed today. There was a small patch of blue for a short while just now, but it's being rapidly subsumed by rolling shades of dark gray, then almost gray-orange - the clouds above must be catching the setting sun. ~~Tappity-tappity on the window.~~Actually more of an insistent rapping now...

I've been helping my NOAA compadre organize a meeting for kicking of a sampling design project to be done by a contractor. We're having it at our office as it's central to everything and I'm trying to think of anything else needed - room, check; phone conference line, check (luckliy, the Feds have one they can organize almost anytime - we only have two, and they're almost always booked up all day); reserving equipment, to do; hotel list for participants, check; anything else for agenda, hmmm, suggesting restaurants for a social hour afterward...not sure I'll be able to participate in that one as I won't be travelling, and can't get reimbursed for it.

Should be interesting. And now, a dock report I'm behind on, fish receipts to edit and otoliths to start...

senoritafish @ 2009-12-07T16:23:00

2009-12-08T00:23:32Z

Avatar: The Last Airbender at McDonald's
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
04 September 2009

John and I have been trying to make at least one of my Furlough Fridays a month sort of a breakfast date. It's not like we can sleep in as the kids still have to get off to school, so once they're in class, we'll pick a different place for brekky. Today we walked out to Ruby's on the pier, and I practiced shooting the surfers as we walked back.

Old guys rule.

senoritafish @ 2009-12-07T16:08:00

2009-12-08T00:09:01Z

The City has been doing a lot of revamping down in the Harbor area - these are some pretty new lamps put up in near the end of Signal St., where we often park to watch for fishing boats coming into the harbor.

Seahorses and flying fish
San Pedro CA
Canon EOS 1000D
03 September 2009

They nicely put in a small pier here, which is helpful as now, we can actually see the wharf at the the munipal markets at few hundred yards farther north and if there are boats tied up there.

There are also nice benches in case you're going to sit there awhile. Warehouse One, in the background, was built in 1916 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's the only place in the harbor I can think of that has gargoyles (the vertical row of dots on the wall above, closer up below).

senoritafish @ 2009-12-03T08:25:00

2009-12-03T16:25:03Z

Mustard
Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
30 August 2009

Mustard is a non-native plant, and the sky is colored by a combo of L.A. smog and a forest fire, but together it makes for a good picture, I guess...

More pyrocumulus clouds and smoke from the Station fire, which raged through the mountains north of Los Angeles for several weeks - it wasn't fully contained until October 16th.

senoritafish @ 2009-12-03T07:59:00

2009-12-03T15:59:18Z

These were growing in my friends front yard. I don't know what they're called, but they sure are neat-looking.

Purple flower
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
29 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-12-02T23:51:00

2009-12-03T07:51:34Z

I noticed a strange-looking cloud out of my office window. Turned out it was smoke from the Station Fire, north of Los Angeles. The strange spots are from the tempered glass window and the polarizing filter on my lens.

Pyrocumulus cloud
Los Alamitos CA
EOS Canon 1000D
28 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-12-02T23:23:00

2009-12-03T07:22:59Z

Sure you are...
San Pedro CA
Canon 1000D EOS
27 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-12-02T23:00:00

2009-12-03T07:00:45Z

Went to Dismalland for Avalon's B-day. We've never bought any of these balloons because not only are they hella expensive for something that's going to be lying on the floor by the next morning when all the helium leaks out ($14 for one of these), but I think they loose their effect singly. They look much better in a big bunch. Oh, and the sea-turtle killing thing, that too.

Bubbles
Anaheim CA
Canon EOS 1000D
21 August 2009

Kids goofing around. This little photo op at CA Adventure always makes me snort, because it's title "Record Catch" and really if those were real fish, it'd only be 3-4 tons. Some of the boats we see in San Pedro are capable of catching over 100 tons (although they rarely do).

senoritafish @ 2009-08-17T18:18:00

2009-12-02T02:18:12Z

Some kelp I found in a load of sardines - I hadn't seen it before and we're supposed to be documenting bycatch. I noticed that some of it was bright green and other specimens were brown, like this one. Luckily I still have my handy dandy Marine Algae of California from my Marine Phycology class in college, and discovered it's a species of Desmarestia, which sounds familiar, so I must have come across it before. Some of it was green because this type of kelp harbors acids in its tissues - so much so that it will bleach out anything else caught with it (and why some of it looked green).

Acid Kelp
San Pedro CA
Canon EOS 1000D
17 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-08-16T18:09:00

2009-12-02T02:09:04Z

Avalon picked out this cookbook at the bookstore, and wanted to make this recipe from it. A little heavy on the cream cheese, but still tasty. I'm not sure whether the recipe actually called for the Fruit Snacks on the top, but she thought they'd be a good idea.

Perfect Parfaits
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
16 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-08-14T17:12:00

2009-12-02T01:12:32Z

This place is less than mile from my home, and I actually worked for about three years at the fast-food place visible in the background more than two decades ago. But in all the time I've lived in the neighborhood, I've never ventured inside, despite my father making use of the services there for my grandmother. Specifically, for my grandmother's beloved Boo-Boo.

Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
14 August 2009

Geocaching with the fry today, and there was one around this area; we couldn't find it, but took the opportunity to explore this place, as it's listed at Waymarking.com as well (so at least we picked up a waymark visit). Supposedly, pets belonging to Richard and Karen Carpenter are interred here. It's a little crowded in spots, especially in the small animal section; headstones are only a few inches apart in places.

I knew parrots lived a long time, but I think Katie Teeter here outlived some of my relatives.

Interesting that many of the trees here seem to be tipping to the south and east. While we were here, a large murder of crows was milling about in and above the trees near the front, making a lot of racket. Just before leaving, we met a man in the parking lot (one of the caretakers I believe), who said that one of the crows was on the ground, and appeared to be sick or injured. All of his relatives were trying to help him out/encourage him, I guess.

Not surprisingly, St. Francis of Assisi figures as important decor here. He also seems to be very patriotic - nearly all the little statues of him were festooned with American flags. :p

We all thought it was an interesting, peaceful place, and it's hard to believe I've never set foot in it before. But it made Gareth sad.

senoritafish @ 2009-08-13T14:10:00

2009-12-01T22:10:24Z

Bob is not quite officially retired just yet, and he and my boss visited our office as well...and he got another cake. I don't think I actually took this picture; Paul borrowed my camera and got this nifty angle, which I'll have to keep in mind.

Frosting Octopus
Los Alamitos CA
Canon EOS 1000D
13 August 2009

(and I have to remember to make Bob a CD of all these pics and mail it to him in Utah...)

senoritafish @ 2009-08-12T14:01:00

2009-12-01T22:01:55Z

The ugly new house across the street.

Nearing completion
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
12 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-08-09T19:45:00

2009-11-28T03:45:31Z

The soap my spouse brought home made me snerk.

Soap
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
9 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-11-27T19:35:00

2009-11-28T03:35:32Z

Good grief, I was wondering why I couldn't find this stuff at World Market anymore!! That is on the every other month or so I stop in there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rabbit_Creamy_Candy

(I'm ashamed to say I thought it was Japanese, not Chinese. It has the same rice paper wrapper as some other candy I like. Guess I didn't read the wrapper as close as I usually do.)

senoritafish @ 2009-08-07T19:27:00

2009-11-28T03:27:54Z

My daughter had a dental appointment this morning, so afterward we stopped at Starbucks and had a muffin, then walked around the nearby Westminster Civic Center for a little bit. Now, Westminster, the next town over from mine, likes to emulate its namesake in Merrie Olde Englande, thus an old red phonebooth near City Hall...

Red Telephone Booth
Westminster CA
Canon EOS 1000D
7 August 2009

...lots of buildings in pseudo-Elizabethan style...

...and many entrances guarded by pair of lions...

..some of them are Asian, but seriously, I counted about 5 pair of lions within a two-block area of Westminster Blvd.

(oh yeah, some of them were waymarks; or they are now... ;) )

senoritafish @ 2009-08-05T18:33:00

2009-11-28T02:33:36Z

I have no idea what this is. It was on my cell phone. Looks kinda cool tho'.

Use your imagination
Don't know where...
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
5 August 2009

senoritafish @ 2009-11-27T15:23:00

2009-11-27T23:23:50Z

Avalon, a doll (given to her by one of my brother's friends), and some of that green pearly putty that some kids toys come in:

"Gareth, look! Barbie's getting a brain transplant! (moving it to her knees) And now she's being sucked on by leeches!"

(Honestly, I did not coach her in any of this...)

Hmm, runsamuck just suggested that "Miss Congeniality" could be very empowering for her to watch. I'm not sure whether he's serious.

Green Day for free, whee!

2009-11-25T18:19:28Z

Well, we made it up to Green Day and back alive. I was thinking we would park at the train station, and catch it directly, but John thought it would be a better idea to park at his mom's house, catch the shuttle to the Transit Mall, and from there catch the Blue Line up to LA. Which worked fine, but put a time limit on when we had to be back. The last shuttle back his mom's neighbor hood left downtown Long Beach at 9 pm, so we had to be back on the train before that.

I had packed up a bunch of sandwiches, carrots, apples and carried them along - Avalon was excited enough, she packed up her own. We made it up to the Staples Center without incident and walked over to the Nokia Plaza - that whole development is new, I'm pretty sure it wasn't there last time we were up there. The plaza itself was fenced off, but we had a seat on the planter in from of a statue of Oscar De La Hoya. The website had said the concert was to start at 5:30 - at 6:30 nothing had started yet, and John was getting impatient and saying if they didn't start in fifteen or twenty minutes we were leaving. No patientce, that man. The kids kept going over to the fence to see if they could see anything through any of the gaps in the covering, but there was really too much equipment in the way. Finally, we saw some TV camera platforms go up and heard an announcement, "Cameramen, please put on your headphones." A few minutes later there was actual music. Billy Joe's face appeared on the screens, visible over the fence, for about 30 seconds, then was replaced by little flying skulls and then occasionally "Carson Daly's New Year's Eve," Aha, that's what this was for. The band played quite a few songs, some not all the way through, and some silly things, like beginning of Stairway to Heaven, sequeing into the lyrics to Gilligan's Island, and a lot of joking around, which made me think this wasn't quite the real deal, especially since we could hear the people who did have tickets cheering and applauding down the street - they hadn't been let in front of the stage yet.

Finally the music wound down and the 21st Century Breakdown themed pictures on the screen were replaced with commercials from one of the other screens. John got up, insisted that was it, it was over (I was sure it wasn't), but we did have to catch the train back by the right time to not miss the downtown Long Beach bus. His knee and his feet were bothering him and he wanted to get home. Peeking through the fence on the way back to the train station I could see that all the ticket-holders were still standing in a group in the same place, but whatever.

Anyhow, the train was crowded, and the kids and I stood for quite a bit of it. We had to get off the train at the Willow Station as that was as far as it went, and wait for the next one, but we did make it back to Long Beach in time for the last bus, and a quick visit with John's mom and grandma before heading home. The kids had fun, we got to hear some live music by someone well known, and I think it's good for them to get some experience using public transportion.

I haven't taken the train for a very long time; however I remember the last couple of times we did, I looked out the window and right in the middle of the inner city, Compton or Watts, some graffiti artist had drawn a huge picture of Spock's face, filling the entire wall next to the tracks from top to bottom. I was kind of hoping it was still there, but it's been at least 15 years and graffiti art is ephemeral; if the city or wall owners don't paint it over, other artists or taggers will.

senoritafish @ 2009-11-23T10:32:00

2009-11-23T18:32:15Z

Anyone in LA/OC area want to go see Brian Sezter Orchestra? My friend Val sez -

"I've got 2 Brian Setzer Orchestra Christmas Extravaganza tickets for sale - excellent seats (ORC 4, Row EE, Seats 4 & 5). The concert is December 19 at the Gibson Amphitheatre. Please let me know if you are interested or know of someone that would be."

Message Valerie Boyd Taylor at Facebook if interested, or comment here and I'll pass along your email.

Probably going to do something crazy...

2009-11-22T20:22:07Z

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.

senoritafish @ 2009-08-04T13:08:00

2009-11-21T21:08:44Z

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

Must be getting old...

2009-11-21T19:21:26Z

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...

senoritafish @ 2009-08-02T12:52:00

2009-11-17T02:03:52Z

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

It weighs 17 tons and is rung three times a year: the 4th of July, August 15th (Korean Independence Day, and New Year's Eve. That would be cool to go see, I'm thinkin'.

These little critters guard the steps.

Just below the bell are some old WWII structures. The doors to the underground bunkers are padlocked shut now, and the old circular concrete mounts for the guns that once protected the harbor now hold picnic tables.