Visit the kelpforest....

Work has finally upgraded us into the 21st Century by finally migrating us to Windows 7. The upside is that I have a new laptop I'd thought mine would be fixed - I needed a new power cable and a few of the keys on my keyboard didn't work, meaning I had to take a Spongebob roll-up keyboard with me when I went to meetings - but turns out it was out of warrantee, so they figured it was better to issue me a new one. The downside is they're much more locked down now, so I can't download my LJ client, among other handy little things I use, because it's not approved software. Sigh. I knew it was coming. So I'll just have to use the page.

I feel like Tumblr is making me forget how to write. The truth is I don't get much time on the family laptop (I just don't feel like hearing all the grumbling), so I'm using my Nook most of the time lately, and typing on it is really a pain in the ass, especially there. But here, I must have made a dozen placeholders for posts on topics that I haven't written. I thought I'd get some of them done while riding the bus the last three months, but I used the time to reread the original Sherlock Holmes instead. Haven't quite gotten through all of it, but nearly.

I think my last post was when the car blew up. We only got it back last week. It turned out it wasn't just the head, it was the long block - which meant the entire engine had to be replaced.  A week on each end was due to our having to come up with money for a deposit and to pay it off (so much for our tax refund - we still had to get a loan). We looked into buying a used engine, but they came with no guarantees, and John's experience with two used transmissions in the Kia's predecessor (one of which only lasted a couple of months) made us opt for new parts, some of which must have had to be shipped from Korea. John is a good haggler though, and they gave us about a 15% discount for taking so damn long.

With the price of gas though, I think I still should take the bus, even though there's no longer a route down the street my office is on and I have to walk a mile each way to the stop. I really don't mind the walk, but between it and still having to transfer, sometimes it was taking me two hours or more to get home. The Starbucks at my transfer point was getting way too much of my money.

Btw, if they ask, don't let them put two teabags in a Grande sized reusable cup. It's nicely strong, but $3.55 is too goddamned much for a cup of tea. And when I asked for a tall amount of water with one teabag in it, so it wasn't too weak, it took me five minutes to get across to the guy what I wanted. "ok, so you just want hot water? You want one teabag and no water?" I finally had to take the cup, show him there was a line inside for Tall, and tell him only fill it up to there, and no farther. Sheesh.

Anyway, I keep meaning to test out my son's bike to see if it's something I could ride the two miles from my first bus, thus saving the walking time and having to transfer, but I keep forgetting over the weekend.

Huh, this page says I can still send stuff to FB; I thought FB wasn't allowing that anymore.

Crossing the street to the bus stop, and I noticed a large bird on one of the flagpoles in front of my office building. I was suprised to see an osprey perched there in a spot usually occupied by starlings (several at a time, sometimes). Maybe I shouldn't have been; they're common enough around the harbor and wetlands nearby. Maybe he was hoping something edible was in the little pond of the Navy Golf Course next door. He sat there quite comfortably until I reached down to pull out my camera, of course. I have several more of his butt flying away...

Flagpole osprey
Los Alamitos CA
Canon EOS 1000D
28 September 2009

Since the meeting didn't start until 1 pm, I now had a working GPS and hadn't done any geocaching since last September, I spent my first morning in Spokane walking around the riverfront and downtown area, which was lovely. There are waterfalls here, and the Riverfront Park was once the site of the 1974 World Expo, which a couple of the structures in the background were part of. This rock formation in the middle of Upper Spokane Falls is an Earthcache, a type of virtual cache that gives you a little geology lesson of the area. The lesson here being that much of the area around Spokane was once volcanic, and this formation is made of the same columnar basalt that is used in building a number of structures in the area (it looks very manmade, but it's the actual stucture formed by the rock as it cooled). This was taken from one of two pedestrian footbridges that cross the Upper Falls, both connecting to an island in the middle of the river.

Upper Spokane Falls
Spokane WA
Canon EOS 1000D
12 June 2009

( and another water feature... )

I guess I was lucky I drove home yesterday. Apparently a new guy, who works in the other office in our building, was waiting for the bus one stop down from where I usually wait. A black Toyota Corolla pulled up, someone got out and hit him in the head with something; while he's lying there bleeding, they stole everything he had - computer, electronics, etc. He spent the night in the hospital, but should be getting out today.

This is was in broad daylight, 5 pm or so, in a fairly quiet suburban neighborhood. The street does get fairly busy during rush hour, but it's regularly patrolled by police from two cities (our building is in Los Alamitos, but it's Seal Beach directly across the street). I got this in a forwarded email from the other office; it also said there's been a rash of incidents - a carjacking at the Dairy Queen a mile down the road, someone stealing a dog from the neighborhood across the street, and a drunk driver killing a bicyclist a small distance in the other direction (there seems to be a high proportion of accidents along this road; it curves several times and people just drive too fast).

Who knows if the mugging was by someone local or just a random drive-by? But if I hadn't had to go somewhere yesterday evening, I would have been standing there too, well, maybe across the street. I believe I'll call for a ride home this evening. I don't want to stop taking the bus because of this, though.

Came in a bit later this morning because I'm going to a sportfisherman's club meeting tonight; they would like to know more about some upcoming possible changes to thresher shark regulations.

At one of the bus stops, an entire kindergarten class wearing several colors of bandanas around their necks,and their accompanying teacher and room parents (about 25 kids and six women) got on, to the amusement of many of the other passengers. There was much ooing and aahing and hey there's no seatbelts! when the bus began moving, and especially when we passed a big truck, wow that was cool! It didn't sound like any of them had been on a bus before - not suprising since this route starts in a fairly affluent area of Orange County. One of room moms who sat behind me told me the school district, whether because of funding or scheduling, couldn't provide a bus for their excursion. They pretty much filled up the entire bus, except for a few seats at the back, so the four men who got on at the next stop, after widening their eyes when they stepped aboard, chose to stand. The kids chattered until they arrived at the stop nearest the pumpkin patch at Goldenwest College, where they all trooped off and gathered into a neat little group by their chaperones. It was too cute.

I think it's a good idea; they should get used to using public transportation early.

crap - stupid tiny phone buttons...hit the wrong one by accident and my post disappears...grr

Was there some holiday today I didn't know about? I was the only person on my bus for the first third of my trip this morning. No one got on until the stop at Goldenwest College - usually there's at least two or three other passengers when I get on...

Payday tomorrow...I'm sure the bus driver will be happy; today and Friday I've had to pay my entire fare in nickels and dimes, and not even the option of driving, because the Kia has just about enough for John to pick up Gareth at summer school. $10 yesterday was enough to get 2 gallons and barely move the needle off E.

We have a trip planned in August to drive to Carlsbad Caverns and take a cave tour or two, and camp. We were going also visit the Grand Canyon, but with the price of gas that's out. We're planning on using our economic stimulus check for it, and John thinks even if gas gets up to $5.25, we can still afford it.

I am dubious. I am all for staying closer to home. Driving across the desert in August, with three kids who have never been on a long car trip before (two of whom seem to have problems sitting still for any length of time), does not sound like a wonderful time to me.

Well, we'll see. My family made cross country trips in the summer, without DVD player or AC even. We did have a camper and more room to spread out, though. And a couple of those trips were made when we kids were old enough to share in the driving.

I was kind of hoping to use part of our check to get a new camera, but I don't suppose there's going to be any extra for that...

(posted from the bus; consolidated & photos added later)

Ok, freaky weather we're having, much? This morning when I was getting Angus ready for school, I looked out the kitchen window to the west and thought "Boy, that sure looks darker than our usual marine layer..." then put the boy on the bus and promptly forgot about it. By the time I caught my own bus, it was sunny, if pretty hazy, and remained so most of the day. VT remarked at lunchtime that her spouse had called after dropping their son off at daycare, and reported it was thundering and hailing in Irvine, but it was still sunny and hazy in Los Al.

Just before I shut down for the day, I noticed it agian looked awfully dark. I checked if the sidewalk was wet-it wasn't-and with a vague hope that I could get home before I got wet, headed for the exit downstairs. walked down the hall and got the door opened at the exact time the heavens decided to do the same thing. Soaked before I even got to the bus stop; one of the admin staff leaving at the same time stopped and handed me an umbrella out her car window.



Very tiny redwood forest at the corner of our building's property...



grr, guess there's a char. limit on email posts from the phone too...
Anyhoo, I usually hate brollies because it seems to me you need at least three arms to use them properly and I would rather just wear a hat. But grateful this time cuz I didn't have one-'tho there was thunder along with the downpour so I stuck close to the wall 'til the bus came. And yeah, Crocs are waterproof but they ain't WATERPROOF, so I have a wet shirt and wet feet. ACHOO! Frank, the driver, told me to have a glass of wine when I get home-sounds good to me! (Dammit, why don't the Enter key on this phone work?)

So, got a nifty new phone with one of those text messaging keyboards and (limited) webaccess and was hoping I could use it to read LJ on the bus. While it's better than my old phone as far as screen size, something is haywire; every time I try to log in, I just get returned to the login page. So I can't post or really read much of my friends page. I know I used to be able to. Log in, that is. I posted as support request, but the queue of unresolved posts on that topic goes back 12 weeks, so I'm not holding out much hope there. However I forgot I can post by email so I guess that's a workaround. If I can get around this suddenly weird formatting...posted from the bus, mostly.

A survey benchmark near one of my bus stops. I've tried to look it up at Geocaching.com, but can't find it. Being a rank beginner at this stuff, that's probably not surprising.