Visit the kelpforest....

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

Flew up to Spokane WA for three days of meetings. Another sundog, this time from above.

Sundog
Location -? (somewhere between John Wayne Airport and SeaTac)
Canon EOS 1000D
11 June 2009

( ...And flung my eager craft through footless halls of air...  )

The flight up had no less than six small passegers under two, who all set each other off crying during takeoff. While I can tune a lot of that out, being a parent, six was rather a lot as once. Luckily, most of them settled pretty quickly, except for one little girl who wailed intermittently as her parents took turns handing her off. While jockeying for position with the other passenger for the second leg of the trip from Seattle to Spokane, I noticed the young man next to me had a Jack's Surfboards shopping bag (a store on Main St. near me), so I asked if he was coming or going from SoCA. Turned out he and his dad were going back home to their small town nearly on the Canada/Idaho border. They'd gone down to go to Dismalland (JWA flights always seem to have families with that as a destination), and we chatted a bit about beaches and traffic (he was shocked it was so bad), and whether I'd been to Idaho (twice; the meeting last September, and a number of years before, when Beth and I drove up there to visit and go camping with her father's family). He also related that the little girl who cried the most on the flight had been on their flight down as well, and never stopped that time. He told me he never wants to leave his town, and I don't blame him a bit. I think the entire state of Idaho has less of a population than my local area; from that trip with Beth, I remember seeing three- and four-digit license plates.

I was out of camera battery for the flight to Spokane (and if you ever peruse my Flickr photostream I'm sure you're grateful for that!), and the sun was setting anyway, but it looked like there was still quite a lot of snow in the Cascades. After I checked in I realized I must have left my DFG jacket on one of the planes, and my black go-to-meeting shoes no longer seemed to be in my suitcase - and I know I shoved them in there because I almost forgot them. We were about to leave for the airport and I had to run back inside and grab them.

Last day this house is whole. This is the same property where the owner cut the tree down on Earth Day. It was originally built in the 20's, and used to be the offices for Standard Oil - Huntington Beach being founded on the oil in the area, so there's a bit of city history behind it. I'm not sure when it was converted to a home, but it has been so for a very long time. The previous owner unfortunately had to sell it to cover his son's bout's in rehab; finally the son went to jail (again) and the parents split up. The new owner, after swearing he wasn't going to tear it down, decided he had to have another McMansion like every other new person who moves into this neighborhood -already started in the backyard - he had to wait until the tenant he was renting the house to move out to start the front.

It's not a fancy house, but it's older than two other city buildings nearby that are on County and National Historic Registers. I'm very sad about this.

Old Standard Oil House
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
2 June 2009

( Also, weird clouds... )