senoritafish

We seem to have a number of musicians in the neighborhood. I'm just now hearing someone practicing drums in their garage - maybe the kids who have a punk band on the corner of the next block. I shouldn't say kids - they're probably in their mid-twenties. And the lead singer from a fairly well-known band bought the house at the end of my block after it had been sitting empty for almost a year after the real estate bubble. I haven't met him, but runsamuck (who is waaay more outgoing than I and knows ALL the neighbors) sometimes goes down and plays nickel n' dime poker with him and his buddies in the garage. I nod and smile at his wife when we run into each other on the sidewalk when we're out for a walk, and she's walking their little dog. runsamuck mentioned he'd seen something about them going on tour, and sure enough, when I came home from work the other day, there was a big bus parked next to the house. They hadn't been for awhile because their drummer passed away last year.

One of runsamuck's friends found a guitar in the trash out the alley - looks very much like this one, it says S-classic on the head, but I can't find that model on the website - it's a little beat up but still in working condition. He took it to Guitar Center and got it some new strings, had it cleaned and tuned, and the tech couldn't believe someone had thrown it away. Gareth cabbaged onto it and has managed to pick out the first couple of lines of the Skwisgaar's tutorial from the DVD we have. Well, he didn't sign up for band this year, but maybe we should get guitar lessons instead. Maybe when he gets his grades up. He tells me now he'd rather teach himself. Arrogant pre-teen. Skwisgaar you're not. ;p Ah, what do I know? Neil Finn is my musical genius.



We don't have an amp for him yet,and the pickup on the camera is not very strong, so it's very soft. He's only been fiddling around with the guitar for a month or two...I'm actually kind of impressed he's done this on his own.

Searching the NASA Channel for the penultimate Shuttle launch (before the Discovery's launch was delayed until the end of the month)...

"You know, I need an astronaut to keep for a pet. So I can ask him questions all the time."

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.

Among the mustard... tried again for the one we missed yesterday and this time we found it! We were looking for this one, and the first hint was "where the fence makes no sense." Hmmm.

Bosco's Bluff part 2
Bolsa Chica
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000d
21 June 2009

( ? )

Fouth graders have to do a project depicting some part of California history, which can be various different things, but many kids choose a model of a mission, because all the craft stores sell model kits of them. Gareth was no different; he at least picked the Santa Cruz Mission (located north of Monterey), not the one closest to us (the more famous Mission San Juan Capistrano, which the swallows come back to). This caused runsamuck some grumbling of "separation of church and state," but I suppose it is somewhat legit - some of the first European settlers here were Spanish Missionaries (at the time the place belonged to Mexico), and many of the mission settlements formed the basis of present-day towns. They also have a section on Native Americans of the region before this - mostly Chumash and Gabrielinos.

Gareth was frustrated because he left his supplies out on the patio, where he was working. He hadn't put down the green fuzzy stuff (meant to be grass) on the model yet, and during the night, Spot came by and decided to sleep on it, leaving long white cat hairs all over it. You can't see it in the photo, but they're still there; no amount of brushing or tape would get them off, without also removing the fuzzy stuff.

Santa Cruz Mission model
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
25 March 2009

At my SF/Fantasy book group last night:

Angus: (Coming back from the kid's section during a pause in the conversation, walking halfway around the circle of folding chairs till he was opposite me and announcing rather loudly) "They didn't have ANYTHING I liked; but I have these. Mom, where are you?"

This caused everyone to crack up - he had observed where I sat before going, but apparently walked around the group most of the way before he bothered to look up. He forgets sometimes that he needs to listen to see if other people are talking before he just announces whatever's on his mind, and he needs to lower the volume a bit. However, I am glad he's venturing off to do things on his own, although if he wants to do it himself it's much easier. He still gets a little freaked when I need to leave him for a minute, as in a half an hour later, when I needed to use the restroom and asked him to stay and read for a few minutes where he was (even though Gareth was there too).

Anyway, his latest book to peruse everytime we visit the bookstore is the D&D Monster Manual, and since one of the other members was an old school D&D player, he kept bringing it over to him to ask questions about various monsters. I don't think Aaron minded, but I always worry he's bugging people. At the same time, I've never liked the adage about children being seen and not heard, and I don't like just squelching him.

Meanwhile, Gareth was paging through a copy of Weird California (a book I'd like to pick up sometime, but it's an expensive coffee table book - and I don't have a coffee table I'd like to put it on at this point). Instead of just blurting things out, every so often I would feel an soft but insistent poke in the back because he wanted to show me something. And of course, he wanted to show the group the pictures of the Fry's Electronics store in Burbank, since we had been talking about cephalopods and the store has a theme of 50's/60's SciFi movies. He asked me later when he could actually join the group, and I told him as soon as he was up to reading the sort of book we pick out every month. He reads juvenile chapter books now; at present he's reading a book about the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII.

The book for January was Making Money by Terry Pratchett (a Discworld book), which I am only starting, having only been able to pick it up on Saturday. February's will be The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon, and for March, Nova Swing by M. John Harrison (although I may have to read Light first), all of which look interesting.

Before deciding on the March book, Deb turned aside to me and said, "You know, I'm finding I like my science fiction to be more homey; all these galaxy expansive stories make me tired."

The kids wanted to fly kites and Gareth wanted to test out his little remote control plane he'd gotten for Christmas, so we went over to the softball fields a block or two away. The wind was intermittent at best, and keeping the kite in the air required lots of running - which I was perfectly happy to let them do. After we'd been there for half an hour, a couple teams of soccer players arrived for weekend practice, so we left as not to get in their way.

Worthy Park
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
28 December 2008

( moar... )

Something I forgot to write about.

One afternoon over the weekend, Gareth came in from the front yard and said, "Mom there's a pelican on the sidewalk."

Now I should know not to just dismiss what he says out of hand, especially after the 'possum incident, but we were getting ready to head to the store, and I was busy haranguing everyone to get their shoes on and get ready to go, so I just kind of said, "Right, ok..." and continued collecting shoes etc. I doubted it was a pelican; we do live a mile from the beach, but you seldom see pelicans away from the water, and certainly not in a residential neighborhood. We see cormorants fly overhead quite often, but not pelicans.

We walked outside to get in the car, and directly across the street was a police car, pulled in at an angle to curb, with the yellow lights on its light bar blinking. Cops in our neighborhood are not really unusual; we live a block away from the police station and they often park on our street to do their paperwork before heading in. This officer, however, was standing on the sidewalk, looking at something further up. And I could have sworn, as he stood there, that I saw him reach up to his holstered pistol and unsnap the strap over it. This made me a bit nervous, and instead of driving past him, I elected to make a U-turn from my parking space and go the other direction. As I did, I had clear view up the sidewalk where the policeman was looking.

And there, indeed, stood a juvenile pelican. Brown head and back, white belly. I really should believe Gareth now, when he tells me these things.

As we went out to Main Street and passed the police station, I saw an Animal Contral truck exiting the police parking lot; I'll bet it was on the way to pick the bird up. There has been some sicko recently deliberately breaking the wings of pelicans off Bolsa Chica, close to here, and I wonder if this bird was injured; however, there have been a lot of hungry young birds recently struggling to find food recently as well - the linked blog cites young birds also being found in unexpected places searching for food, a bit farther down.

Still, I wonder what the officer unstrapping his gun thought the pelican was going to do? They can't bite (very hard, anyway), and their long beaks are too unwieldy to even peck very efficiently - that's not what they're designed for. They might buffet you with their wings a bit, I suppose, but I don't think they could really injure you. They might damage you if they dive bombed you from straight overhead, but they not going to attack from the ground.

Went to the Aquarium late in the afternoon, and after it closed, spent a while walking around the "harbor." This is a little old tug that appears to be undergoing some renovation, but in the the meantime, I thought I'd snap it to post to the Flickr groups, Sad Boats and Workboats and Tugs (I love to go to those pages and just turn on the slideshow).

Rainbow Harbor
Long Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
05 October 2008

( I think I took the majority of pics this month today... )