Visit the kelpforest....

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.

So Gareth wanted this shirt from Old Navy last night. Sometimes he's not very self-confident and other times he's just the opposite. I asked if anyone said anything about it at school and he reccounted the following with his best bud Connor:

Connor: Well, that's certainly not true!

Gareth: Nope! It's an understatement!

Clothes make the man, I guess?

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."

Lunar landing

( ...and a photo... )

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.

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.

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

( goofing around... )

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

( ? )

We found out this week that Gareth's mission model had been entered by the school in the county Youth Expo at the Orange County Fairgrounds. That's his, closest to the hay bale on the lowest level. The one just behind him is a classmate's; she decided to make hers out of gingerbread, with red licorice for the roof tiles - pretty creative, but it was looking a bit tired and crumbly after all the travel. I brought along the Big Camera, but unfortunately forgot the spare battery; after a few rabbit and chicken pics in the 4-H section, it died, so had to rely on my phone.

OC Youth Expo
Costa Mesa CA
Kyocera Switchbach phone camera
18 April 2009

By the way - the Fairgrounds really needs to label their entrances for events a little better. There was a Pet Expo going on at the same time, which took up most of the grounds and for which there was a $12 admission. There were signs on the main street for the Youth Expo (which was free), but no other direction. We parked at OCC, the community college across the street, and walked to what we thought would be the entrance, but both the main fairground entrances were to the Pet Expo. By the time we figured out the entrance was in the back, near the Equestrian Center, we had had to walk all the way around the Swap Meet (also going on, and charging admission so we couldn't take a short cut through it), and up Newport Blvd., nearly a complete circuit of the entire Fairgrounds. Which I wouldn't have minded so much, but it was HOT!!! and I hadn't brought any water with me. Plus three kids who weren't necessarily wearing walking shoes. Also, when we finally found the correct entrance, there was no sidewalk and very little allowance for pedestrians; I did not feel real comfortable with three kids, dodging cars to walk in the driveway.

( other youth crafts, animals and balloons! )