Visit the kelpforest....

My work family (and people here do seem like a family, especially those of us who've been here a long time) not only made a donation in my dad's name to the American Heart Association, but also sent us a tree seed from Seeds of Life. It's a Canyon Live Oak, a native Californian, as he was, so it's very appropriate. They even grow around Oxnard and Moorpark, where he was born and grew up.

We planted it in its biodegradable pot a couple of weeks ago, and the acorn is sprouting! Very exciting!

I don't know if we're going to be able to plant it here at the house, once it gets big. I'm wondering if maybe the Shipley Nature Center in Central Park might let us plant it there? Then it would still be here in HB, and we'd have a nearer place to go and visit.

Well, I have a cough I believe my dear offspring or possibly my spouse passed on to me, thank you so much. Chest congestion mostly - thank goodness for no stuffy head, although head hurts when coughing. Mostly scratchy throat and lung boogers. Yuck.

Had a furlough on Monday, the kids were off school for Lincoln's B-day, and it's my brother's usual day off, so we decided to go to Knott's Berry Farm - the annual passes there are about 1/2 the cost of Dismalland - which we've been doing off n' on since Angus was two, and we thought it'd be nice to do something different for a year. Turns out they're on a calendar year, not date to date, so they're only good until the end of December, but it's early in the year, so that's fine. No blackout days either.

It's probably been twenty years since I was last there and wow, has it changed. It's been owned for the last 13 years by the same company that runs Cedar Point back in Ohio (they also own Great America up in the Bay Area), so the emphasis has really been put on the roller coasters. The quiet reflecting pond surrounded by trees that used to be between the entrance and Fiesta Village is now a concrete-lined pool with a bunch of rollercoaster pylons in it. What I really noticed all over was missing trees; the whole park used to be surrounded by large eucalyptus, which may be understandably gone. A few years ago there was a plague of lurp insects (a type of scale) that killed a lot of them all over southern CA. Eucalyptus are not native tree here anyway, but large old trees are still pleasant, and the place just felt very open. I do like roller coasters, but in places I'd rather have trees.

Most of the ghost town is still there, although the Mystery Shack is missing - I always liked that one with all the optical illusions. We stopped there to have a snack, and I looked at Avalon, whose eyes had started watering. She gradually went downhill the rest of the afternoon, and by the time we got home, she went straight to bed.

She and I both took a sick day yesterday, and lounged on my bed watching The Princess and the Frog, which I'd missed, and Mushi-Shi, which is a lovely series, but so quiet and soothing if I'm tired at all, I will doze off watching it, in spite of my being interested. I bought a Roku unit at Fry's a couple of weeks ago, and I swear, we've watched more Netflix in the time since than in the last 2-3 years! Quite handy. I do wish I could change the language and watch subtitles though.

Back at work today, and am realizing it's only the 16th but how few work days are left in the month! Ack, where does it go!

The kids demanded Slurpees, so off we went to find a 7-11. While there, I remembered there was a geocache in this parking lot. Even though we didn't have the GPS with us, I thought I might know where it was, and indeed, we found it. Sackboy signed the log too. I would have taken his pic with the cache but there was too much birdshit everwhere.

At the 7-11
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
23 June 2010

( +2 )

I had no idea the park I grew up going to and that I now take my kids to - a few blocks down the street from me - had been immortalized in a Zippy the Pinhead comic strip. Ten years ago, even. I used to read Zippy all the time in college, not so much lately...

Zippy - Hunting in Huntington Beach

Found at Waymarking. The poster there refers to them as a semi-circle and a saddle, but we always thought of them as the "Swiss Cheese" and the "Tent."

( Avalon and a friend from a couple of years ago... )

Slightly foggy evening's walk down to the pier with the fry.

Pier
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
27 September 2008

( Blast from the past... )

This weekend was the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour; a fundraiser in memory of a local gardener/nursery owner. She started the tour herself as a way to raise money for a local women's shelter - after she passed away, others continued putting it on. It's all free; each home has a donation jar that they ask you donate to. And some of the gardens are just breathtaking. A woman in my garden club particpated in it last year, and said she spent 9 hours a day for two months in her yard getting ready for it! There were 48 homes on the tour, but we only visited six, which was plenty.

Seal Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
04 May 2008

( a few more... )

This is a building about 10 stories tall, on the property of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. It's bigger than it looks in this photo, as it's probably a hundred yards or so behind the fence in the forground and now appears to be surrounded by naval personnel RV storage. When I was a kid, my dad worked for Rockwell International across the street, and this and several other gargantuan corrugated iron buildings nearby helped with part of the Apollo space program in the 60's/early 70's (although I can't remember now what purpose they served) for which Rockwell was a contractor. I remember going on a tour or two there when I was in grade school, when they had Open House events. Those are actually sliding doors on the front of that thing, although they haven't opened in decades and my father thinks they must have rusted shut by now.

And now Rockwell has nothing to do with space - sort of sad.

Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station
Seal Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
04 April 2008

4/22/08 - Edit : Shortly after posting this I received this email -

Hi Senoritafish.  Google News sent me a link to yesterday's blog entry about the weapons station.  FYI, the building in the picture was used to construct the second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket.  Those huge doors actually still work, and we very occasionally "exercise them" to make sure that they do.  Never know when they might come in handy!  Normally though, the doors on this building stay shut.  Cheers!

Public Affairs Officer
Seal Beach Weapons Station

Whatever they did a month or two ago apparently wasn't enough; now they used this machine to dig out the entire alley two feet deep for two blocks.

( Like this... )

The church a block from my house puts on a Drive-Thru Nativity every year; they have since I was a kid. They set up all these little scenes in the parking lot and you drive your car from one to the next. Kind of corny, but I like how they use the parking lot plantings as part of the scenery. We're pretty agnostic, but I figure the kids should at least know the stories.

( Angels, asses, and sheep. And sheep's asses... )

This is one of the older buildings downtown, a block from the beach. It still houses an antique store and some apartments; at one point the complex of connected buildings appeared to be some kind of commune. I think author James P. Blaylock had this building in mind when he wrote Winter Tides (the story is set in Huntington Beach, although I don't think it's quite as good as The Last Coin, which is set in Seal Beach, the next town up the road). There has been major reconstruction downtown, and this is one of the few, sort of historical buildings left. As a mater of fact everything else on the block has been razed and there is now a parking structure butting up against the antique store.

The Hydrangea bush is over 80 years old, although a few people in my garden club have said it's over a hundred.

( close-up )