Visit the kelpforest....

While getting gas this morning...

I'd always kind of wondered how Google Maps got its Street View pics. This morning I was driving to work and, trying to be a good driver and constantly keep my eyes moving, noticed something odd in my rear view mirror. A small car with a very large Thingie...

( and unfortunately, then I was a very poor driver because I tried to take a picture of it... )

In the parking lot at Knott's Berry Farm...



( and up in LA... )

Dude, when your basketball shorts are so long they're about touching the tops of your socks, they're not b-ball shorts anymore.

They're palazzo pants.

(But don't take my word for it. I wear purple Crocs and men's Hawaiian shirts...)

On the way to work this morning I was behind a bright yellow Can-Am bike, made more noticeable to me because the rider's headgear, a Shoei helmet that matched the bike, was the same one runsamuck has. From the front, I always thought these things look kind of cool, and that they are more stable when turning than the typical three-wheeler with the two tires in the back, is also a plus. However, following behind it, all I could think of was someone riding a lawnmower down the street.

And while we're on the subject of vehicles, what's the deal with the white roof on a Ford Flex? "Oh, what I really wanted was a Mini Cooper, but I just have too much crap/family I have to haul around..."

There was something else that occurred to me while driving to work today (more than once - runsamuck had two root canals, so I came home to pick up the kids from school and fill his prescriptions because he was too hurty), but of course once I sit down in front of a keyboard, it's completely gone.

Every time I hear the radio commercial for that surgical weight loss device while I'm driving, I hear it as "Get the Lap Dance!"

And what the heck is with the announcement at the end going "Take this opportunity NOW before it's taken away by Health Insurance Reform!" Didn't know it had anything to do with that.

Well not quite "seen while driving" - the LJ tag I have this marked with - but a license plate frame I saw in the parking lot while walking back to my car.

"...And then Buffy staked Edward. The End."

Not a member of either fandom referred to here (guess I'm more of an old-school Bram Stoker Dracula fan), but it gave me quite a chuckle, nevertheless. And then I swore because I'd gone over to Ralph's to grab some lunch and brought neither camera nor phone-with-camera with me. One of mylife_onceaday's scavenger hunt items for May was "bumper sticker" - not exactly the same, but at least it's a phrase on stuck on a car...

I saw a very sweet thing driving to work this morning. I made a right turn from Seal Beach Blvd. onto Lampson to head to my office, and ahead of me, saw a police car stopped in the right lane with its lights flashing. At first I thought someone was being pulled over, but then I noticed the cop walking around his car to the lawn. I was kind of trapped behind him for a few minutes as car behind me were all going around, and it was then I noticed the puddle in the gutter next to the police car contained about six ducklings. Mama duck was anxiously going back and forth on the grass above them, and the officer was trying to help the babies get up the curb to mom. Although every time he got on one side of them, they would run the other direction. The last I saw before I finally was able to move was that he had gotten some sort of flat object out of the car to either herd them a bit more effieciently, or to place against the curb so they could hop up. I don't know how it worked out, but it was nice to see him stopping traffic to help out the wildlife, at least.

In other encounters with local law enforcement, Saturday evening I turned in a intoxicated driver. Angus, Avalon and I were going to check out a nearby geocache, but when I turned onto Goldenwest, I noticed a black Silverado pickup in front of me that weaved in the lane, then drifted left and the tires bounced off the curb of the island in the middle of the street. Then he went the other direction. I decided to keep him in front of me so I could keep an eye on him. He contined weaving and was having serious problems staying in his lane. As it happened we both got into the same lane to turn left on Garfield. He sat for awhile after the light turned green - all the other cars had gone - and then turned so wide he almost hit the curb again, narrowly missing a pedstrian who holding his child and waiting to cross the street. That's when I decided he needed to be reported. I called 911, and I guess I must have sounded pretty excited, because they told me I was talking too fast and to calm down. The officer said not to do anything crazy to keep up with him, but to try and keep him in sight; someone was being sent after him. They kept me on the phone until a motorcycle caught up with us at the Warner/Edwards signal (where he did the same thing as in the left turn lane). Thereupon, they put their lights on and pulled him over on the other side of the signal. I was instructed to pull onto a residential street in the officer wanted to talk to me. After waiting for about 15 minutes, I called the number they'd told me to, and a female officer said they had my cell phone number and I was free to leave. Made it too dark to get to the geocache, but we had a nice walk nevertheless. The officer who'd pulled the guy over called me later in the evening and said the guy had been "heavily medicated" and shouldn't have been driving at all. Seriously, I hear about pedestrians and bicylists getting hit by people driving off the road quite often, and the thought has crossed my mind while I'm waiting at a bus stop with semis whooshing by at 50 mph not six feet from where I'm sitting. It's a scary thought. Keep your kids outta the street, Mama duck.

Since I was a kid, this intersection near my kids' schools was controlled by a four-way stop sign. About three years ago, it was deemed busy enough to put in this signal (I would guess because so many parents drive their kids to school nowadays, rather than have them walk). To this day, when driving up this street on my way home from work, I may slow and almost stop at a green light, or stop at a red light, then almost immediately start to cross if nobody's coming, before I remember it's a light now. I know it's a signal, yet "stop sign" seemed to have gotten hard-wired into my brain. This will likely get me killed someday.

Red light-Green light
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
24 June 2009

Took the kids to a roller skating birthday party, but only got pics of kids stuffing their faces with pizza. Thought I at least got feet in skates, but turns out I didn't (maybe I left the lens cap on). And I was teaching them to skate and remembering how to do so myself, so didn't take that many to begin with. So instead you get the tacky furniture store around the corner from Fry's, where we stopped off afterward. I think Elvis was life-size; it looked like the guitar was real, as it was all wrapped up in plastic to protect against the elements.

Elvis and friends
Fountain Valley CA
Canon EOS 1000D
21 March 2009