I just felt a slight jerk and heard a creak in the house structure, here in Redondo Beach. About 08:30 PST. Anyone else in SoCal feel anything?
Category Archives: General
Watching It Like A Hawk
My friend (and partner in Evoloterra crime) Bill Simon had a rare visitation in his west LA back yard on Veterans Day.
Fall
…is the only season that I miss in my home state. Springs are nice, but they’re basically southern Cal standard. Summer, while it can have some nice days, tends to be hot and humid. I don’t mind cold and snow per se, but southeast Michigan winters are unpredictable (a white Chistmas is hit or miss), and generally on the edge of freezing, with slush, slick ice, and ugly mud. But fall… The closest thing I can find to it in CA is to go up into the Sierra with the aspens and sycamores. And south Florida? You’re joking, right?
A Dilemma
We bought a bunch of wine at Bevmo the other week, because they were having a sale. Buy one bottle, and get another of the same thing for a nickel. Great, right?
Well, two of the bottles we bought on that basis were a nice Italian red. We drank one a couple weeks go with a home-made spaghetti sauce. Tonight, I’m making a frozen pizza. I’m tarting it up with mushrooms and red peppers, and leftover chicken, but it’s basically a thin-crust Albertson’s margherita with the extras that I’m adding.
Here’s the problem. We usually like Chianti, but we don’t have any, and all we have is this other Italian bottle. But I don’t know which bottle it is. Is it the one we paid full price for, or the one that only cost five cents? There’s no way to know, because I didn’t mark them when we bought them. If it’s the full-price one, I’m not sure I want to waste it on a frozen pizza, whereas if it’s only a nickel, it’s a bargain. So should I go with it, or the Trader Joe’s Coastal Cab?
Doing The Best That You Can Do
…but sometimes, it just isn’t enough. I had drinks with Mark (and Iowahawk) a couple weeks ago. That had to be emotionally devastating. And my hat is eternally off to the people who do it for a living.
[Early afternoon update]
One other take-home message from this. Please, folks. Buckle up.
Rescue An Animal
This looks like a good cause.
A Record Of The Debaucherie
Iowahawk documents his wild weekend in LA, including the soiree in Hollywood with your’s truly. Playboy bunnies, lots of playboy bunnies, are involved.
Another Good Thing About LA Living
Pippin apples. I could never find them in Florida, and they’re my favorite. Tart, crispy, and they make great pies. No need to add lemon. Or at least not as much. I’m munching on one as I type this.
Also, Bevmo. For years I’ve thought that there was a market for varietal apple juices and ciders. And lo and behold, this weekend I scored a six-pack of Granny Smith cider, 5% alcohol content. Better than beer for watching a fall football game.
Trapped
We’ve had critters in the yard in Redondo Beach for the past seventeen-plus years that we’ve owned the house. The ones that we’ve seen (besides squirrels and birds) were mostly possums (including a juvie that wandered into the house one day that was a chore to catch, and one that died out in the yard by the spa and smelled to high heaven). Back when I had a backyard artificial stream running, we heard a growl out the bedroom window one night, back in the nineties, and we shot a flashlight out to see a couple masked faces looking back at us.
When we moved in a couple weeks ago, the new next-door neighbors told us that they thought we had a raccoon nest somewhere, and we heard animals running around on the roof at night.
I called animal control, who told me that I could borrow a trap, with a deposit, but they didn’t have any available, because there was a waiting list. They also said we could call a private trapper. So I did. The first night, he left four traps, and we got a possum. The second night we caught two neighborhood cats. He came by yesterday to release the cats, and take the possum to release it in the wild (somewhere up in the Santa Monicas). The traps were reset and baited (with cat food), and this morning, we had the coon above, and another possum.
Where there’s one coon, I’m guessing there is at least one more, judging from the sounds on the roof. Unfortunately, we’re starting to run up a tab, because he charges fifty bucks per visit, and a hundred per animal taken away. I’m thinking that I should just buy my own traps at this point.
[Evening update]
Between the coons, possums and cats, maybe I should just get some more traps, and set up a neighborhood menagerie. I could charge admission to the kids. I imagine there’s some RB zoning law against it, though.
[Update a few minutes later]
I just checked prices on line, and traps are less than a hundred bucks each, including shipping. I think that’s the way to go before I pay him any more, assuming that Animal Control will come get my catch.
[Monday morning update]
Got another coon last night. I think I’m going to call it quits for now, and if the problems continue, I’ll do it with my own traps. This wasn’t in our budget.
An Existential Question
This is a sign I saw on the road from Las Cruces to Tucson.
So. What does it mean?
Is it a description of what might be? That there is a possibility of dust storms? Here, and now, but not other wheres or whens? Or is it (as we were reprimanded by our mothers or English teachers) simply an expression of permission for dust storms to exist? By whom? Our betters in Santa Fe, or Phoenix? These are state-sanctioned dust storms? And they’re not permitted elsewhere?
Or is it more of a Heisenbergian deal? That dust storms simultaneously both exist and don’t exist, and which is the case is determined only when one collapses the wave function by driving down the road to Lordsburg?
I’ll never know for sure, of course, but I can say that I never saw a dust storm on the trip.
Next up (or perhaps other things in between) — a road sign that I liked a lot more, on the American autobahn. There are a few things that the Germans got right.