Stan’s Obligatory Blog

On Sunday afternoon, Susan and I went out to Pomona to the Los Angeles County Fair. Neither of us had been to it in years, so we thought it might be a fun thing to do.

We saw lots of animals, which is perhaps a bit surprising, since there is very little agriculture going on in Los Angeles County. On the other hand, ‘very little’ is not ‘none’, so there are farmers here, and they have crops and animals and such. So that was fun and interesting.

On the other hand, they did have a booth selling body jewelry, which is fitting for L.A.

We went to see the crafts and food, too. After looking at the baked goods, I’m totally going to enter my perfect blueberry muffins next year.

We had some pretty good barbecue for dinner, and then we got ice cream from Dr. Bob’s. It was a fun afternoon.

So I was out at lunchtime, walking to the store to get some food for dinner. And I felt the ground move. At first, I thought it was a small earthquake, since it didn’t feel like much. But then I saw the big crane at the construction site on San Pasqual swaying. And I immediately turned around and headed back to the office.

When I got there, I realized that the quake was much larger than I’d thought. And I was greeted by this scene of chaos and devastation in my office. Oh the penguinity…

The Los Angeles Times today reports that California is considering ‘pay as you drive’ car insurance.

I’ve long thought that this was a good idea. I’ve only driven about 1,000 miles a year for the last five years. I’ve even found cobwebs on my dashboard. Yet I’m still paying the same amount for insurance, regardless of how little I’m driving.

So bring it on. This sounds like a Good Thing.

This afternoon, Susan and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Bank of America is having a promotion where having a BofA credit card is good for free admission there on the first weekend of the month.

We went to see the “Los Angelenos” exhibit. For some reason, the opportunity to see the art collection of Cheech Marin was just too good to pass up.

Afterward, we went to see the Contemporary Art building. That was interesting. We saw a lot of nice art, and some pieces by famous recent artists as well. I think the giant balloon animal was our favorite.

Before we left the park, we took a walk around the tar pits. As always, I’m amazed at plants that grow right in the middle of the tar.

On Friday night, I took Lucinda and her friend to see the fireworks show in South Pasadena. We’ve been to this before, and it’s usually a pretty good show.

We got there and took our places on the artificial turf. That was a little weird. Sitting on fake grass that had fake dirt underneath it. The fake dirt was made of ground-up tires. So it was a totally un-natural experience. But it was soft and pretty comfortable. So I guess that’s just how it goes.

The show was good. They didn’t waste any time. As soon as it was dark, they started up. And right after the climax at the end, the lights came on, and everyone went home. No wasted time or motion.

It was a fun time.

On Sunday afternoon, Susan and I went over to Beverly Hills to visit the galleries at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two current exhibits are:

• Ink and Paint: The Art of Hand-Drawn Animation
• Pulling Back the Drapes: Set Decoration Revealed

I’ve been to these sorts of things before, and they’re always fun to see.

The animation exhibit was interesting, and we got to see a lot of original artwork from cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s. And upstairs, we saw parts of sets of quite a few recent movies. We saw Indiana Jones‘s desk. Too bad he was denied tenure. We also saw The Chief’s desk from “Get Smart“, got our picture in the cave with the Mark 1 suit from “Iron Man“, and Susan poked around the props from “The Spiderwick Chronicles“.

It was a fun little afternoon, and we finished off with dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.

Just a couple of parrot pictures. There is a large colony of feral parrots that live somewhere nearby, and I see them around my house most days. So I tried taking a few pictures of them just for fun.

As always, my camera rocks.

Today was the media event for the start of the Southern California Shakeout. This is an exercise to see if we can collectively deal with a M7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This is the ‘Big One‘ that they have been telling us about for some years now.

They had an animation showing the waves traveling across southern California in real time, showing just how long the earthquake would last. It was impressive. Most earthquakes we’ve dealt with recently are over in seconds. The Big One will last something like three minutes.

Have I mentioned lately that I really like my job?

On Friday night, Susan and I went to Griffith park to do one of the evening hikes. Tonight’s was up Glendale Peak, which is one of the small mountains in the park. I’ve done this one before, but it’s a pleasant hike. And it’s also a good way for us to get some weight-bearing exercise.

On the way to the start of the hike, we saw a lone coyote hanging around in one of the parking lots in the park. On the way up, we saw a small frog in a little puddle on the side of the trail. And a bit later, we saw a couple of deer running around just above us on the hill.

By the time we were close to the top, it was dusk, and so we got a picture with the city lights and Griffith Observatory in the background.

The trip down was nice, since it was cooling off by then. And the nearly-full moon was plenty of light to see by.

It was a fun evening.

After the bike ride this morning, Susan and I went to the JPL Open House. Bein’ nerds and all, this was great fun.

We saw models of the three generations of Mars rovers, from the tiny Sojourner to the current Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the relatively huge Mars Science Laboratory rover. They also had photos of Mars in 3-D. They gave all of us anaglyph 3-D glasses to use for viewing these.

We got our picture taken with the Sergeant missile. We also had a laugh at the “Rover Xing” signs. One building had a small exhibit of art projected on blocks of aerogel. And outside they had a rover demonstration where the rover drove over kids lying on the ground.

Finally, we got our picture taken in 3-D on Mars. It was a fun afternoon.