Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Lucinda is going to be eight next week, and she’s now old enough to understand what it means that we have no cable TV. And she’s been lobbying for it for several months now.

So being the doting parents that we are, we agreed to get it for her. I think we must be remembering things we felt we were denied as children, and we figured that we could spring for it.

We signed up for DirecTV, which seemed to have the best deal for what we wanted. Or at least what Lucinda wanted.

On the other hand, this also means I get to watch “The Simpsons” again. I’ve been missing them ever since KTTV replaced their transmitter several years ago. The old transmitter made a decent signal at our house, but the new one has a more directional beam, and it goes right over our house because we’re too close to the mountain. Since we got the satellite thingy, I figure I should get some enjoyment from it, too.

So let the games begin. Can you hear our IQs dropping?

We went and had dinner with my aunt and uncle and cousins this evening for Chinese New Year. After dinner, Lucinda wanted to go into one of the stores there. It was filled with Hello Kitty and Monokuro Boo and lots of other things I’d never seen before.

But a couple of items made me stop in my tracks and say, “?” The first had Betty Boop and said, “You Will Be Relieved When You Can See Your Favorites”. And of course, my favorite was the scissors with “Welcome to Pig Pig Family” on them. Offhand, I’d guess these are just more examples of Engrish.

Last year, Cathy found a little article in the Auto Club magazine about a school near San Francisco that trains guide dogs for the blind. It said that they had an open house that we could visit. She loves dogs, and she wanted to take a trip up there to go to it. I thought that surely in a city the size of Los Angeles, there must be something comparable. So I went looking, and found Guide Dogs of America. It’s in Sylmar in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley.

They have a graduation and open house every three months there, so we made plans to go to one. And today was the day.

The graduation involved the class of dogs that are being given to their new masters, as well as the people who fostered the dogs as puppies. The puppy raisers do the basic training and socialization of the dogs, and then some specialized trainers teach the dog how to be a guide dog before they are matched up with blind people in need of dogs. It’s a pretty amazing process, and it was very obvious that the blind people were very happy to have the dogs to help them. Apparently, the entire service is free to the blind, and it’s largely supported by donations and volunteers.

We got to meet a lot of dogs in training. The foster families are encouraged to bring them to events like these so that they can get used to the environment. We also got some information about possibly having them do a presentation at Lucinda’s school, and also how to sign up to foster a puppy. We may or may not do that soon, but we probably will some day.

Friday was “Wear your favorite sports team’s jersey to school” day at Lucinda’s school. But we don’t really follow sports in our house. So we were kind of at a loss at first. The only sport we’ve ever gone to watch is bicycle racing. So Lucinda decided to wear the Navigators Cycling hat she got last year when we went to see the Tour of California. I had a Navigators jersey, so she wore that, too. So she had a team after all.

Cathy and Lucinda were decorating the house for Valentine’s Day. Lucinda went around and stuck little hearts on just about everything that didn’t run away. Being that Ripley is 12 and very mellow, she didn’t run away.

Today we took Lucinda out to Santa Monica to Magicopolis. They have an afternoon show on Saturdays.

Inside the theater, I was glad to see that the building had been retrofitted for seismic safety. And in between the steel beams, they had had various famous people sign their names on the bricks. That was kind of fun. David Bowie’s note was just behind our seats.

The show was a lot of fun. They did most of the standard magician’s tricks, but with their own spin. The show stars Steve Spill and his wife Bozena Sparrow, and part of the act centers on her being from Eastern Europe. In one bit, she comes out on stage with a box labeled “Acme” and talks in her fractured English about how she ordered a trick from Acme Magic. It is the ‘disappearing bandanna’, but then she pulls out a banana. She follows the intructions, folding it over and totally squishing it. Then she makes it disappear. This was a new twist on an old trick.

Overall, this show was a lot of fun. They also have a little magic shop in the front of the theater. Lucinda got a set of foam balls, complete with instructions on how to do a few tricks with them.

After the show let out, we decided to walk down to the beach. It was a nice day, and it was only a few blocks away. When we got there, Lucinda ran around in the surf and collected shells until the sun went down. Then, on the way out, we saw a seagull resting on the sand next to an empty malt-liquor can. We figured he was sleeping it off.

At the top of the bluff, I got a nice picture of the sunset over the beach. Then we went home. It’s days like this where I just marvel at how much I like living in Los Angeles. It’s really and truly my most favorite place.

Today we went down to Long Beach to see the Russian submarine and the Queen Mary. Cathy and I had been there to see the submarine once when Lucinda was a baby. Now that she’s big enough to climb through it, she wanted to see it. And we hadn’t been on the Queen Mary tour since 1988. When we got married, we spent our honeymoon playing tourist in Los Angeles.

The submarine is tied up next to the Queen Mary. There is a little building with an exhibit and gift shop by the entrance. They were playing Russian martial music, which the sign said they have available on CD. Just in case you’re missing the old days of the Soviet Union.

We took the tour through the submarine. Lucinda was amused at how small it was inside, but climbing through small spaces is easy for a kid.

After the submarine, we took the tour of the Queen Mary. It was interesting, although I kind of think the computer in the radio room was not original equipment.

We stopped for lunch at one of the onboard restaurants. They had had an exhibit of Hurrell glamour photographs of Hollywood stars from the 1930s on the walls. That was interesting, and it also fit with the whole art-deco theme on the Queen Mary.

Continuing the tour, we headed up to the bow. Lucinda was amazed at how heavy the anchor chain links were. We also saw a pelican flying among the seagulls overhead, which is a little unusual. Then we headed down to the engine room. I loved the 1930s control panels. We also saw the propeller, which was interesting, since it’s something that’s not normally visible on ship like this.

Of course, I also took a bunch of pictures of Lucinda. They are in her photo album.

I woke up early this morning to the sound of the B-2 bomber circling overhead. Normally, this might be cause for some alarm, but today it just meant that the Rose Parade was about to start.

Being an airplane geek, I got the ladder and climbed up on the roof for a better view. I got a pretty good shot of it when it made the turn at Colorado and Sierra Madre. The planes banked over towards my house, so I could see them pretty well, even if they were a mile away.

A bit later, we all walked down to watch part of the parade. As always, there was a tremendous crush of humanity there, and since I don’t like crowds, it was somewhat unpleasant. But it was still worth it to see the über-geeky Stormtroopers in the parade. I don’t really understand this, since the Stormtroopers were just about the least sympathetic characters in “Star Wars”. They were just anonymous agents of evil. It was also funny to see them in the park after the parade, eating In-N-Out burgers while still in costume.

We walked back home to see the horses. They always park the horse trailers in our neighborhood. Along the way we saw a guy shoveling horse shit off the street. I always marvel at how they manage to keep our streets pretty clean despite the number of horses.

On the way back to the house, we stopped to pet a llama. That was a new experience. Its fur was very soft.

Next, we walked up the street to where the horse trailers were parked. I had a bag of carrots, so Lucinda, Claire and Rose could have some treats for the horses. We got to pet the miniature horses from the “Petite Elite” group, which were all very cute.

We also visited with some of the other horse groups. The girls got to sit on top of one of the big horses so I could take pictures of them. We hung around the horses until the carrots were all gone.

It was a fun day.

Our little puppy Bella died last night. We have no idea what happened to her, but yesterday morning Cathy found her burrowed into the cushions of the couch. She was alive, but comatose. Cathy took her to the emergency vet and they said that she appeared to be suffering from liver failure.

When our regular vet opened, Cathy took Bella up there, and they put her on an IV to help her blood pressure and they confirmed the diagnosis. They said that it looked like she had eaten something that poisoned her. They kept her there overnight, but they said that there wasn’t really anything they could do. She would either recover or die. And she died last night.

We’re all very sad about this. Bella was a sweet and loving dog, and we’re going to miss her a lot.

When Cathy took Bella to the vet, Lucinda told us that she didn’t want to talk about it, so she doesn’t know yet that Bella died. We think she probably knows on some level, but she just can’t deal with it yet.

This is a very sad day for us.

Corporations put out an annual report. We put out our holiday letter. I always see lots of hits in the server logs around this time of year from searches on “Christmas letters”. So just in case you’re curious, here’s the condensed version of our year.