Stan’s Obligatory Blog

On Saturday, we had to go down to San Diego for the day. My cousin’s girlfriend is having a baby, and Cathy agreed to organize the baby shower for her. So Cathy and Lucinda went over there, and I visited with my father. We got together with my uncle and cousin, and the four of us went out to lunch.

Since we were going out, my father suggested going to Prado in Balboa Park. Apparently, it’s his favorite restaurant. When we got there, they said it would be a 40 minute wait, so we sat down in the bar. I had heard that my old friend Laura was working there. I wasn’t completely clear on what she did there, but I figured I’d ask someone while we were waiting. But then I looked up, and there she was. Turns out she runs the place. She got us a table and told the staff to take care of us.

We ordered a squid appetizer, and Laura sent us the Kobe beef sushi appetizer, too. Both were very good. The main dishes we got were all great, too. The food was good, and the presentation was great.

At the end, Laura stopped by our table, so we asked her about what desserts were good. So we got the chocolate tart, the mango bombe, and the chocolate souffle cake. All were excellent.

Laura only was able to visit with us a little bit. I could see that she has a demanding job. Even when she stopped by our table, I could see that she was watching the whole restaurant like a hawk. She saw everything, and she was keeping track of it all. It was exhausting just to watch. And she does it all in four-inch heels. Wow.

But it was a good meal. The food was great, and the service was even better. And it was a treat to see Laura. So we had a very nice time.

By the time we finished with lunch, the baby shower was over, so we all headed home. On the way back, we took the back way through Temecula just to avoid the traffic. It was a long day, but it was still fun.

It’s System Administrator Appreciation Day. But I can’t say it better than Andrew Leonard did in Salon:

“If we understand contemporary globalization as a process that is in part driven by the emergence of a global network of computers, then it is no understatement to say that sysadmins make the world go ’round.”

Anyway, it’s novel to have a day that’s dedicated to my occupation. So be nice to me, of I’ll do something to your email…

With all the excitement about the new “Simpsons” movie, we are seeing Matt Groening everywhere. He was on “The Daily Show”, he was in last week’s L.A. Weekly, and he’s in today’s Los Angeles Times. And we had to marvel about how he’s really hit it big. Back before “The Simpsons“, he drew “Life in Hell“, which ran in the L.A. Reader and later in the L.A. Weekly. We were big fans of “Life in Hell”, and we went to several of his signings for the “Life in Hell” books. We have all the early books signed by him, complete with a drawing of a rabbit in each one.

I recently found this calendar that he’d signed for us back in 1988. This was when he was doing the animations for “The Tracy Ullman Show”, but just before the debut of “The Simpsons”. So for once, maybe my pack-rat tendencies paid off.

Today when I was on my way home, I had a WTF moment. I was riding my bike when I heard the sound of a small object hitting the pavement. I looked back and saw my phone lying in the street.

We recently got new phones, and since the new one is smaller than my old one, I got a new holster for it. The old one was open at the top, and the swivel on the clip allowed it to turn upside down and dump the phone out. This new one is a better design because it has a little velcro strap over the top to keep the phone from falling out.

So whose bright idea was it to have a snap on the other end so the bottom can open up and drop the phone on the ground? WTF.

Today’s ride was one that didn’t really go anywhere in particular. We just went in a big circle around the San Gabriel Valley. There wasn’t much notable about it. Andre showed up and got a flat before we even left the park. Other than that, there wasn’t much to take pictures of. Still, it was a fun time.

Here’s the route, as recorded by Gaurav’s bike computer: http://www.allsportgps.com/Data/ActivityDisplay.aspx?tripId=76717

50 miles.
cycling

It’s time for the July edition of the Body Art Expo. This is the big tattoo show at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. They promote it pretty heavily, and it usually gets a good turnout.

I usually go to these things on a Saturday, since that’s the big party day at them. But this time, I couldn’t go then, so I went on Friday night. This is usually a little slower and a little less crowded. But that’s all right.

I saw several people I’ve met before at these things. So we got to compare and see who got what new tattoos since the last time. That’s always fun.

Shannon had a booth there this time, so I was able to visit her, and also got to see Amy eating a big tub of popcorn. If you knew Amy, you’d know that that’s totally out of character for her. But she was desperate for food.

Overall, it was a pretty fun time, even though it was a Friday night.

Is it weird that I sometimes find the most entertaining things on the L.A. Times Obituary page?

Today, we have the story of Shirley Slesinger Laswell. Her first husband had bought the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh from A.A. Milne in 1930. When he died, she supported herself by designing and selling Pooh merchandise. But in 1961, Walt Disney came and made a deal for marketing Pooh, and agreed to pay her royalties.

“The battle over Pooh’s money pot had its genesis in a 1981 trip to Disney World in Florida, Lasswell told The Times. Lasswell, a self-describe ‘Pooh shopaholic’ noticed that she wasn’t receiving royalties for much of the merchandise she bought — and hired a lawyer.”

So the battle was joined.

“More than three judges and a dozen law firms were involved in the breach-of-contract suit. Disney was chastised for destroying more than 40 boxes that contained Pooh papers, including one marked ‘Winnie the Pooh, Legal Problems’.”

Read the whole story at the Times web site.

Route map

Today’s lunchtime ride was the Lida loop again. We like the two-mile downhill at the end. That’s great on a hot summer day.

The only funny thing I saw was the house for sale with the big banner advertising “LOW PAYMENTS/PAGOS BAJOS”. You don’t see that often around here.

Right after that, I got a flat. So I sat down in the shade of a building and fixed it, while Eric took the picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

Finally, it was time for the nice, long downhill back to the office. Along the way, I picked up two more abandoned couches.

It was a very nice ride, even with the flat tire.

The year before last, when we were on vacation at Lake Tahoe, we found my parents’ old slide projector in the closet at the house. There was a carousel in it filled with slides of bike races I rode back in 1978. Included were the big races in Hartford and Fitchburg on July 4th weekend, and also the races from Super Week in Milwaukee.

This year, Cathy took these slides to Ritz Camera and got them all scanned onto a DVD for me for Father’s Day. So I’ve been going through them and sorting them out. Today I put up the first set. This is from the Hartford Criterium in Hartford, CT. At the time, the race was sponsored by Travelers Insurance, and it had a very rich prize list. This race was very popular with racers on the east coast. They had a little sticker with the Travelers umbrella logo that they put on bikes when they passed pre-race inspection. Lots of racers kept this sticker on their bikes long after the race was over, even going so far as to glue it back on if it fell off.

Apparently, they are still doing this race now. It was on Memorial Day weekend this year.

The race is held on a short course around Bushnell Park in downtown Hartford. The Category 1/2 race was relatively short. My recollection is that it was something like 25 miles. There were only a couple of real corners on the course, so the race was very fast. I don’t remember much about it. I just stayed in the pack the whole way, and I didn’t place. But it was an exciting race, since it was a big pack on a fast course.

So here are my pictures from that day. It’s old-school racing at its best.

Today’s ride was Gene’s “South Pasadena Cafe” route, which takes us up through La Cañada and then down through Glendale and Glassell Park. Then we climb Mt Washington and pass the Self Realization Fellowship before heading back through Highland Park to South Pasadena to our snack stop at Kaldi’s. I don’t have a route map for it, but it’s pretty much the same route as we’ve done before.

Along the way, I spotted a pretty girl with a nice tattoo filling her car up in Glendale. We also stopped to see the tiny house we’d looked at last year. At the time, it was for sale. 450 square feet, boarded up, and listed as “uninhabitable”. But today it appeared that someone had bought it and was fixing it up.

In Highland Park, I spotted an abandoned couch, so I got a picture for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

When we got to Kaldi’s, Jon took my picture in front of the Twinkies and Ding Dongs. Apparently, it was hot. I didn’t realize just how sweaty I’d gotten.

I was glad to see the big steel girder next to the toaster. That meant that the brick building had been reinforced, so it wouldn’t need a warning sign like the one we saw in Covina one time.

After the stop, we headed home by way of San Marino and San Gabriel. When we got back to the park, I rode back up to Woodbury Road to get photos of a couple of other abandoned couches we’d passed earlier. There was a pair of them on Hill Ave, and then one on Woodbury, followed just a few blocks later by another. It was a very good day for feral-couch spotting.

Finally, on the way home, I saw a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s car going through the drive-through at Jack-In-The-Box. I guess those guys have to eat, too.

It was a very nice ride.

50 miles.
cycling