Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today Lucinda had a friend from the neighborhood over to play, and we took them to see “MatheMagic!” at Caltech. This is one of their “Saturdays at 2:00” programs for kids.

Today’s show featured Bradley Fields, the “Mathemagician”. His show was a magic show combined with math tricks and history of mathematics. And it was very funny and entertaining. Lucinda and her friend liked it a lot.

Today we went to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana. They were having a special exhibit about dogs, including a dog stunt show, so Lucinda wanted to go see it.

The parking was full when we got there, and there was a long line to get in. I suppose I should consider it a good sign that that many people want to go to a science museum. But on the other hand, I think it may have more to do with the fact that it’s actually a pretty small museum, and the parking lot is also small. Anyway, after parking the car at the nearby mall (there’s no shortage of those in Orange County) we got our tickets and went in.

We saw a presentation on therapy dogs at the local Children’s Hospital, and we got to meet and pet one of the dogs.

The main event of the day was the dog stunt show. The dogs did tricks, including catching, jumping, and running obstacle courses. They were all very good at what they did, and it was very entertaining.

The last thing we did was to ride in the earthquake simulator. It’s one of the better museum earthquake simulators, and it’s more realistic than most. They also have a whole section of the earthquake exhibit devoted to Lucy Jones, which is funny to me, since I work with her. I don’t think of her as being famous, but she’s about as famous as a scientist can be. (Have I mentioned lately that I really like my job?)

After the museum, we stopped off at the mall where we’d parked the car so that Cathy could look for some red hair color. The red she’d gotten just wasn’t red enough. While she discussed hair color minutiae with the beauty supply people, Lucinda and I went and got ice cream.

It was a fun day.

We’ve been having a cold spell here in L.A. At least it’s cold by our standards. And this morning, there was even frost on our garage roof. In 10 years in this house, this is only the second time I’ve seen that.

brrr

Today started out cold and rainy, and it rained out the regular Sunday club ride. But then, almost miraculously, it stopped raining and cleared up. But 10:00, the sky was blue and the streets were (almost) dry. So I went for a little ride by myself.

I headed east through Sierra Madre to Arcadia, then east some more into Monrovia. When I got there, I went up Norumbega Drive, which goes up a nice hill and makes a loop back down to where it started. It was a nice gratuitous hill.

Then I went down Mountain Ave, and it was there that I spotted a thong in the street. When I used to live in Hollywood, I rode every weekend on Mulholland Drive, up in the hills. And every Sunday morning, I would see lots of women’s clothing, particularly shoes and underwear on the side of the road. That was just a normal thing in the hills above Hollywood, but this is the first time I’ve seen anything like that here in the suburbs.

I rode through a little bit of Bradbury and then into Duarte. I took the bike path along Royal Oaks to its end, and then went up Melcanyon just to add another gratuitous hill. I made a loop up there and came out on Encanto by the park there, and then headed back towards home.

I took Santa Clara St back into Arcadia just so I could stop for a photo at the Young Dong Restaurant. Its name probably means something like “Mom’s” in Korean, but the sign looks funny to American eyes. And it’s right around the corner from the Turf Analist, so there is an ongoing tradition of Engrish in that area.

Next, I headed back up 1st St to get to Highland Oaks and Sierra Madre for the trip home. I stopped for one more photo of the “Reclamation Center” sign, right by the cemetery. I guess it makes sense in some way.

From there, it was downhill all the way home. It was a pleasant ride, even if it was chilly and kind of windy.

27 miles.
cycling

Today we had to go over to the costume shop in Arcadia to pick up some of the supplies we ordered for Lucinda’s birthday party. While we were there, we noticed a little display on the counter. It was a little plastic squeeze bottle sitting on a wooden base. The label said, “Liquid Ass“. So, of course, we smelled it. And it was easily the most horrible odor any of us had ever smelled. (Between growing up in New Jersey, and my father being a chemist, that means something.) So in the true spirit of the Internet, I just wanted to spread the word about Liquid Ass. This is one gag gift that will truly make people gag.

So I’ve been living here in L.A. for many years now, and I like sightseeing around the city. So I decided to put together a list of things I’ve seen that I think are amusing. Just to have it all in one place for future reference.

http://www.1134.org/photomap.php?xmlfile=sightseeing.xml

I’ll add new things to the map as I find them. And needless to say, Disneyland and the other usual ‘tourist’ things are not on my map.

There’s an article in Salon today about the big permanent bases in Iraq and how this story is pretty much being ignored. But they made a big deal about how big these bases are, so I thought that maybe I could find them on Google Maps. And it wasn’t all that hard. Here’s Balad Air Base:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=baghdad,+iraq&ll=33.940939,44.369659&spn=0.086587,0.172005&t=h

Here’s the article where a reporter visited the base:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302994_pf.html

And here’s a bit of background about it. Apparently it used to be an Iraqi Air Force base. You can still see the airplane shelters mentioned near the ends of the long runway.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/balad-ab.htm

This evening we went to see Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. This is a an all-male comic ballet company. They perform classic ballet en trasvesty. The ‘ballerinas’ have faux-Russian stage names like Ludmila Beaulemova and Tatiana Youbetyabootskya and such. The actual dancers are all trained in traditional serious ballet, but they do this as a form of ‘ballet outreach’. A lot of the humor is based on sending up the traditions of classic ballet. Since we’re not that familiar with the conventions of ballet, we probably missed a lot of the jokes. Still, it was very funny and very entertaining. The ‘dying swan’ was particularly hilarious, with feathers falling out of her tutu all over the stage, followed by two very serious-looking janitors coming out to sweep up afterward.

I had seen the Trockadero ballet on PBS’ “Egg” several years ago. At the time, I made a note that we should see them if they ever came to Los Angeles. And we were not disappointed. It was a very fun evening. And Lucinda has a story to tell now that probably no other kid in her class will be able to match.

Today’s ride was down to Whittier and then up Turnbull Canyon. We were supposed to continue on down the other side, but several of us had to get home early, so we turned around there and cut the ride short.

I started out meeting Gene at Victory Park for the ride down to Live Oak Park, which was the official start of the ride. It was a nice morning, bright and sunny, but on the way down there, we rode into a fog bank. It got cold. By the time we got to the park we were chilled.

From the park, we went east a bit and then south to Lower Azusa Road, then east again to Santa Anita, where we turned south again. After a bit, Santa Anita turned into Workman Mill Road, which took us down to Beverly Blvd in Whittier.

While we were on Beverly Blvd, we had the first flat of the day. It was Bob, who had picked up a big piece of glass in his tire. Sandy stopped to help him change the tube, and I stopped to get a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

From there, we continued on up Beverly Blvd until it turned into Turnbull Canyon Rd. The climb up the canyon was nice except for two things:

• It was cold in the shade;
• The road was wet with dew in the shade, and we all found our back wheels slipping.

On the way up, I got another picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. This time it was Carl, who had taken a shortcut to get ahead of the group, but then got a flat.

At the top, we regrouped. Then Gene, Philippe, Rick, Maria, and I all headed back down. We all needed to get home relatively early for one reason or another, so we all headed back together. At the bottom of the canyon, we took Beverly Blvd west into Pico Rivera. This was for a short side trip to see Dork St. We’ve been there before, but every other time it’s been cloudy, so I never got a good picture of the sign. So today was the day.

After the photo op at Dork St., we headed north on the San Gabriel River bike path. We went over Whittier Narrows Dam and then went west a bit to get on the Rio Hondo bike path. We took that bike path all the way back to Lower Azusa Road.

From there, we got on El Monte Ave, which has the biggest bike lane in the world. That brought us up into Arcadia. Then we took Fairview back to Sunset and then back into Pasadena.

45 miles.
cycling

Everyone knows that the real estate market is insane here in Los Angeles. And so far, we’ve been absurdly fortunate in it through sheer dumb luck. While reading Curbed L.A. recently, I discovered Zillow.com, which has all sorts of information about real estate. I looked up our house and marveled at what they said it is worth now. More than triple what we paid for it back in ’95. Yow.

Then I looked up our old place in Hollywood. This was our first little condo that we bought when we were married. And it was seriously little. 954 square feet. We had a hard time fitting all our furniture in it. But it was ours, and we were happy to have it. This was during the late ’80s real estate frenzy here, and we bought it when everyone was going nuts and prices were skyrocketing. We sold it about three years later, and although we didn’t know it at the time, we sold right at the peak of the boom. After we left, prices fell for four years.

So Zillow shows the sale history of our old place, and it says that it was sold in 1999 for $169,500. This is less than what we sold it for in ’91. So that means that the guy we sold it to most likely ended up taking a bath on the deal. Oh well. If you’re reading, sorry about that…