Pictures

Comics from Austin, city of liberal hedonism and parrot abuse

Isn't it about time for some pictures?

For the long weekend, we celebrated N's birthday by going down to Phoenix for a Renaissance festival they have there. He'd never been to one; I can't remember what came up in October, but we didn't go to the one here, plus it's always between 90 and 100 degrees here, and the idea of parading around in fancy clothes in wintertime was pretty nice.

As you can see, we lucked into a nice, overcast day. It started out pretty cold, and I was really, really wishing we'd brought the giant gray robe I'd made a few years ago. These pictures are from the tournament. We went to 2 different shows because there was a pirate, and really great special effects. Think the "Black Knight" sequence from Holy Grail.

There was also a falconer with some raptors. This horned owl looks just like T's cat, Fea.

This is a lees falcon, a relative of a peregrine falcon, the fastest known animal, who can dive at speeds in excess of 270 mph.

Outside Prescott, there was a wild animal rescue where we saw javelinas.....

and this tiger with a sinus infection,

plus coatis, really fat raccoons, coyotes, the butt end of a sleeping porcupine, a black bear, another horned owl, a raven that walked over to you if you said its name, big hairy spiders (although not the Goliath birdeater advertised in the brochure), and lemurs.

On the way home, we drove through Jerome and Sedona, but because it was a holiday weekend, we skipped the "vortex tours" and tried unsuccessfully to have a nice steak dinner in Laughlin instead.

Finally, I got a camera that works!

I'm actually pretty impressed with this picture: it's a tiny little 9-inch rainbow trout swimming along the shore of Long Lake, in the Little Lakes Valley.

I left for California at about 8:30, just as the sun was going down, and made it all the way to the White Mountains without stopping, where I slept by the turnoff for Schulman Grove. Check out the view of the Sierras from up here!

I got into Bishop, got a mocha from Looney Bean (which I promptly splashed onto my white sweatpants), and headed up the road a ways to Rock Creek Lake and the Little Lakes Valley.

This is the third time I've done this hike, and it is still just about the prettiest place I have ever been. I actually hiked the whole way to Chickenfoot Lake, about 3/4 mile farther than Long Lake, seen here, where I had never been before.

I got back into Bishop and returned to the Looney Bean, where I chatted with Tyson for a while before taking the kayak up to Lake Sabrina.

The weather was clear, and the lake was so pretty. The last time we were here, the dam had just been rebuilt, and the water was still very low, but now it was full and gorgeous--even prettier than South Lake. Unfortunately, my camera was acting cranky, and I was unable to take pictures that day.

I slept in the car at the pack station about a mile from the trailhead to Paiute Pass, fully intending to make the 5.5-mile trek in the morning, but totally punked out. It was just too cold to crawl out from under my blanket until about 9:30! Imagine that! Too cold to get out of bed! It was delicious.


On Monday, instead of hiking the pass, I was feeling lazy, and I couldn't really settle on anything to do. I went up to Mammoth and drove around in the mountains, thinking about reading a book by one of the lakes, but (this is mildly embarrassing) I couldn't find them. I'd remembered driving right by about 6 little lakes the last time I was out this direction, but didn't have any real luck just stumbling across them, and I didn't feel like the concentrated effort finding out how to get there would take.

Instead, I ate a fresh churro from Schat's and found a coffee shop with wi-fi and chatted with Tyson for a while. Then I drove aimlessly back to Bishop, got myself a motel room, and lived like a hedonist for the rest of the afternoon, taking a hot shower and watching Lifetime in the air-conditioning. For dinner, I ate at this place called the Petite Pantry where I had the best chile verde and apricot pie ever.

On Tuesday, I went back up to Sabrina, where I actually got some pics; there was a front coming in and it was overcast. There are some really nice beaches around the lake, and if it had been warmer out, the water would have been perfect for swimming.


Finally, I started back towards home, but this time I drove the 20 extra miles down to the Schulman Grove and the Bristlecone Forest. There, a 4.3-mile hike takes you down the ridge and into a valley where there are trees that were old when the Roman Empire was young. Methusulah, the oldest, is more than 4300 years old. Pieces of dead wood more than 8600 years old have been found there. (Interestingly enough, it is this 8600-year tree record that helped scientists make necessary adjustments to carbon-14 dating, allowing them to be much more accurate. In case you were wondering.)


One day, I will get a giant tattoo of a bristlecone pine covering my whole back, that's how much I like these trees. So you can get an inkling of my intense disappointment, anger, and frustration when my camera stubbornly decided it wasn't taking pictures anymore. I came very close to chucking the damn thing off the side of the mountain until I remembered I'd just have to go and get it if I wanted to take it back.

After the hike, I drove home. It was unexciting, except for a quick stop in Beatty for peanut-butter-cookie ice cream and dried mango slices.

Yes, this was a while in coming...

I'd been sort of stalling until I took some pictures of my pink hair, which, in turn, was waiting for the following convergence of events:

1. School to be out


2. My hair to be pink


3. Having bought a new camera to replace the lost one


4. Getting Tyson to take a picture

As you can clearly tell, I was so anxious to have the preceding 4 qualifications met that I didn't wait for the fifth, which, obviously, would be a non-napped-on hairstyle. But whatever. I knew you, my six loyal readers, were anxiously awaiting my post, and I didn't want to delay it any longer.

The other reason I have been remiss in my blogging commitment is that last week was the last week of school, so therefore when the Nevada lege awarded grant money the Thursday prior to teachers in at-risk schools who completed 30 hours of professional development by the end of the school year, that meant I had eight days to put in an entire additional workweek. <-- That sentence, by the way, is only an overture to a workday that starts at 6 a.m. and ends at 7:30 p.m.

So now that I've successfully (I think) justified my absence over the past two weeks, we can get down to business.

It's actually been quite a productive first four days of summer vacation. I got new contacts, put my student loans back into forbearance, cleared up some insurance stuff, applied for and turned down a job at REI (no pink hair, no last trip to Bishop with Tyson before he leaves--even the hefty employee discount couldn't persuade me to change my only two firm plans for the whole summer), unloaded my carful of classroom stuff into my new room (one wall is approximately this color--eew!), drove all the way back across town to my old school to retrieve the jump drive I'd left in my computer upon check-out, helped (mostly by staying out of the way) friends train horses, and schooled Tyson at Guitar Hero in front of his class. As penance, here is a picture of me sleeping it off with my elbow straight up in the air last night.

So there it is: my update. In a few minutes I will post a new (belated) Audience Participation Monday, then I'm making breakfast-for-dinner.

Ode to the Beach House

The beach house in Baja Malibu has been sold, suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, although we had known for the last year or so that it was coming. T's stepdad was looking for work again after 7 years of medical problems, surgeries, etc., and the border crossing was just getting too long and inconvenient to do every day. There has also been a sharp increase in Americanization (condos, Home Depots, Dominoes Pizza, and the like), as well as drug-related violence south of Rosarito. All in all, we all knew it was getting to be time, and when a realtor asked to show the house "just to see," and wound up with an offer for $370K, B and B decided that now was as good a time as any to leave Mexico.


We'll start our tour on the front patio.

The front door and patio.


When B and B first bought this house, everything in Baja Malibu was white, usually with brick trim and red tile roofs. But as soon as the ink was dry, they went to town with color, usually trying several color combinations before getting things just right. The dark terra-cotta color of the exterior, for instance, is the third incarnation.

These steps are on the patio and go up to the roof, a great place to hide stuff or to look out at the ocean.




Another view of the steps and patio wall.

The south view of the house.

Unfortunately, somebody bought this vacant lot and will be building a house on it beginning in January, leaving only 18" between the houses. Still, that will leave the new house barely 18' wide.

The front door. To the left is the doorway to the third bedroom/computer room/closet. (It's only about 12'x7'.) Behind you are three steps, then a door on the right to a second bedroom.

I wish the colors hadn't turned out so pinky in the photos--they're really a little more of a terra-cotta, like the exterior of the house but much lighter.

One view from inside the kitchen, featuring the microwave and some local art pieces.

There are actually two shades of the orangey-pink on these walls. The whole house started out the lightest color as B delicately dipped her toes into the non-white color palette.

Another view of the kitchen.

Note the handpainted tile on the backsplash and the handwoven baskets on top of the cabinets. (Yes, there are always towels hanging over the chairs. They won't ever get dry otherwise.)

This is the living area, looking toward the kitchen.

The last stop on the backwards-walking tour of the house is the living room. I love how the purple walls are echoed from the room divider to the kitchen archway to the far wall of the kitchen. B did it that way on purpose! The purple chenielle sectional sofa is waaaayyyy more comfortable that the previous one.

Another view of the living room.

The side walls of the living area are what B calls "icky green," her favorite color. What I love so much about this house is that there is absolutely no way I would have chosen olive drab to match purple, burnt orange, and turquoise, but in the end there's just nothing else that would have done. The art pieces on the wall are all from the mercado in Rosarito.

The fireplace, all decked out for Christmas.

The other side of the living area has a fireplace and more artwork. As much as B and family hate to see the beach house go, she admits it will be nice to go somewhere her stainless steel won't rust.

The fireplace was originally made of brick, which was covered in stucco and then painted.

The dining table has a great view of the balcony and the beach! The archways around the windows were bare brick before being covered with stucco. This wall is the only one in the house (besides the back of the kitchen arch) to retain the original first-try color, a very light terra-cotta orange-pink.

B and B on the couch.

This is absolutely the best, best thing about this house: this is the view from the living room onto the Pacific through the wall of arched windows on the west side of the house.

It's not all bad, though. B and B will be moving back to the mountains west of Denver, where they will be able to get quite a bit of house for what they made on this one. Inexplicably, all the houses in that area are painted white on the inside, too, so it should be fascinating to see how the new one turns out!

Old News

Here are some pictures from the aquarium in Long Beach. I realize they are a few weeks old by now, but since nothing new is happening, I'll wager, for any of us, what's the harm?

After a whole entire day of rental cars and stupid hotel rooms (more on that later, probably), we went sightseeing instead of literacy-conferencing. No fewer than four freeways later, we were right next to the ocean. It didn't even take all that long to get there. After numerous bad traffic experiences in the Inland Empire section of the metro area, getting around downtown and west LA was quick and easy by comparison.


After multiple rooms of fish and venomous critters, it was nice to take a break in the bird enclosure. The parrot-type birds in the photos are actually lorikeets, which to me sounds a little too much like something from a Dr. Seuss book, but there you go.


In the water there is a leopard ray who was about 4 feet across and more than 5 feet long, and with a beautiful pattern on his back and tail.

Besides the aquarium, there was some other stuff, but frankly I have been stricken with quite a case of ennui today and won't be getting to it at the moment.

Merry Christmas!

What says "happy holidays" better than a half-naked kiddo at the beach? I can't think of anything. For our last-ever (sniff, sniff) trip to Baja Malibu, Nick insisted on going down to the beach and trying to swim. He'd been up since 5a.m. alternating between cartoons, mock-martial-arts with a curtain rod, and staring longingly at the ocean.

Then two things happened, that, to a 12-year-old within throwing distance of a swimmable body of water, made the prospect of a long afternoon nearly unbearable: Dad broke the computer and was looking at a long day (and night!) of downloading and installing Linux to replace the Windows he'd deleted; and two little local kids hitting the waves with their boogie boards.

"Fine," I said, almost at the end of my patience. "I'll take you down there and you can just try to swim. I dare you."

Now, keep in mind that the Pacific is chilly even in the summer. The first time the waves hit your toes, you think, "I'm gonna be swimming in that?!" and then when the waves hit you in the crotch for the first time, well, it's pretty shocking. Even Deidre might have some trouble with it.

So as Nick is splashing away down there, all I can think about is: 1) Thank God he's a strong enough swimmer so I won't have to go rescue him and 2) If he gets sick doing this, I'll have a minimum of 6 parents/stepparents/grandparents calling and asking what exactly I was thinking letting him in the water two days before Christmas.

The second day we went down to the beach, Christmas eve, a couple of surfers were getting ready to go in, you know, putting on their wetsuits and everything like sane and normal people would. When they saw Nick splashing around in the surf in his underwear, they just shook their heads.

Anyway, you'll be glad to know Nick did not, in fact, get sick from his winter swimming, so nobody have a panic attack. Have a great Christmas day instead.

More Summer Pics

Me and Nick playing in the surf.


Zuccharitas--Breakfast of Nordic champions!


Me and Deidre on the beach.


Sancho watching for squirrels.


Another one of Barb in the Viking hat.


At Francisco's taco shop in Rosarito.














Nick has his beer goggles on!

The Viking hat

We bought a Viking hat for John (Nick's stepdad) at the mercado in Rosarito and then we all took turns trying it on.