Let the screaming begin!
No, wait, that’s not the roller coaster of life, it’s just the first bag of “Halloween candy” being opened and the sugar high smashing into my brain.
Same difference.
Author Archives: momdude
At The Top Of The Lift Hill
Anyone who rides roller coasters is familiar with the “lift hill.” It’s the slow part at the beginning of many coasters where you slowly get hauled up a big, BIG hill to get the gravitational potential energy that’s going to be expended to propel you through a series of high speed twists, loops, spins, and other maneuvers generally intended to make you puke.
Usually you’re pulled up by a big chain underneath the car and you hear it clacking and clanking all the way up. But at the top there’s a change in the timbre of the sound as the first cars start to go over the summit and the rest of the train quickly follows and the cars pull away from the chain.
In a metamorphic sense, that final sound as you go over the top is the theme song for today.
There’s the new job, which is going well, but which is extremely busy and a bit intense.
There’s my usual bit at the CAF hangar where I’m always running the Red Queen’s Race.
And the winds have started howling here again tonight while the humidity has dropped into single digits. In the Bay Area there are close to two million people without power (NOT a typo!) as PG&E deliberately shuts down the grid to prevent the fires that its faulty infrastructure started two or three days ago. Here in LA there are still a couple of fires burning but the evacuation orders have been lifted – for now. We remain vigilant and nervous.
But for us personally, the big source of life’s flips, spins, loops, and stomach-lurching changes is a wedding next Saturday. Our youngest daughter is getting married, and the family starts coming into town tomorrow. I got to spend most of today frantically cleaning up the back yard and preparing it for the multiple parties and celebrations being held here next weekend. I spent a while this evening putting together a baby walker for some of the young ones coming in, one of whom I’ll be meeting for the first time.
I got my tux today. (First one I’ve ever owned.) I have a week to learn how to tie a bow-tie. (I accidentally got a clip-on as an emergency back-up if needed – I won’t need it.)
So maybe expect short posts the rest of the week.
Oh, and needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway, I won’t be doing “NaNoWriMo” this year.
No matter how much I might enjoy the roller coaster of life, there’s only so much screaming I can handle!
Filed under Castle Willett, Family
Layers Of Smoke In The Sunset
I came out of the hangar on my way home at just the perfect time. The sun was just hovering on the horizon, blood red through layer after layer of smoke.
While the worst of the smoke (for the moment) isn’t hitting where we live, the smoke from the past several days of fires has been blown out over the ocean, where a lot of it is lingering. You can see different strata of smoke across the horizon.
It’s beautiful, in a horrific sort of way.
Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography
Someplace Special – October 25th
From our trip last December, the final game of the regular season for the Kansas City Chiefs, against the hated Oakland Raiders.
It was cold. The crowd was ***LOUD***! We stomped them, 35-3.
We got to see four games last year. Two in LA, one in Seattle, and this game in KC. This year we’re highly unlikely to get to any games since the Chargers’ “home game” against the Chiefs is in Mexico City next month.
Arrowhead Stadium is a holy place to a lifelong Chiefs fan.
Truly somewhere special!
Filed under KC Chiefs, Photography, Sports, Travel
Smoky Commute
One thing that the new job has a bit of (not too much) which the old job didn’t is a commute in LA traffic. To get to my old office in the morning or back home at night was 10-15 minutes or less and with the grid of local streets available there were a hundred different routes to take if one street or the other was blocked by an accident or something. The new job is 20-45 minutes in the morning (depending on if there’s an accident in the bottleneck through the Calabasas Grade on the 101 Freeway) and typically 40-60 minutes back home in the evening.
*sigh*
Today there was the additional complication of multiple brush fires in the area, which despite being 20 to 40 miles away, filled the air with smoke and ash.
Map from arcg.is/0Pvq0f using data from County of Los Angeles, Esri, HERE, Garmin, METI/NASA, USGS, Bureau of Land Management, EPA, NPS, USDA | FEMA NSS, EGIS | USGS, GeoMAC, Esri | County of Los Angeles, Esri, HERE, Garmin, METI/NASA, USGS, Bureau of Land Management, EPA, NPS, USDA | NOAA, Esri | NASA, Esri
For those of you not familiar with the Los Angeles area, I’ve indicated the general area of home (red circle, red arrow) and the new office (red circle, green arrow). That freeway (white line) where it says “Calabasas” is where the 101 Freeway goes through the Calabasas Grade between the San Fernando Valley (Canoga Park, Winnetka, Reseda, Encingo, Granada Hills, etc) and the Canejo Valley (Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks).
Someone at the office noticed the smoke about 16:00 and our first thought was that for it to be that thick there must be a fire nearby – fortunately, that was not the case. Still, here’s the view from the office parking lot when I left at 17:00. I wish there was a way to convey the choking stench in the air.
I knew the commute would be tough for a couple of reasons, even though the fires weren’t near us. First, people get freaky when it smells of smoke and your eyes are burning and you’re starting to cough and it’s hazy and threatening… It’s a very base, animalistic response from somewhere way down on the brain stem left over from our lizard ancestors.
Secondly, with that “Basin” fire at the junction of the 101 and 405 Freeways 20 miles ahead there would be massive slowing. Part of it is people slowing down to simply watch the fire and smoke near the freeway, some of it is the reduced visibility. A lot of it is that many surface streets used as commuting shortcuts in that area had been shut down as fire crews moved in and possible evacuations were set up.
Sure enough, about two exits after I got on the freeway near the office, I saw this:
For reference, if there isn’t any traffic at all, this sign generally shows 7 minutes to Topanga Canyon and about 18-20 minutes to the 405 Freeway.
Welcome to LA – bring fire extinguishers!
Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography
New York, New York (Pictures Day 19)
When last we left our plucky heroes…
For those of you who are relatively new to this site, in the “old days” I used to post a lot of long, multi-part posts with pictures from various trips. (Use that “search” box over there to look for “Shanghai,” “Seoul,” or “Kyoto,” or look through everything in the “Travel” category.)
Over two years ago things got very busy in the “life” category and the travel series I was in the middle of (one of my favorites because the trip was so great and I had SO much fun on it) was showing off my first trip to New York City. Part #16 was posted on 18-May-2017, part #17 on 11-Jul-2017, and then part #18 didn’t post until 01-Jan-2018. Part #19…never got posted until today.
Let’s see if we can get back to resuming some of those earlier collections of posts. I enjoyed them.
In summary: New York City had a life of it’s own in my head. In early August 2016, I visited there for the first time. On the first afternoon we visited Central Park and were there for hours, despite the jet lag. Day One started with a tour of the Intrepid and the Space Shuttle Enterprise, followed by the full two and a half hour cruise around Manhattan – south down the Hudson River into the Upper Harbor, up the East River under the “BMW” bridges, past Midtown and the UN, into the Harlem River, back south into the Hudson River, underneath the George Washington Bridge, past Grant’s Tomb, and finally back into port. To finish Day Two we had a death march to find a cab, went to the Mets game, left early only to miss the best part, and inadvertently stiffed a nice cab driver. Bright & early on Day Three we headed out toward Liberty Island – it’s hard to take a bad picture there, then went to Ellis Island. Bank on Manhattan, we went to World Trade Center Museum, which was emotional & grueling. Day Four started out with a trip to Times Square, after which we headed to the Empire State Building.
From the top of the Empire State Building, looking to the northwest, across the Hudson River into New Jersey.
Looking north-northwest up the Hudson River, you can see the George Washington Bridge, connecting Upper Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Looking almost due north. You can see Central Park starting a couple miles away.
The view to the northeast. You can see the top of the Chrysler Building, the UN Building, Roosevelt Island, the East River (which isn’t a river) and Queens on the other side.
Looking southeast across Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn you can see the “BMW” bridges, or in this case, the “WMB” bridges – Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Also, far, far off in the distance is the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge.
Almost due south you have Manhattan laid out before you, the One World Trade Center tower rising above it all, with Liberty Island and Ellis Island out in the harbor, Jersey City across the Hudson.
To the southwest, Liberty Island and Ellis Island, the Hudson River, lots of very expensive real estate, and New Jersey.
To the southwest, New Jersey across the Hudson River. (Insert jokes from “Hamilton” here.)
Back around to due west, across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey. In between those two groups of tall buildings by the river on the right you can just catch a peek of the USS Intrepid Museum.
Filed under Photography, Travel
More Stupid Pictures From Inside A Car Wash
Never let it be said that I wasn’t easily amused!
Day Two at the new job was still a flood of new information but there was a bit of settling in, which is a good thing.
Afterward, I was a little out of gas, but my car was way, WAY out of gas. Since the station with the lowest current prices (while yet remaining exorbitant!) also had a drive-through car wash, I took the opportunity to get rid of two month’s worth of dust and grime.
As I saw on a bumper sticker the other day, “My car isn’t dirty! It’s drought tolerant!!”
Is that the eye of Sauron beckoning me from beyond the huge, flapping, rubber brushes? Or just the guy in front of me deciding that he’s going to back up into me instead of going out through the blower?
Filed under Photography
New Job
Those of you who follow me on FaceBook and/or LinkedIn might have seen something posted late last Friday night, a status update of sorts, but I’ll make a note of it here for the rest of you, since it is something that I post about at times – after almost four years with Homes for Families, I’ve left to take a new position. Beginning today, I’m the Director of Finance and Administration for the ALS Association Golden West Chapter.
This was not a move that I made lightly or without a great deal of soul searching. I loved the work that H4F has done and continues to do. Just look back at some of the posts that I’ve done here, for the Builder’s Ball, the WE Build, going Over The Edge, and the recent “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build, among others. I have many friends there and I truly wish nothing but the best for all of them and for the company.
But when I was contacted by a recruiter I thought it a prudent move to at least be aware of what other options might be available. When I found another organization with a fantastic mission helping people, and organization that truly went out of its way to not just see whether or not I was right for them but if they were right for me, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t in good conscience pass on.
The move explains a great deal of whatever discombobulation you might have seen on this site in the past five or six weeks. This was not an easy decision, and I’ve been putting in a lot of time to tie up as many loose ends at H4F as possible before my departure. There’s been some lost sleep…
Now I’m diving in at the Golden West Chapter and after one day I’m spinning, but in a good way. As expected, there are a gazillion new things to learn, people to meet, names to remember, and last but not least, the lock code to the men’s room to remember!
So far, so good.
It’s adventure time!
Filed under ALSA Golden West, Homes4Families
No Context For You – October 20th
Tomorrow’s a big day, so here’s something simple so I can get to bed early. Well, earlier than normal. Which, sort of by definition, is way too late…
Filed under Photography
Disney Concert Hall
From last Sunday’s visit, some pictures showing the outside lobbies and stairwells of the concert hall, taken as we were waiting for the elevator. Not only is the venue spectacular from an acoustic standpoint with an iconic exterior, but the interior architecture is also amazing. Lots of it reminds me of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Wait – where are my pictures from the Guggenheim? What do you mean, I never finished the “New York, New York” series of pictures from our August 2016 trip? What the hell have I been doing for the last twenty months, slacking off?!!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 