Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Now that it’s almost February, the poinsettia in my office has finally decided to turn red. Sheesh.

It’s been six months now since I started having a regular Saturday night ‘date’ with Lucinda. And you know what? I’m really enjoying it. I know it sounds sappy and all, but we have a lot of fun together. We bake cakes, watch movies, eat tremendous bowls of popcorn, play pinball, and all sorts of things. And it’s really fun. So I guess this is the ’sweet spot’ of parenting. I know that in a few more years she will be out doing her own thing on Saturday night, so I’m going to enjoy this while I can. It’s nice.

I’m still nesting.

Today I made buttermilk pancakes from scratch for the first time. They were good. And surprisingly easy to make. I’ll never buy a box of pancake mix again.

Since it was raining today, I couldn’t go bike riding. So here’s what else I do as a way to keep occupied and relieve stress. I build shit. I’ve been thinking for some years of setting up a little herb garden outside. So today, I went and got some wood, and I built this planter. I divided it in half, because it’s pretty big, and I haven’t decided yet what all the things are that I’m going to grow. So I filled half of it and transplanted my little rosemary bush and also the thyme plant. I also got seeds for oregano, dill, and cilantro that I started in pots on the windowsill. I’ll transplant them outside when they come up. Maybe by then it will be warm enough and I’ll put basil in the other side so I can make pesto this summer.

Now I’m off to the kitchen again to start on dinner. Broiled rib steak with fennel, ginger and cloves, and onions broiled with the same spices. Also, braised fennel, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. And finally, I’m making another pan of brownies for dessert.

Lucinda and I were playing pinball again last night. She’s getting quite good now. She gets the extra ball at 240,000 points pretty regularly. And she beat me a few times last night.

One funny thing that happened while we were playing was that the ball got stuck in a completely new way. I’ve owned this machine since 1984, and I’ve never seen the ball get stuck there before. So I had to take a picture to commemorate the occasion before we jostled the machine to get the ball moving again. Of course it promptly fell down the outlane, but still, it was amusing.

Today’s ride was the “Glendale Vistas” route. We do a variation on this ride on Sundays some times. The most recent time was at the end of December, when I broke my cassette going up one of the hills. I’ve been sick this week, so that, along with various other unpleasantness at home meant that I was not feeling particularly strong today. So I didn’t break my bike this time.

We are having a quick break between storms today, so it was actually a perfect day for riding. A bit chilly at first, but it warmed up nicely. Mt Wilson had a dusting of snow on top, which doesn’t happen all that often.

We rode up into La Cañada and then over Chevy Chase and down into Glendale. This is normally a fun descent, but the road was still wet from the rain last night. So we all went pretty slow.

On the ride across Glendale, I saw the Eat Well Coffee Shop. I thought that this was a nice, straightforward name for a restaurant. Sort of like Hammered Liquor.

Continuing on, we turned and started up the hills north of downtown Glendale. There were some nice views along the way before we came out at the top. That was where they had a sign at the end of the street warning us about mountain lions.

After all the hills, we rode down into Montrose and stopped at Berolina bakery. From there, we just headed home by the usual route over Hospital Hill and back to Pasadena.

It was a fun little ride, even though we didn’t really go anywhere or see anything.

40 miles.
cycling

I just found out that the paper about My Pet Project has been published in Seisomological Research Letters:

The USGS Earthquake Notification Service (ENS): Customizable Notifications of Earthquakes around the Globe

I’ve had co-authorship on papers before, but this is the first time a whole paper has been published about something that I invented. Yay.

Cooking is still one of my favorite ways of dealing with stress. That and bike riding. And drinking beer. And I’ve been doing a lot of all three lately.

Tonight, I made a new batch of home-made pita bread and a some tzatziki sauce. The lula kebab meat came from the Armenian market up on Washington Blvd. And I got a recipe for Persian rice.

Now, what to make for dessert…

There was an egret perched by one of the little ponds at Disneyland. Everything there is artificial, so it’s kind of a shock to see an actual wild animal there. But I guess there’s good eatin’ in the pond.

So this is my latest Canon commercial.

Today we were supposed to go to the snow with Shannon, Mars, and Rose. I made a pan of brownies and a batch of blueberry muffins to take along. Then Shannon called and said that she didn’t think we should go because it was going to rain. So Cathy suggested Disneyland, and I agreed to take Lucinda and her friend.

Normally, if I had a choice between a day at Disneyland and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I’ll take the stick. But today my choice was between a day at Disneyland and a day at home. So I chose Disneyland.

And it turned out to be all right. We had a nice time. We rode a total of eight rides, which I think is pretty good. And we got to go on Star Tours. That ride is pretty old now, but it’s still good.

At the end, we walked over to Downtown Disney and had dinner before going home. Overall, it was a good day, although I think I looked a bit haunted in the picture on the Dumbo ride.

Tonight, I made The Swallow’s Pork and Tomatillo Stew. That’s what’s in the picture. I also made Shredded Pork Enchiladas. And two loaves of Olive Bread. Cooking is a nice relaxing activity for me. So it’s just the thing in these Trying Times.

Today’s bike ride was our Larchmont Village route. The idea was to see the headless Statue of Liberty that I’d heard Paramount had near their front gate on Melrose Ave. This was supposed to be promoting their new movie, “Cloverfield“.

It was chilly when we set out. We rode down through Eagle Rock and across the L.A. River. Then on down Silver Lake Blvd. There was no sign of the work to drain the reservoir that we’ve been hearing about lately.

When we got to Larchmont, we stopped at Noah’s Bagels. There was a little promotion for “Cloverfield” written in chalk on the sidewalk there. I guess that’s what you get when a mega-corporation attempts viral marketing. I thought it was funny that there was some person who was paid to go around writing stuff on the sidewalks in chalk.

Leaving Larchmont, we rode down Melrose past Paramount. But there was no sign of Lady Liberty. So either they’d taken it down, or it was in some place that was less than obvious.

When we got back to Pasadena, I remembered that today was the Doo Dah Parade. So several of us stopped off to have a look. We saw lots of people handing out campaign materials for Dennis Kucinich. It would be interesting to study why he so appeals to people with the anarchist spirit of the Doo Dah Parade. We also saw the Angel City Derby Girls and the Midnite Ridazz. I developed an immediate crush on all the Derby Girls. They’re just so darn cute. And one of the Midnite Ridazz was also my favorite. I love heavily tattooed girls with nose rings. As a final treat, we saw that the Grand Marshal for the Parade was Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping.

Pictures of the parade are here: http://www.1134.org/gallery/doodah2008

38 miles
cycling

This afternoon, I took Lucinda and her friend for a little adventure in Hollywood.

First, we went to West Hollywood, where we went to M+B to see the Alison Jackson: Confidential photo show. This was a fairly small exhibit, but it was very amusing. I bought the book so we can see the rest of her photos.

After that, we went to the park in West Hollywood. The girls played there for a bit before we headed back to Hollywood to visit High Voltage Tattoo. This is the shop in “L.A. Ink“, which Lucinda and I have been enjoying recently. When we were first watching it, there was a scene of a person walking out he front door, and I recognized the JONS market across the street. And I realized that the shop was right around the corner from our old condo in Hollywood. So I’d promised Lucinda that I’d take her there to visit. We gawked for a bit and I bought Lucinda a shirt. And then we went home. It was a fun little afternoon adventure.

Today’s ride was out to San Dimas to The Bagelry. It turned out to be a harrowing experience.

We met at Victory Park in Pasadena. While we were waiting to leave, a woman drove into the parking lot and told us that a bike rider had been hit by a car around the corner. So several people rode over to see what happened. It turned out to be YK (I have no idea he spells his name, but that’s what we know him as.) who had been on his way up to meet us. So a bunch of us waited around to see that the paramedics took him off to the hospital and to take care of his bike. They said that they didn’t think he had broken anything too badly, but it was still a very unsettling experience.

In the meantime, the rest of the group had headed off on the ride. So the rest of us started out with about half an intention to catch them. But then Ben got a flat. I stayed back to help him fix it while the rest went on. I was so unsettled that I completely forgot to take a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

When we got Ben’s bike back on the road, we were quite far behind. He got in behind me and we made a serious attempt to catch up. We averaged a bit over 20mph all the way out to San Dimas, where we caught up with Sandy and Silvio. The rest of the riders were already there. But we were only about a minute or so behind them by then, so if we’d had another five miles or so, we would have caught them. Along the way was where I saw the very worn penny embedded in the pavement.

While we were sitting there, I noticed that Sandy had a fork in his backpack. I thought this was pretty funny, since nobody carries a spare fork around normally. So I took a picture of it.

We all set out together for the trip home. Then we went down Gladstone St, which is the street with the 1% downhill grade, so we always end up going very fast. This split the group in two. At the end, we rode through the Santa Fe Dam Nature Center and back up the bike path to Duarte. From there, we just took the straight route home. Then we caught up with the other part of our group. They had fallen behind on Gladstone, but then they took a shorter route, so they’d ended up ahead of us. Then we took the quiet residential route back through Arcadia and back to the park.

Aside from the unpleasantness at the start, it actually turned out to be a fairly nice ride.

46 miles.
cycling

For reasons I’m not going to talk about here, I’ve been getting a strong nesting instinct lately. So I’ve been cooking a lot. I made home-made pita bread a few days ago. I tried out a new brownie recipe last night. And tonight I made chicken with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato sauce.

At least I’m eating well.

Since it rained last weekend, we did last week’s planned ride today. The route was out to Glendora and back, with a stop at a bakery there.

It was chilly when we met at the park, but promising to warm up nicely. For some reason, we had a very small group today. Only six of us. But that doesn’t stop us. The ride must go on.

The route went pretty much straight east out to Glendora, and the only funny thing I saw along the way was the house with the topiary teddy bears and animals in the front yard. That was worth a picture.

When we got to the bakery, I got an eclair. Silvio got some apricot pastry thing that looked for all the world like sunny-side-up eggs. While we were sitting there, we called Gene to see how he was doing, since he’s not able to lead the rides with his broken leg.

The route back was nice. We tried a little different version to avoid the part of Foothill Blvd across the San Gabriel River, since it’s got really bad pavement. We took a little detour up through Azusa to Sierra Madre Blvd, and then got on the bike path to cross the river.

And then we headed straight back across Monrovia and Arcadia to home. It was a nice ride.

40 miles.
cycling

Today’s ride was an informal sightseeing trip to Hollywood. Five of us went, and we had a nice list of sights to see.

We met in South Pasadena and headed on over to Hollywood. When we got there, the first stop was at Hollywood Forever. I’d been there a while back to visit Don Adams’ grave, and I wanted to see if he’d gotten a stone yet. As it turned out, he had. I took a couple of pictures, and then we took a short tour around the cemetery. We saw Cecil B. DeMille’s grave. Also Dee Dee and Johnny Ramone, and Mel Blanc. Pictures are all in the Graves Gallery.

Leaving the cemetery, we took some side streets across Hollywood, passing by my old house there, as well as Mickey’s Greenhouse. Then we stopped for a photo-op on La Brea at Kat Von D’s tattoo shop that is features in “L.A. Ink“. Then we went up to Franklin Ave to see the Highland Gardens motel, where Janis Joplin died back in 1970.

Heading west, we stopped at the site of the motel where Divine died. The building was recently torn down, so it was just a vacant lot. Then we headed over into West Hollywood, passing by Jack Cassidy’s old apartment, as well as the alley where Sal Mineo was murdered.

We took a small detour down to Dicks St just for a chuckle. Then we went back up to Sunset and headed back east, passing The Viper Room, where River Phoenix died back in 1993. Then we turned left up Sunset Plaza and headed up the hill. Along the way, I spotted another hot-rod mailbox, so I added it to my collection.

Going over the top, we headed down into Laurel Canyon, passing by the site of Houdini’s old house. Then we turned and rode up Willow Glen, which is a very steep hill. It’s also always wet, which makes for tricky riding. At the top, we went down into Nicholls Canyon, turning left on Nicholls Canyon Road for the climb up to Mulholland.

We rode part-way down Mulholland before realizing that we’d gone the wrong way. We wanted to visit the site of Errol Flynn’s house, so we had to backtrack a bit to find it. Then we went back down Mulholland, turning on Woodrow Wilson to go down to the freeway in Cahuenga Pass.

Coming down the hill into Burbank, we stopped at Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake for bagels and orange juice. Then we headed home by the most direct and flattest route possible.

Overall, it was a very nice ride.

about 60 miles (my bike computer was on the fritz)
cycling

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the leopard print really hides the dirt. Even dog shit is hard to see. It just blends right in. Fortunately, so far we’ve found them before stepping on them.

The results are in:

In 2007, I used my car 38 times. Of those, 5 were when I took a trip to San Diego when my father had his knee replacement surgery. I drove to work a total of 4 times.

I put 1,020 miles on my car. This works out to an average of 26.8 miles on each day I used the car. The average is a bit higher than last year because of the trip to San Diego, which involved two days of 100+ miles.

I didn’t use the car at all in August and September. The car sat in the garage for 75 consecutive days.

One funny thing that happened was that 2007 was the year I had to take the car for its smog test. I took it to the same place as in 2005. The guy there remembered me. And he chuckled a bit when he read the odometer and saw how few miles I’d driven in those two years.

My car didn’t have to go in for repair at all this year. The only thing that went wrong was that I had to replace the battery in December. The old battery lasted for exactly 7 years.

I bought gas four times: January 13, April 29, June 8, and November 12.

Adding up the cost of gas, insurance, registration, and a new battery, it works out to 58.5 cents per mile.

Today is New Year’s Day, which means the Rose Parade here in Pasadena.

And my two most favorite things to see at the parade are:

• The look on the face of the kid who just marched 5 miles carrying a Sousaphone;
• Seeing a broken-down float getting towed away.

And what’s up with that ‘chin strap across the nose’ thing?

Anyway, my day was complete very early on. After that, we headed back home to see the horses. Along the way, we saw the band kids all sitting and chowing down on In-N-Out burgers. For some reason, I find that amusing, too.

We went to the parking lot where they had most of the horse trailers. Lucinda and her friend got to pet and feed carrots to the horses. While they were doing that, I watched a guy practice rope tricks, and I also got to see Miss California Rodeo.

When we went back home, we were treated to the always-surreal sight of horses grazing on suburban lawns, and people riding past our house.

It was a fun day.