Stan’s Obligatory Blog

On Friday night, I took Lucinda and her friend to see the fireworks show in South Pasadena. We’ve been to this before, and it’s usually a pretty good show.

We got there and took our places on the artificial turf. That was a little weird. Sitting on fake grass that had fake dirt underneath it. The fake dirt was made of ground-up tires. So it was a totally un-natural experience. But it was soft and pretty comfortable. So I guess that’s just how it goes.

The show was good. They didn’t waste any time. As soon as it was dark, they started up. And right after the climax at the end, the lights came on, and everyone went home. No wasted time or motion.

It was a fun time.

On Sunday afternoon, Susan and I went over to Beverly Hills to visit the galleries at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two current exhibits are:

• Ink and Paint: The Art of Hand-Drawn Animation
• Pulling Back the Drapes: Set Decoration Revealed

I’ve been to these sorts of things before, and they’re always fun to see.

The animation exhibit was interesting, and we got to see a lot of original artwork from cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s. And upstairs, we saw parts of sets of quite a few recent movies. We saw Indiana Jones’s desk. Too bad he was denied tenure. We also saw The Chief’s desk from “Get Smart“, got our picture in the cave with the Mark 1 suit from “Iron Man“, and Susan poked around the props from “The Spiderwick Chronicles“.

It was a fun little afternoon, and we finished off with dinner at the French Quarter in West Hollywood.

Just a couple of parrot pictures. There is a large colony of feral parrots that live somewhere nearby, and I see them around my house most days. So I tried taking a few pictures of them just for fun.

As always, my camera rocks.

Today was the media event for the start of the Southern California Shakeout. This is an exercise to see if we can collectively deal with a M7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This is the ‘Big One‘ that they have been telling us about for some years now.

They had an animation showing the waves traveling across southern California in real time, showing just how long the earthquake would last. It was impressive. Most earthquakes we’ve dealt with recently are over in seconds. The Big One will last something like three minutes.

Have I mentioned lately that I really like my job?

On Friday night, Susan and I went to Griffith park to do one of the evening hikes. Tonight’s was up Glendale Peak, which is one of the small mountains in the park. I’ve done this one before, but it’s a pleasant hike. And it’s also a good way for us to get some weight-bearing exercise.

On the way to the start of the hike, we saw a lone coyote hanging around in one of the parking lots in the park. On the way up, we saw a small frog in a little puddle on the side of the trail. And a bit later, we saw a couple of deer running around just above us on the hill.

By the time we were close to the top, it was dusk, and so we got a picture with the city lights and Griffith Observatory in the background.

The trip down was nice, since it was cooling off by then. And the nearly-full moon was plenty of light to see by.

It was a fun evening.

After the bike ride this morning, Susan and I went to the JPL Open House. Bein’ nerds and all, this was great fun.

We saw models of the three generations of Mars rovers, from the tiny Sojourner to the current Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the relatively huge Mars Science Laboratory rover. They also had photos of Mars in 3-D. They gave all of us anaglyph 3-D glasses to use for viewing these.

We got our picture taken with the Sergeant missile. We also had a laugh at the “Rover Xing” signs. One building had a small exhibit of art projected on blocks of aerogel. And outside they had a rover demonstration where the rover drove over kids lying on the ground.

Finally, we got our picture taken in 3-D on Mars. It was a fun afternoon.

Just a couple of random things I saw and found amusing:

Yesterday, they were filming “Greek” again on campus at Caltech. It’s weird to be riding my bike across campus and suddenly see things in the middle of the sidewalk that I know are just props. And it’s always funny to see a familiar place dressed up as something different. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the last time I saw them filming this on campus, but the bulletin board kiosks on the sidewalk were kind of jarring to see. Especially since if I wasn’t paying attention, I’d have run into one of them.

Later, when I was going out for the evening, I saw a GM fuel cell car on the road. I’d seen a couple of these parked behind the GM Training Center in Burbank back in February. So it was interesting to see one out on the road. It was very quiet.

I didn’t say anything about the time between Saturday’s bike ride and Sunday’s bike ride. It was a very fun time. But it wasn’t the sort of fun that I can talk about here. So here’s the officially sanitized version.

This morning, when I dropped Lucinda off at school, this is what I saw from the playground at the school.

The fire in Santa Anita Canyon was crossing a ridge about 2 miles away. It was a bit unnerving to see actual flames on the mountain that close to the school. But the word tonight is that they are gaining ground on the fire, and school will be open tomorrow. So I guess that’s a Good Thing.

I’ve been doing the Tuesday night hikes in Griffith Park lately. It’s fun, and interesting to see what’s in the park right here in the city. Tonight was a different hike, where we went and looked for an old trail that was burned out in last year’s fires. We went up a fire road for part of the way, and then struck out on a faint trail up a ridge, just overlooking the Golden State Freeway. Such is urban hiking. We can be walking up the side of a mountain, but listening to the roar of a freeway. But we got a nice view of downtown L.A. at dusk, which was nice.