Stan’s Obligatory Blog

On Thursday, I took a vacation day to take Lucinda and her friend Claire to Disneyland. I’d promised her I’d take her one more time before school starts. It was very hot, which made for a sweaty day, but it also kept a lot of other people away. So the lines were very short.

The highlight of the day had to be when Claire and I convinced Lucinda to try Gadget’s Go Coaster in Toon Town. The last two times we were there, I rode it with Claire while Lucinda sat on a rock and watched us. She was pretty apprehensive about it, but at the end of the run, before the train even stopped, she said, “That was so much fun! Let’s do it again!” So we ended up riding it three times in a row.

We were there from 11:00AM until nearly 7:00PM. Then we went for the obligatory dinner at the Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney before heading home. I like to make a point of ending our days there, since the pictures from there have provided me a good measure of my progress in surviving the sturm und drang of the ongoing divorce process.

And yes, it was a very fun day.

On Sunday afternoon, Lucinda asked if we could go on another bike ride. So I took her on another local sightseeing ride. This time to see the Bunny Museum. It’s only about a mile or so from our house, although it’s all uphill to get there. So I took her there by a roundabout route that broke the climbing up into small chunks. The we stopped to admire the giant topiary rabbit in the front yard, and all the other bunnies around the yard. Then we rode home, which was all downhill.

Today’s bike ride was another little sightseeing ride. This time, the destination was The Donut Hole in La Puente. This is a prime example of programmatic architecture, which in this case is a building shaped like the product sold there.

The actual route out there was pretty straightforward and flat. This was a minor variation on a route we did last summer.

When we got to The Donut Hole, we each took a souvenir photo in front of the big donut, and then a group shot, with the camera balanced on a rock.

The snack stop was at Panera in West Covina, and the route home went over Santa Fe Dam and up the bike path. Then home across Monrovia and Arcadia. It was a fun ride. The route itself wasn’t all that exciting, but the Donut Hole made it amusing.

45 miles.
cycling

Saturday afternoon, I went over to Hollywood for the big Tattoo Hollywood convention put on by BMEzine. I figured that because it was BME, it would be a good convention. And I also figured that a lot of people I know would be there.

When I walked in the door, I immediately saw The Lizardman. We’d never met in person before, I’ve known him from rec.arts.bodyart back in the days when he was a grad student, and before he embarked on his show business career.

I had a fun time schmoozing around and taking pictures. I met up with several other people who I’ve known online for years but never met in meatspace before. Late in the afternoon, Leslie came by, fresh off the plane from being out of town for the last few days. So I got to introduce her around, and she even has instant cachet in the tattoo scene, since she worked on the Modern Primitives book back in the ’80s.

It was a very fun afternoon and evening. Pictures are in the usual place.

Today, I got to go on the Saturday club ride for the first time since March. The ride was out to La Verne. It was a nice day, but the humidity was high by SoCal standards, so everyone was complaining about it.

As always, the group fragmented immediately at the start. Gene and I were the fast group. When we got to Gladstone St, we saw the PAA Coach Rick ride go by. This was the ride that I went on once last March. A couple of the guys in the group were people we knew, so we chased them for a couple miles to catch up and talk. Then they turned off and we continued on to La Verne.

We stopped at Coffeeberry, since they have a nice shaded patio. Then we continued on past the L.A. County Fair Grounds. I told everyone how I’m entering my blueberry muffins in the fair this year. Then we rode into Bonelli Park, around the lake and then headed for home.

On the way back, I saw a trailer park where the front street was “Space St”, and the cross streets were named for the original Mercury astronauts. I think this will have to be a sightseeing trip some time in the future.

It was a nice ride.

58 miles.
cycling

This past weekend I took Lucinda down to San Diego. The plan was to visit Grandpa, and also to go to the Wild Animal Park. We went down on Sunday afternoon. When we got there, we picked up Grandpa and headed down to La Jolla Cove. I’d seen the seals there the last time I was in San Diego, and I knew Lucinda would like seeing them, too.

When we got there, there we no seals. There were people on the beach, and the seals were all out in the water. They were just sort of bobbing in the waves and waiting for the people to leave. Whenever one would make a move to come up on the beach, a bunch of people with cameras would run over toward it. And of course, the seal would get scared off. Rule #1 of wildlife photography is: You get better pictures when you don’t scare the animal away.

After the seals, we headed down to Balboa Park for dinner at Prado. As always, it was great, even if my friend Laura isn’t the manager there any more.

Since we hadn’t really seen the seals, I promised Lucinda that we could go back there in the morning. And we did. They were all snoozing on the beach. Lucinda enjoyed seeing them, and I got some good seal photos. As always, my camera rocks.

After seeing the seals, we had breakfast and headed up to the Wild Animal Park. We went on the tram ride around to see the African animals. Then we went and saw some of the other exhibits. We signed up for the ‘Photo Safari’ tour in the afternoon. This is the one where you ride in a stake-bed truck out into the Africa exhibit, and you can hand-feed a giraffe. I knew that Lucinda would like this. And it was fun. We all got to feed the giraffe, and also get licked by the big giraffe tongue. After that, we saw some more exhibits and the bird show before heading home. It was a nice weekend.

More photos are here.

A week or so ago, my girlfriend was telling me about her friends who live in Shadow Hills. That’s the horse neighborhood off Sunland Blvd in the northeast San Fernando Valley. She said that their neighbors have an emu and a llama named Lorenzo living in their front yard. So of course I had to find out where so we could do a sightseeing ride up there. It turned out that it was only about a three-block detour off the “No Tuna for Me” route that we do. So this was today’s bike ride.

It was a perfect day for riding. We started off across Pasadena and Eagle Rock, and then across Glendale into Burbank. We took Glenoaks Blvd up to Sun Valley and turned on Peoria St, just before the big dump. And then we headed into horse country. We wound around in there a bit before we ended up in front of the llama house.

There was a sheep, a goat, an emu, and then Lorenzo the Llama. They were all friendly and curious, and they came up to the fence to check us out. So we all got souvenir pictures with them. It was a good piece of weird Los Angeles sightseeing.

The route back went through Tujunga and Montrose. Then we stopped at Goldstein’s for a bagel before heading home.

It was a nice ride.

44 miles.
cycling

This morning, I built a new box planter for my back yard. I had some basil plants started in pots on the window sill, and I wanted a place to put them outside. So I built a little planter with some spare wood I had in the garage. Lucinda helped me fill it and plant everything.

I bought Lucinda a new bike last Monday, and she’s been excited to go riding. So we’ve gone on a few short rides in the evening, and today, I took her on a small sightseeing ride. She asked to go somewhere without hills, and not too far away. So we rode down to see the weird castle-house I found in Pasadena some time ago.

It was a nice day for riding, and we even stopped off on the way home and got a new lamp for the house at a yard sale.

The widow of the man interred in the crypt above Marilyn Monroe is selling the crypt on Ebay. He had bought the crypt in 1954 from Joe DiMaggio, and was later buried in it. The money quote:

When he was dying, Elsie said, her husband approached her with a request. “He said, ‘If I croak, if you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you the rest of my life.’ ”

Right after the funeral, Elsie said, she told the funeral director of her husband’s wish. “I was standing right there, and he turned him over,” she said.

Goes to show that no matter what, mens’ priorities are always the same…

Read the whole article here:

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-marilyn14-2009aug14,0,2135061.story