Stan’s Obligatory Blog

So today was the big holiday feast. Not a lot to say about it. I made the traditional turkey and cornbread stuffing. I also made herb bread and two kinds of olive tapenade. And potatoes au gratin.

The main thing was that we got to use our fun little wine chiller thingy.

Last spring, Cathy had some trouble with her car. We ended up spending close to $2000 on fixing it. Our hope was that this would buy us another two years before having to replace it.

Sadly, this was not to be. After 129,000 miles, it was time.

So we bought Cathy a new car today. It’s a Toyota Matrix XR.

The amazing thing was, this wasn’t a horrible experience.

We started out looking at used cars. Cathy wanted something with a higher crash safety rating than her old Honda Civic. She liked the look of the Matrix, but being short, she needed to sit in it to be sure she could drive it.

Cathy contacted AAA and they referred her to Longo Toyota in El Monte. We went down there and had a look.

In the end, we found a used Matrix that had all the features Cathy wanted, but a new one with the same features was only $1,500 more. So we bought that.

Now this was a very weird, but still pleasant experience. Apparently, Longo fired all their car salesmen and replaced them with human beings. Everyone we dealt with there was pleasant, helpful, and knowledgeable. We thought we’d stepped into some weird Bizarro World where car buying doesn’t involve high pressure sales tactics, bodily-function deprivation, and being locked in a room with “The Closer”. It was all right.

And on a completely unrelated note, this weekend my car rolled over 100,000 miles. With the miles I drive, I probably won’t be able to keep it for more than another 15-20 years.

Route map and photo locations

Since I can’t do the regular Sunday ride this week, I contacted Gene and we arranged to do a ride today. The plan was to ride out to Westwood to visit Marilyn Monroe’s grave.

Today was another achingly beautiful Southern California day. It was clear. It was the kind of day when they take postcard pictures. It was amazing.

We started out going west and down through the arroyo, past the stables, and then up to York Ave. We took York to Eagle Rock Blvd, and then took that south. We crossed the L.A. River on Fletcher, then took Glendale Blvd and Rowena Ave into the Franklin Hills.

After crossing the Shakespeare Bridge we turned south and picked up Hollywood Boulevard. Riding a bike down Hollywood Blvd is always a unique experience. We passed the Thai hot dog. Then we got to the main tourist area and the Walk of Fame. Workers were putting up the holiday decorations over the street. We stopped where Marilyn’s star is, but they were digging up the sidewalk there and several of the stars were buried under a big pile of dirt. So we didn’t get to see her star.

Turning south, we took Hawthorn Ave for a bit and then went south some more to get to Fountain Ave. We took Fountain to its end and then went south one block to Holloway. Then we went up a little hill and got on the Sunset Strip. We passed all the usual landmarks there, and then crossed into Beverly Hills.

We rode halfway across Beverly Hills on Sunset, and then turned south a bit and took Elevado the rest of the way. Due to a miscalculation, we ended up on Wilshire, but we only had to ride on it for a block or so to get to Santa Monica Blvd.

Sadly, Santa Monica Blvd through Century City is being rebuilt. So it was kind of miserable to ride on. I immediately remembered why I used to always take Olympic instead. Fortunately, we only had to ride on it for about a mile. We passed the Los Angeles Mormon Temple with the nicely landscaped fault scarp in front of it. Then we turned off and went to visit my friend Kathleen at her house in Westwood.

We got some water and visited with Kathleen for a little bit and then got back on the road. We went north to the Westwood cemetery. It took us a while to find the entrance. We finally went down an alley between two high-rises and found a little gate that went in to the cemetery. Then it was pretty easy to find the crypt where Marilyn is buried.

Leaving the cemetery, we crossed Wilshire and went north into Holmby Hills. We passed Aaron Spelling’s modest little 56,000 square foot house. Then we crossed Sunset and took some small streets through the hills there to get to Benedict Canyon.

Benedict Canyon Road is one of the nicest roads in the Hollywood Hills. It has been repaved, and it has less traffic than most of the other roads. We took it all the way up to Mulholland Drive, and then we turned east for the trip home.

Mulholland is nice to ride from west to east, because it tends downhill in that direction. And the views today were fabulous. We saw some filming going on on one of the side streets. We also stopped for water at a park and had to admire the view of the Valley and also the view of Downtown L.A.

When we came out by the freeway in Cahuenga Pass, we took Cahuenga for just one short block and turned off onto one of the small streets to cut through the neighborhood there to get to Barham Blvd. Then it was the nice downhill and a turn on Forest Lawn to get to Griffith Park.

We rode through part of Griffith Park and then turned off to get to San Fernando Road. Then we took a route that Gene knew to take small streets across Glendale and Eagle Rock. Then the final test was to ride up the Colorado hill. That brought us back into Pasadena. We crossed the Colorado Bridge and then took Orange Grove back to the park.

65 miles
cycling

Yesterday, the club did a mountain ride. They rode up Glendora Mountain Road and along the ridge to Mt. Baldy Village. Gene said it was nearly 75 miles, and lots of big hills. So today’s ride was flat one.

Today was a perfect Southern California fall day. It was sunny and clear, and after a little morning chill it warmed up to about 75 degrees. It’s days like this that make dealing with urban congestion, smog and high housing prices worthwhile.

We started out east to Arcadia and Monrovia, and then turned south to Temple City. We made a big loop back through San Gabriel and San Marino to end up in Old Town Pasadena.

Our snack stop was at Il Forniao. The last time we were there, a security guard gave us a hard time about leaning our bikes up against the wall, so a bunch of the guys just leaned their bikes together to make a big free-standing bike sculpture. Then we sat down and ate.

After that, we rode down into the Arroyo, passing by the Rose Bowl and then going up Windsor Road up to Altadena Drive. That was where I saw the house with “Jesus Saves” spelled out in paving stones on the front yard. They also had “J S” in bricks in the driveway.

Coming down the hill, we ended up back at the park. Since it was still early, I rode out to Arcadia again just to pad the ride a bit.

47 miles.
cycling

I don’t usually (or ever, in fact) write about poop. But in keeping with the grand tradition of Heather and Zoot, I think that last evening’s adventure warrants an exception to my policy.

We had gone out today and seen the costumes from the “Star Wars” movies and also gone to the Natural History Museum. When we got home, we were all pretty tired and ready for bed. Then Cathy came out of our room holding her sweater and she said that our dog Buddy had gotten shit on it. I immediately grabbed Buddy and held him up. We looked and saw a pretty big chunk of shit impacted between his toes. We put him in the sink and washed all four of his feet. But when we went and looked at our bed where the sweater had been, he had gotten shit on the blanket and sheets.

So it was off to the laundry room. We had to wash everything.

Several hours later, all the laundry was done. I took the sheets and blanket and reassembled the bed. But when I lifted the comforter to put it back on the bed, I suddenly felt something between my toes. I looked down and saw a pea-sized turd lodged there. I picked it up and tossed it outside. Then I washed my feet. At that point, we were pretty tired of the whole dog-shit experience. So we just shook out the comforter and did a nose inspection of it and called it Good Enough For Government Work.

And we went to bed. Yick.

Today we went to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in downtown Los Angeles to see “Dressing a Galaxy: The Costumes of Star Wars“. This was an exhibit of costumes and props from all six movies. Most of the exhibits were costumes, but there were some other things, including Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader’s light sabers from the original movie, and an X-wing fighter parked in the courtyard.

There was an entire side of one gallery devoted to Natalie Portman’s costumes. I suppose we’ll have to rent those movies some day to see why she needed so many outfits.

We also saw the complete Darth Vader outfit used in Episode III, as well as a couple of wookie suits. Also, they had various other alien beings on display. I’m not enough of a geek to be able to name them.

It was great fun seeing this stuff up close. In particular, seeing Darth Vader’s light saber ranked right up there with the time I saw Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone. And after seeing this, Lucinda says we have to rent the movies so she can see them.

Just another sample of Lucinda’s artwork. (Waves to Grandma and Grandpa…)

I upgraded my Wordpress installation to the latest version. I’d read yesterday about the XML-RPC worm. I had a look at the Wordpress site and found this:

wordpress.org/development/2005/11/wordpress-is-secure/

They said not to worry if you’re running 1.5 or later. But I was on 1.2.mumble. So it was time to bite the bullet and do it.

The actual upgrade was pretty easy. I did a practice run on my practice web server at home. Then I hacked my home-made CAPTCHA and got it working with the new Wordpress. So here it is. Yay.

Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, and her student Tracy Boechler have conducted a study on the physics of cow-tipping.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1858246,00.html

Today we went to see “WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price“. This movie is like “Super Size Me” for Wal-Mart. We’ll never be able to go into a Wal-Mart again without feeling a bit sick. We were astounded by the arrogance and greed of the management.

The film talks about several different aspects of Wal-Mart’s corporate behavior, but I thought it was particularly impressive when they tied two of the threads together. They were talking about security problems in Wal-Mart’s parking lots and how the company doesn’t care about people being robbed and assaulted there. They told a story about a woman who was abducted and murdered from a Wal-Mart parking lot in Texas. The abduction was caught on a security camera. But nobody was watching the camera. Because the only reason that store had security cameras was so that management could keep an eye on union organizers. Truly breathtaking.

While it’s certainly not the ‘feel-good movie of the year’, it’s worth seeing.