Holidays, travels, and storms

It was a busy holiday season. Like I mentioned in my previous post, we spent Christmas here on the island. It was even quieter than normal in town. A serious challenge was to get Christmas gifts to the island in time for the big day. We had some rain the week before which delayed shipment of a number of packages we were expecting. Christmas Eve we hung the stockings by the front door (with care), and left milk and cookies under the tree. Christmas day the temperature was close to 75. The Things ran around outdoors in shorts (when they weren't playing with their new Gamecube or board games or Legos). It was definitely different that other Christmases we've had, but it was fun.

Later that week we left for the East coast. On top of a trip to visit Grammy and Grandpa Nelson, we finally sold our house (hooray!) and had to get the remaining items out of the garage. Our flight out of LA was delayed by 1 hr, but Southwest held our connection in St Louis. We arrived at BWI at about 1am, and still had to drive to Delaware, finally getting to my folks' place at 3am. (Which really was only midnight California time :) ) Fortunately, we didn't have to go down to Maryland until Monday. Sweetie and I drove down, met the new owners (very nice people), took a load of stuff to the dump (well, refuse transfer station), and sold our station wagon (back down to two cars!). That evening we had dinner with a former colleague of Sweetie's. The Things stayed with Grammy and Grandpa and Aunt Naomi and went to the Brandywine River Museum (quite an adventure in GPS navigation, as I'm told).

It was cold in Delaware (20-30), and we now have little in the way of warm clothes. The Things enjoyed seeing Buster (formerly our cat) again, whacking the ice on the fish pond with sticks, and spreading toys all over the living room. Too soon it was time to return. It's an odd thing, but now the sight that makes me feel like "whew, we're home" is not the house, or the island, but as we drive south on the 110 and come over the rise and see the field of cargo cranes at the Port of LA.

Traveling on the ferry in the off season is like old home week. There's rarely anyone you don't know (or at least have seen around town) coming across to Two Harbors. So it's very friendly, and then when the ferry docks, many other people you know are waiting on the pier for the people on the boat, so it's a very social time.

Too soon we were traveling again. We were just getting adjusted to 2008, when news of the tragic death of Sweetie's 19-year-old nephew arrived. And it arrived in a typically screwed-up island way. Workers had been scheduled to sandblast and paint a water storage tank near town. It happened that the tank was right next to the local cell phone tower. So they cut power to the cell phone tower so the workers wouldn't be 'irradiated'. All cell phone coverage on the West End was out for a month. So when Sweetie's mom tried to call, she couldn't get through. She had to leave voice mail on my work phone to let us know. Then I had to drive back into town to tell Sweetie and bring her back to the lab so she could use a land line to call back. It was horrible. A trip was quickly arranged for us all to go to the services. The one bright spot in this terrible weekend was that the Things got to see and play with their cousins. We'll miss you Taylor.

Finally, I'd like to say that the rainy season is really living up to its name this year. So far in January we've gotten more rain that we did all last year. I'd like to thank those who have sent email inquiring as to how we've been doing in all this, and I'd like to apologize for not answering those emails. We're doing just fine, so far. Mud slides are not a danger where we are, and the biggest problem has been worries about whether the road to Avalon will be open for us to get groceries or get to Cub Scout meetings or catch a ferry. We have had some limbs down in town (stupid eucalyptus trees), and last weekend an 80-ft yacht was blown so hard it dragged its anchor, crashed into two other boats and then wrecked on the shore. I'll try to post a picture of that. It's impressive.

So that's a bit of a catch-up on doings here. I'll try to be better about posting more frequently, but most of you know me well enough to know how likely that is. :)

Next up: Doings at work, etc.

Christmas time

What does Christmas on Catalina mean? I think the word that best describes it is 'mud'.

Yes, we're into the rainy season, and with every couple inches of rain, a new mud texture is discovered. First, as the dust of summer is first moistened, it turns into an unbelievably sticky clay-like mud that cakes on to shoes until they are the size of dinner platters and weigh a (figurative) ton. Tires pick up the top inch of the road surface and fling it all about, tearing up the roads. Then as more rain falls, everything seems to liquify. Any slightly dirty surface (ie all surfaces) become covered with a slime-like mud that is very slippery. The roads (in unpredictable places) turn into 4-6 inches of muck making driving quite treacherous (since we're driving on the edge of a cliff). The kids who go to school in Avalon get the day off because the interior roads become impassable. You can see the muddy streams flowing down every crevice of every hill. They don't have gutters on the houses. Rain streams down windows and drenches you as soon as you open the door. Finally the rain stops, and the parched ground has a chance to drink in all remaining moisture. After about a day, there are no puddles to be found. The dirt is gelatinous with its retained water making walking treacherous. Soon it returns to the sticky clay consistency, and then a sunny day will bake it back into the hard soil from which next year's dust will be made. Ah, the circle of life...

"But what of the decorations?", I hear you ask. (I have good ears.) The Island Company (which runs the town of Two Harbors) organized a shipment of very nice trees to the island, however, most of our decorations (and all our tree ornaments) remain in storage on the mainland. We scrounged some decorations from friends and managed to make a pretty festive tree. The Things were so excited that they had to take some ornaments ('elements' as Thing 2 calls them) and re-decorate the tree. Not much in the way of exterior lights for us. Some houses have quite a few, but what with it being the rainy season and all, I'm worried about that whole mixing water and electricity thing. Sweetie made sugar cookies the other day, and we decorated them. Again, the Things had a blast. Some cookies you can just barely see beneath the avalanche of sprinkles atop them.

So it's looking like it will be a Merry Christmas. We will be on the island for the Big Day, then travel to the east coast for New Year's (and to complete the sale of our house) (knock wood).

So Merry Christmas to all of you out there (unless you're a Happy Hannukkah or Sensational Solstice type of person) and Happy New Year, too.

Travels

We had a very nice visit with extended family over Thanksgiving down in Escandido. Let me tell you how NOT to get there the day before Thanksgiving. Do NOT take the 91 to 15. This is a big mistake. At one point I saw a sign saying 'Cororna 15mi' and I thought to myself "Gee, at this speed we'll be to Corona in two hours!". I optimistically/naively think that the 5 will be a much better choice next year.

We eventually got where we were going. We stayed in a hotel that had a heated outdoor pool. The Things had to go swimming, naturally. The air temperature was less than 60, but we went swimming, darnit. Brrrrr! Good thing there was a hot tub to warm up in before we went back to the room. The next morning, we had to go swimming again. This served two purposes: it got the Things to stop asking when we were going swimming, and it tired them out so they wouldn't be too bouncy with the excitement of the day. Thing 2 actually had to take a nap in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. We were dining with friends of my Uncle and Aunt. They were very nice and served an excellent dinner. There neighborhood was close to where the fires were in October, so they had some interesting and hair-raising stories to tell.

Friday we had planned to do something fun like the Wild Animal Park or Legoland, but everyone was tired and the weather wasn't that nice, so we decided to drive back to LA and go to the Natural History Museum. That was really cool. They have great diorama's displaying their large mammals and the Treasures from the Vault exhibit was great. Saturday was errands and a movie, and then it was back to the island.

A week later, Sweetie and I were back to the mainland. We had to take a ferry from Avalon, so the first part of the trip was a drive across the island. The ferry ride over was smooth as glass, which should have alerted up to bad things ahead. The next day it rained (in LA!), which made our drive downtown that much more interesting (it's sort of like when it snows in North Carolina). We were supposed to go back to the island Friday night, but decided to wait until Saturday. This turned out to be a mistake. As the ferry left the dock, the captain said something about "it's kind of bumpy out there today". And it was. I would say the swells were around 6-8 feet. The boat would hit them and the spray would go 20-30 feet in the air. At one point I think the boat went airborne. Many passengers were getting seasick. I just closed my eyes and thought about work. We finally got to Avalon. I got off there; Sweetie was going to take the ferry over to Two Harbors. So I get to the truck to discover that Sweetie still had the keys! Fortunately, some friends of ours needed groceries, so there were willing to drive the keys across the island to me, otherwise I'm not sure what I would've done. Finally, I got home. It was an exhausting couple of days. The Things were very happy to see us.

Next post: The Christmas Season

Sorry for the delay

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posting for the last month or so. Is it because we've been having so much fun we just haven't had time to post? Is it because we're so desperately unhappy that we can't bear to rehash our misery in blog form? Did I break all my fingers in a bizarre kayaking accident?

No, we just lost our internet connection at the house. We use a University wireless network, and the access point closest to us stopped working. So now we're waiting for ITS to come out and fix it. They've been here twice already, but they have fallen short on fixing it. I do have a few posts saved up that I will upload soon. (I thought I had them on my thumb drive, but apparently not...)

Until then, a funny moment with Thing2:

Thing2, playing with a milk tanker truck
"Mom, this is the cow truck"
Puzzled expression on his face.
"How do they get the cows in there?"

Rain

On Friday we had the first actual rainfall since we moved here. I awoke at about 5:30 am to the now-unfamiliar sound of rain beating down. There were several showers that day. I heard on the radio that LA received it's first rain in 150 days; for the island it may have been longer.

If you've ever wondered how quickly dust turns to mud, I am now an expert. The water soaks into the first inch or so of dust before it starts to run off. That top layer turns into a clay-like substance, which sticks to any tire- or shoe-like substance that it touches. Lugged soles or tires are pretty much worthless after about 20 seconds; after that you have slick mud caked on what is supposed to be giving you traction. I heard that we got about 1/2 inch of rain that day. It seemed like more than that to me, especially as I was shifting the truck into 4-wheel drive for the trip over to the lab.

Amusing aside: I used to laugh at the Marylanders when school would be canceled when 1/4 inch of snow fell. Sometimes they'd cancel school on the threat of snow. Well, on Friday they canceled a field trip from the LRS to Avalon on the THREAT of RAIN! Granted the rain did actually appear, and I wouldn't have wanted them to go on the slick roads, but still I found it funny.

So things appear greener here right now, although I can't tell if that's because things are growing or just that the dust has been washed off.


Speaking of dust, here is a picture of the back of our truck prior to the rain, just to show you how dusty things get around here. It seems like we'd do better to have windshield brushes rather than wipers.

One last note: We got our satellite TV hooked up. A nice man (who apparently spent 20 years as a professional break-dancer) came out on the ferry and was able to set up our satellite dish in between the morning and afternoon rain showers on Friday. I watched several football games (Go Trojans!), one futbol game (Spanish league!), and two soccer games (Man City v Fulham, and the unfortunate ManU/Chelsea affair) over the weekend, and tonight I even got to watch the Daily Show for the first time since July! One benefit to West Coast living is that the Daily Show is on at 10pm, leaving you an hour to blog. (It's also on at 8pm, but the kids are still running around at that point.) I guess I have mixed feelings about it, but the mix is heavily on the 'thank goodness' side.

Summer Ends / Autumn Begins

School has begun. It seems late, but then maybe that's because southern California doesn't have to build in snow days, so they can start later and save on air conditioning bills (not that that's a concern out here on the island).

We had a clean-up day at the Little Red Schoolhouse (LRS) a week ago to pick up trash, fix up gardens, and generally spruce up the place. The building was just painted, too. It turns out this is the 20th anniversary of the LRS, so they're doing an extra special sprucing up this year. We also had a Welcome cook-out for the new teacher (we'll call her Ms Frizzle in honor of the Magic Schoolbus series). She seems very nice and very together. She has 20 years experience and knows the island and its issues. There is a great sense of community amongst the school parents and the various people who volunteer their time at the school (there's a couple who comes to teach music, and another who donates school supplies each year, for instance). It was nice to meet all of them while the kids played together.

The first week (well, three days) of school went pretty well. The first day, Ms Frizzle had the kids gather on the steps in front of all the parents and sing a special LRS song. Then the bell was rung (yes, there's a bell in the little bell house on top!) and in the kids went. Thing1 didn't exactly stay out of trouble, but we haven't received a note home yet. Most of this first week seems to be Ms Frizzle trying to figure out what the kids know so she can plan curriculum for the kids. After school, many of the kids go to a house across the courtyard for after-care, so Thing1 plays with them (after doing his homework, of course). Thing2 is spending his days at home with Sweetie, and has been very excited to see Thing1 when he gets home.

Another sure sign of autumn is the decreased activity in the harbor. Which means a slowing down of the tourist activity in town, which means, well, here's an example. Last week (Labor Day weekend) we decided to get a pizza for dinner from the snack bar on Friday night. So I wandered down and (eventually) got one and we enjoyed it, so we thought we'd try that again this week. I walked down to the snack bar at 5:30 to find it closed. Hrm. I looked around for a sign showing their current hours, only to be disappointed. Hrm. Life in a small tourist town. Looks like it's frozen pizzas until Memorial Day.

We now have a planned date for moving our stuff. I'm not exactly sure when it will arrive here, but we know when it will leave Maryland. The house still hasn't sold, but we occasionally have second showings, so maybe someday soon.

Poopcorn

A day late, but, as promised, here is the tale of poopcorn.

We were camping in Yellowstone, as you may remember from a previous post. After dinner we started a campfire, as did our neighbors. We were enjoying the fire, Thing 2 had us dance around singing a silly song, we sang some real campfire songs, and we made s'mores. [On a side note, eating s'mores does not combine neatly with having a mustache].

Our neighbors had no marshmallows, but did make JiffyPop over their campfire. Thing1 thought this was really cool and asked if we could make popcorn the next night. So the next day we stopped by the store and picked up some JiffyPop. But this story isn't titled 'Popcorn', now is it?

One can only drive by so many bison before the story of the pioneers using buffalo chips as fuel for their fires is mentioned by one (or both) know-it-all parents. The Things were amused and intrigued by this idea of burning poop, so we hit upon the idea of 'poopcorn' - cooking our popcorn over a buffalo chip fire.

After returning to camp, I went on a chip hunt. With the number of bison around, and their prodigious pooping ability, it did not take long to find a well-aged patty. After supper, we built a campfire, and when we decided the time was ripe (ha ha), on went the chip.

How does a buffalo chip burn? Not as well as the bone-dry lodgepole pine branches we had been using in the fire, but a cheery yellow flame licked (ugh) around the edges of the chip. And while there was a slight odor, it wasn't any worse than regular wood smoke.

The unburned center of the chip blocked most of the heat, so we waited until it was mostly consumed (yeck) before starting our JiffyPop.

The experiment was a success. We enjoyed delicious poopcorn, just as the pioneers must have 125 years ago.


And we got a funny story out of it, too.