Vacation 2009 - Day 1

Vacation started rather inauspiciously.

First off, I'm working on a grant that is due soon, so this is rather a sticky time to be away. So I worked half a day before we left the island. This turned out to be a bad idea, as we had a lot to do before we left, and we ended up in a big rush, which may have lead to our second problem.

We got down to the pier in plenty of time for our ferry, but I realized that I hadn't brought my hat. So with it seeming to take an endless amount of time to offload the ferry, I decided to run up to the house to get my it. Of course, 30 seconds after I left, they started loading the boat. I got back in plenty of time for us to load, but it was intimating annoyances to come.


So we're on the ferry, enjoying the thought that we're off on vacation, when Sweetie realizes, after a frantic search, that we don't have the envelope with the tickets for all the fun places we're going. She thinks it's in the office. In our frantic running about before leaving, neither of us thought about them. So a quick call to friends on the island occurs, and they kindly go and search our house and find the ticket envelope. Vacation saved! Now we just needed to link up with them and get them. Of course, that also had it's problems. Due to a mistaken set of assumptions, they ended up going way down to Long Beach while we were waiting in San Pedro, and we needed to get downtown to meet a friend of Sweetie's from college. So after a long drive, we finally found the obscure strip they were at and got the tickets. This sounds whiney, but we were actually very grateful to them for saving our vacation.

So then it was off to downtown. We met with N. (She and Sweetie had a great reunion, while the boys and I watched a movie in the hotel room.)

Sweetie was stressed that evening about the stressful start to our vacation, but I reasoned that, Garp-like, this just meant we got all the bad stuff out of the vacation on the first day, really before we started.

On to Legoland...

Camp

Summer is here, and so we, like all other parents out there, need to entertain our kids (or at least keep them occupied) until school starts again. This is an expensive prospect. In the old days, you just sent them outside and said "Play." Nowadays it's camp. (Okay, that's a total fabrication. I attended many camps from Cub Scout day camps through church and Boy Scout sleep-away camps. Thanks Mom and Dad!)

This year we organized things a logical, yet island-peculiar way. Thing 1 had such a good time at Howland's Landing last year, that we decided to send him for two weeks this year. Reasoning that Thing 2 would a) be lonely while Thing 1 was away, and b) that he should have a chance to play with kids his own age, we signed him up for the Peninsula Bay Cities Day Camp. This is a day camp on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, not too far from the apartment USC maintains for their employees (not a coincidence). This meant that I (being able to commute to campus) would spend two weeks on the mainland with Thing 2 while Thing 1 was away at Howland's. Where did this leave Sweetie? Mommy Camp! Two weeks without boys. Paradise. (Even more so than regular life.)

Things were complicated by 1) my cousin's wedding and 2) Thing 1's birthday. We had a whirlwind weekend trip up to Sacramento for the wedding (which was very nice, by the way), having to leave before lunch on Sunday so we could get back to San Pedro in time to have a little birthday party for Thing 1. Things went awry when the box that we thought contained his bow and arrow set only contained the arrows, but he took it well. The next morning we all dropped Thing2 off for his first day of camp, did a little shopping, and then dropped Thing 1 off at the ferry terminal for his trip to camp. Sweetie left on the next boat, and then it was time to pick up Thing 2 from his first day. A bit crazy, yes, but everyone got where they needed to go and had a good time.

Thing 2 had a great time at his camp. He learned to swim (a source of some anxiety before camp), played lots of sports like soccer, softball, archery, golf, bowling, track and field, cricket (!), and 'tuffleball' (?), sang camp songs ("I'm bringing home a baby bumble-bee..."), did arts & crafts, played games like Steal the Bacon, and generally defeated our good aims by declaring that he didn't really like any of the kids his age, he preferred the teen-agers.

Thing 1 has apparently had a good time at camp. (They post pictures daily on the web.) He has been sailing, climbing walling, composting (yes, an activity at Howland's), snorkelling, archerying (a verb?), BB gunning, game playing and dragging behind a speedboat on a raft. We'll pick him up from camp tomorrow, and maybe get some more information out of him. (Us: "What'd you do at camp?" Thing 1: "I don't remember.")

Meanwhile, Sweetie slept in late, read books, painted the boys room and did other Mommy Camp activities like wine drinking, watching movies, and gardening. She had a good time, too.

Meanwhile I was slaving away over a manuscript...

I guess there's no such thing as Daddy Camp. :)

Welcome back from the road, Grammy, Grampa and Auntie N! Thanks for sharing with us on your secret blog.

Tonight, Two Harbors has its fireworks display. Thing 2 can't wait.

Pinewood derby, United at the HDC and the ASM in Philly

What makes you feel more like a failure as a father than having your son's car come in last in his races at the Pinewood Derby?

Having both your sons cars come in last in all their races.

Thing1 took it pretty well. Thing2 (who was racing in the Friends & Family race since he isn't yet old enough to be a Cub) didn't.

Unfortunately, I had to leave on the ferry just after the race, so I didn't see how quickly they bounced back. It just ate at me for the rest of the day.

Once on the mainland, I meandered on over to the Home Depot Center in Carson. By fortuitous happenstance, DC United was playing Chivas USA that evening, so I got a chance to see the Black and Red play locally. I'd not been to the HDC before - it's a very nice facility. The type they could really use in DC to house United. I was sitting with some United fans; they were rather rowdy. The game wasn't going so well (we went down two goals in the first half), but late in the second half we tied it up, so the evening was saved. The players came over after the game to thank the away-from-home fans. That was pretty cool.

Next day I missed my flight to PHX, thanks to a hotel room alarm clock that was off by 12 hours. (Grrr.) So I had a happy day of stand-by plane travel. It's curious that when you're a ticketed passenger, things seem so regemented and documented. But when you're on stand-by, they just say "get on the plane" - no boarding pass or anything. I got on a flight that was direct to PHL with a stop in Denver, however the leg from Denver to PHL was full, so I got bumped from the plane. Having 20,000 microbiologists converge on a town from all over the world tends to book up the flights. So I was told I was put on a later flight. When I talked to the guy at the gate, however, he was like "Do you have a confirmation number?" And I was like "I don't even have a boarding pass stub. All I have is my luggage claim check." Fortunately that was sufficient for him to find me in the system. I finally arrived in Philadelphia at 11pm (only 8pm CA time!). My luggage was already there. Not having to wait for your luggage in PHL is a huge perk (if you've never flown through there). I get to my hotel and take a real close look at the clock. It's off by 12 hours. I swear they train the cleaning ladies to set them that way...

The meeting was very good. I saw many good talks (almost all with really lousy slides - what, is it a lost art to make a straightforward clear slide?), and saw many old, dear friends. I had an Italian Hoagie and a Cheesesteak at the Eastern Terminal Market (a crazy place), saw an old friend from Bucknell days, and that's about all that I think you'll be interested in from the meeting. After that I took the train to Wilmington to see my folks.

I was only semi-looking forward to this, because my mom reported earlier in the week that my dad had the flu. The last thing I wanted was to be home just long enough to catch the flu, then get on a airplane and bring it back to the island - Typhoid Bill bad! But it turns out Dad was on the mend, and past contagion stage. So I had a nice time. Saw one old friend from high school (she'd probably cringe at the 'old friend' comment :) ; another bailed on me because she came down with shingles. (I swear, any excuse to not see me...) I tried to mow the lawn for my dad, but the pull rope broke on my first try. (Too many Wheaties?). And now I'm out of story, really. The flight back was uneventful. I didn't get flu, and I was happy to be back with the family.

School's out next week. We're getting ready for camps and vacation. Whoopee!

Catalina...the Final Frontier

You're probably all aware that a new Star Trek movie is out. They had...not really a premier, but a special screening of the film at the movie theater in the Avalon Casino. It turns out Rod Roddenberry (Gene's son) is an avid diver and loves to dive off Catalina. So he decided to round up a few people and bring a taste of Hollywood to the island. So Sweetie and I got tickets and made an evening of it. We ate at Steve's Steakhouse before the film. (Good food and good service - go there, if you're here.) Then strolled over to the Casino.
Before the film actually started, there was a lot of fol-de-rol. First a guy came out to "warm up the crowd". Then Rod came out and talked for quite a while about how he pretty much knew nothing about Star Trek except what he learned from fans and how he had nothing to do with any of the productions, TV or movie. Then he asked if there were any questions. I was wondering what question we might be able to ask him. He was also promoting a new dive group, the Roddenberry Dive Team, and another Roddenberry foundation, and a documentary he's putting together about the Star Trek phenomenon - it was a little scattered. Then they had an auction of a few items to support the San Diego Zoo, which I thought was a little odd. Then they had to have a parade of celebrity guests. And while none of the stars from the current movie were there (they were on a press junket, naturally), they did have George Takei (Sulu), Nichelle Nicols (Uhura), the guy who played Jake Sisko on DS9, the guy who played Rom on DS9, an Enterprise cast member (can you tell I didn't really follow these other shows?) and a former Miss Universe. Both George and Nichelle spoke. It was quite impressive to think about the impact that the original series had. They both spoke of how the networks didn't want to air it because it had a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, etc cast and many adults at the time rejected this world view. But I watched it as a kid, and so naturally just accepted the fact that there was a black woman on the bridge performing a critical and technical job. So I wonder how much that kind of exposure shapes one's views of the world and works against societal prejudices.
Well, it had been an hour and a half already, so they decided they'd finally start the movie. It was worth the wait (although the sound system in the Casino theater isn't that great). I thought the script was well done, and the actors were pitch perfect in their adoption of the characters we all know and love. Plenty of good humor and exciting action. So that's about it. When the movie ended (to much applause), we decided not mob the celebs and headed home to our Things.

A little glam in our dusty lives.

A visitor

When we last left our heroes, they had just returned from Atlanta. Arriving back in sunny CA, Sweetie made contact with a former colleague, Dr. Drew, who was out west on the return leg of a trip.

Still exhausted from our trip, we launched right into host mode. We started with a nice stroll down the beach and poke around the intertidal zone. This was followed by a hike over to the lab. It was very hot that weekend - close to 90F, sunny and no breeze. It was a nice hike, but we got close to getting too much sun. The Things complained very little about the hike. Thing 1 spent most of the time lollygagging behind playing sword with fennel stalks. Dr. Drew and Sweetie caught up with each other, while I hung with Thing 2.

The next day was another beautiful, sunny, hot day. In the morning we took a boat out, and explored the coastline down to Empire Landing, then back up past Bird Rock, and all the way to Emerald Bay and back. Not too much wild life seen - a few sea lions, and maybe a dolphin or two. Bird Rock is covered with birds right now, pelicans and cormorants mostly, but also some gulls. It smells quite special. That afternoon we did a cookout on the beach with some friends. The kids splashed in the water for a while (it's around 57F right now). A good time was had by all.

Monday the kiddies went back to school, so we went snorkeling! There was an aborted first attempt - the water was too cold, so we all went back for hoods - but once properly suited up, it was a pretty good snorkel. Storms the previous week had ripped up lots of kelp, which was now decaying on the beach and casting off lots of particulates into the water, so visibility wasn't what it sometimes is, but Dr. Drew still got to see garibaldis, and kelp bass, a spiny lobster, a bat ray, black jacks, spot, blue-banded gobys, quite a few orange sea cucumbers, a nudibranch, and I was lucky enough to catch sight of a leopard shark. We also saw some very cool seaweeds, including kelp that wasn't washed up on the beach. That night we went to the restaurant for dinner; we practically had the place to ourselves.

Tuesday, Dr. Drew had to leave. Sweetie drove him across the island so he could see more of the interior and a little of Avalon. Coincidentally, I was in Avalon, too, that day. A former colleague from TIGR who now lives in Australia was in town and came out to Avalon for the day, so John and I drove over to see him.

Next exciting installment... Star Trek, island-style!

Spring Break

Spring Break for the children at the Little Red Schoolhouse was the week following Easter. We decided to go visit Auntie En in Atlanta. My folks also drove down for the week, so it was a big fambly reonion.

It was lots of fun. We dyed Easter eggs, MC Easter Bunny hid them in all sorts of secret places, but the Things found them all. Auntie En cleverly gave the Things joke books ON THE FIRST DAY OF OUR TRIP, so we heard funny jokes many times over the course of the week.

The next day (when we had recovered from our chocolate comas) we were supposed to visit some of Sweetie's relatives who lived farther south in GA, but it was stormy, so we decided to stay in. Not a bad idea, since trees were down all over Atlanta causing general mayhem. We decided to go to a local museum instead to see the 3D dinosaur movie, but the museum was closed due to a power outage (see the above line about downed trees causing general mayhem). So we went to a local park and got into a total-family monkey ball fight (well, we call them monkey balls - everyone else calls them sweet gum balls).

The next day was a trip to the fabulous Georgia Aquarium (even their website is awesome). The Things loved it and we got some cool pictures and video. Afterwards, we walked over to the Centennial Olympic Park (COP) (remember when the Olympics were in Atlanta?) and found the brick that Auntie En bought to help support the Games.

Wednesday was our big trip to Stone Mountain to (begin sarcasm) celebrate the Confederacy and secession (end sarcasm)! They don't really push that aspect of it, but good Lord, the carving dominates the place, and the 'viewing stations' commemorate only those state that seceded (or tried to). This is a very nice park, and an incredibly impressive geologic formation, and actually a rather incredible feat of engineering and sculpting, but the whole concept of it baffles me (as a Northerner). Ah well, we had had a nice time hiking up the Stone - no whining from the Things about being tired, etc. It was windy at the top, but the view was nice. We took the cable car, I mean, Skyride back down. Thing 2 said, "I've never been on a cable car before!" And he was right...

Thursday, Grammy and Grandpa had to leave and we finally got down to see Aunt Ann and Uncle Jake. They live near the Air Force base in Warner-Robbins that has a cool museum. It's not as extensive as the one in Ohio, but it's got a surprising variety of aircraft from WWII through the modern era - there's a B-1 bomber sitting right in front of the place. This, too, was very popular with the Things.

Then our trip was over and it was time to get back to sunny CA. We were expecting a guest. More on that in the next post.

Hooded Oriole

We've also seen the female. They must be nesting in our area. The cats love to jump up the screen at the poor male when he shows up. He chitters at them quite fiercely. I've taken to closing the sliding glass door so he can eat in peace!