First visitors

We had G and C come to stay with us for two nights, which was exciting, because they were our first ever visitors. Well, they had been in Australia and New Zealand for 6 months, and they had two days to kill - so we killed the days for them. (G and C both work at University of Previous Employment, and coincidentally, at the Aunt and Uncle of R, who is an old friend - and was best man at our wedding.) The Getty Centre is an impressive building (or series of buildings) and apparently has some impressive art - I've never seen it, as my job at the Getty Centre, as it is every time we go there, is to hang around outside with the twins, so that they don't go smashing any vases.
The first two pictures are of the Centre, taken from my vantage point of the grass, where the twins could run around with destroying anything, anyone, or each other. (The rest of the place is made of very hard, and somewhat slippery marble and limestone.)
My one complaint about the place is that it's very non-interactive, there are streams and fountains and gardens and stuff like that, and it's all very impressive, but you are supposed to wander around looking at it, and going "Ooh" and "Aaah" (like at a fireworks display). You are not supposed to interact with it. And two four year olds really, really want to interact with everything. But you are not supposed to climb, dip, dig, sprinkle, or anything else, so it's slightly hard work.
There was a metal sculpture on the way out, that seemed to ask to be touched. G was about to touch it, when a guard jumped out and said "Don't touch!" We asked him if that was his job - to stop people touching the sculpture, and apparently it was.
The other thing that the Getty has is impressive views. Picture number 3 is looking towards Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, and Westchester. If you click on the picture, it gets bigger, and you might be able to see the marina (about half way up, and 1/3 of the way across). The hill just above that is Westchester, which has the airport.

This picture is looking the other way, towards (I think) Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and the San Gabriel mountains beyond (I might be completely wrong about that).

After the Getty Centre, we went to look at the Gene Autry museum, which was recommended to G. We were a bit knackered and basically couldn't be bothered, but we tried to drive past it to have a look and thereby convince ourselves that it wasn't actually worth going in. It turned out to be really hard to get to, because just as you almost got to it, the road was closed, and made into a one way street - with lots of cars coming the other way.

Obviously there was something exciting going on, so we went to investigate. It turned out to be the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Festival of Light. We followed the directions to Los Feliz Avenue (or Boulevard, or whatever, no one cares about that bit of street names). G and C were moderately excited about trying to translate Spanish street names - this one they liked because it didn't seem to make any sense - feliz means happy, but Los implies a plural, so it meant something like The Happy, or The Happies.

Anyway the LADWPFoL (I'm not typing that again) is kind of like Blackpool illuminations. Except American. I'm going to pinch some pictures of it from Flickr - you won't know I didn't take them, will you. (I really like Flickr for that - if you want better pictures than you took, of anywhere you've been, then you just type its name into Flickr, and you've got 'em.
So here they are:



This last one celebrates William Mulholland, who, it seems, wasn't a very nice chap. LA has enough water to keep everything green and nice, because of a massive aqueduct that he built (well, not personally) to nick all the water from a place called the Owens Valley - where they used to grow stuff - until all their water got nicked. When they got pissed off about this, Mulholland said he "half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley’s orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there." He also built a dam to contain the water, which later collapsed and killed 450 people.

New friend

S met a new friend, B, at Trader Joe's the other day - they were both speaking German to their respective offspring, and noticed. Today we went to the beach to meet this new friend. It was interesting, for a number of reasons.

We went to the beach to go 'sledging' down the (artificial) sand dunes. This consists of sitting on a surfboard type of thing (sledges being in somewhat short supply around here) and being pushed down the slope. After progressing a couple of feet, you are pushed again, and fall off.

B works (or worked) in psychology, and has written computer programs that do 'biofeedback' and project auras in colour.

B does research, and has a PhD from the American World University. It was based on 'life experience' and took her two years. She sent off her 200 page thesis, and they said it was too long, and they only wanted 80. Article on Wikipedia (and the web page itself) suggests that they were never going to actually read it anyway.

Christmas Post

Gosh, another post on Christmas day. That's what you do on Christmas day though isn't it? Try to get away from everyone else, and the ideal thing to do is to go and sit at the computer. When we have traditional family christmasses, you can sneak off to the computer, and find that there are more people at the computer than there are doing whatever christmassy thing was officially going on.

Anyway, having made a pathetic and probably futile attempt to explain why I'm sitting here typing on Christmas day, I'll continue. We went to the beach today - not for any special reason, but because we could. We'd been meaning to go to Malibu beach, because there must be something special about Malibu beach or they wouldn't have named a slightly sickly sweet drink after it. So we went, and it was almost dark.

We hung around at the beach for a while, until it was so dark we couldn't see, and then went home. I'd have imagined that on Christmas day, the authorities would have let you drown, but there was a lifeguard on duty (who was leaving as we arrived - it was obviously OK for us to drown). I'd have imagined that on Christmas day, you wouldn't need to worry about parking, but as we were leaving we were reprimanded for parking beyond the time that the car park closed.

Anyway, as regular readers know, I've got a new camera, so I've put some pictures up. The first is S and A, standing on the beach, the second is Malibu lagoon, with the Pacific Coast Highway and the Santa Monica mountains in the background, and the last one is a stork or a crane or some other bird with a long beak and long legs, on a tree.

Having read my book about taking photos I now know how to cheat and make pictures like this look better than they are - they are all taken at dusk, with long exposures. The second picture was taken only 2 minutes before the first one.

Sprouts

I couldn't find Brussels Sprouts in any shops, anywhere. Christmas dinner just won't be the same.

My Christmas Present

This is my Christmas present from S. It's some rocks. But these are special rocks - you put them in a bowl, and cover them with (distilled, white) vinegar, and then you wait. And wait some more.
When all the vinegar has evaporated, the rocks grow some interesting structures, that look a bit like popcorn, and this mimics some geological process - but taking less time, by a factor of a couple of million.
I've just noticed that the picture looks like an arty black and white shot. It's not, it's just black rocks, and glass on a white background.

(And the stripey bits around the edge of the bowl are compression artifacts, and would get your picture rejected by www.istockphoto.com).

Actually, if you type "popcorn rocks" into Google (or your search engine of choice, I imagine - I've just not tried any other, because I'm not, errr..., well let's just say not the kind of person that uses other search engines, and leave it at that. People that use Google know the kind of person I'm talking about) you can find out all about them. I'll take another picture when they've grown. If I remember.

Christmas Eve

Today was Christmas Eve, which S, being German, thinks is Christmas day. But she also thinks it doesn't start until about 4pm - it's all very confusing.

Anyway, as a present for me, from me, I'd bought a camera - my excuse being because I'd lost the old one when we moved house. Bizarrely, today I found the old one, in the place where it's supposed to be, and where I'd looked about 5 times. S says that I told her not to bother looking there, because it wouldn't be there, and was cross. Anyway, I also bought a book about how to take nice looking pictures with one's digital camera.

Anyway, at the end of the book, it mentioned a website called istockphoto.com, which is a picture agency, but anyone can upload pictures, and anyone can buy pictures (pictures cost a dollar to three dollars to download) so I had this great idea that, having read my book, I'd go and take artistic photos and make piles of cash.

Except it's really hard to take photos that anyone except one's mother would be proud of, if you were ten years old that is.

Anyway, we went to the beach today, because we could, and I took photos that no one would want to pay money for, and I'm putting some of them here. You don't have to pay, but you do have to spend time (if you want to), and time is money, so I'd stop now, if I were you.

This one is a lifeguard's boat, which was just hanging around.

Here are some people swimming. On Christmas Eve.


This was my first ever attempt at a really long (30 second) exposure, of a night time city scene. It's almost got something going for it. In the same way that if I painted a picture of a woman in a green dress, it would almost be like the Mona Lisa.



On the way home, we passed someone who was making ice sculptures in the street outside his house. They were lit from underneath, and looked quite impressive, in a way that is singularly not captured in these photos. D and A were very sad that they couldn't lick them.




This is A and D on the beach, silhouetted at sunset. If they didn't have their bicycle helmets on still, they wouldn't look like freaks.

Recycling

I would have imagined that in California, recycling was all the vogue. But it's not, it's very difficult to do. There is a can bank, about the size of a dustbin, about 4 miles from here, next to a car park where it costs $4 to park. Wholefoods market has recycling bins, but that's about 10 miles away, and is colloquially referred to as Whole Pay Check.

However, on lots of containers, one pays a deposit of about 5c, which one can get back by recycling. But not at the shop you bought it from, oh no. I'd have imagined that a deposit so small, for something so large (a 1 gallon container of milk) actually devalues it - if you decide to recycle for the money, it immediately stops being worth doing, a large bin bag full of milk containers is worth about 50 cents. However, the shop has to display the address of somewhere you can take them to recycle, so today I dragged my bin bag of milk containers to the car, went shopping and on the way out, wrote the address of our local recycling centre on my arm. The map lady then showed where it was - surprisingly close - less than a block away (had there not been a shop in the way) and duly directed us to what appeared to be a demolition site. I drove futilely around a couple of times, to make really sure, gave up and went home.

There were signs in the apartment complex about Christmas tree disposal. I thought these might say something about where they could be recycled, but they just said "Don't drop needles in the corridors, and put them in the big bins". You'd have imagined that with 532 dwellings in one relatively confined place, it would be straightforward to collect the Christmas trees, and perhaps shred them and put them on the gardens (so they needed less water), but they don't.

Mysterious heating

In our abode, there is a thermostat in every room. When we turn them up, the room gets hotter. But apart from that, the heating is a complete mystery. I've never lived anywhere where I understand the heating less. I don't know what the fuel is that makes the room hotter - gas? electricity? Hot air recycled from the local oil refinery?

And even more mysterious, I don't know where the heat comes from. There isn't a radiator. Or a vent that warm air comes through. I've crawled around on the floor, and tried to see if one bit feels warmer (it doesnt'), and I've done the same with the walls and the ceiling (same). In the living room, one area does seem to get warmer faster, but I can't find any source of it.

I thought it was maybe a weird American thing, and other Americans would understand. When we were moving in I asked the removal men (who should understand that sort of thing but they didn't know either.

Maybe it's all just some sort of placebo effect - there's not anything attached to the thermostats, it's just that we believe there is, and so we feel warmer.

A Quiz

Hello readers. Today, in an exciting innovation, we're going to have a quiz. S's Christmas present came today. Partly because it was a very large box which was getting in the way, partly because S knew what it was (and S hates surprises anyway) and partly for another reason that I can't tell you yet, she opened it.

And here it is:


The quiz (you were waiting for this, weren't you) is to say what it is. The first person to say what it is (by leaving a comment) will get some sort of prize. Not that I can think of any suitable prize that I could present to you, which wouldn't simply insult your levels of affluence - that being the type of reader this blog attracts. So, maybe you will have to have the knowledge that you won. Or maybe I'll make a charitable donation to a charity of your choice, rather than a charity of my choice. (At CoCE, we got the newsletter today, which goes to staff and 'supporters' and there was a bit on the back about how you can give money to CoCE. Maybe that should be MY charity of choice.)

You can also ask questions, again by leaving a comment, to make it fair. Ideally, these should be answerable with a yes or a no, but whether a question is allowed will be at my discretion. (For example "What is it?" would not be allowed. And would mean you were a pompous git. The kind of person that walks into a pub and says "Good everning my man, two pints of your finest ale, if you will.")

The multi-coloured thing at the front is a pack of felt tip pens - the kind you use on OHPs. The pens are there to give you a better idea of how big the thing is, and also to cover up the bit where it says what it's name is - because (you technological whizkids) if you knew that, 30 seconds of Google later, you'd have an answer.

Do you want another clue? Oh, go on then. It plugs into the mains electricity, but it's not plugged in here. Oh, and one more thing, this isn't it's final location.

Update (some answers): To Jen, no, it's not eco-friendly. Pretty eco-neutral, I'd say, although maybe friendly to one's very local environment.

to Andy: It does come in beige or black, and therefore I could have bought the wrong one. But S stood over me, saying "beige" the whole time I was ordering it. You'll be surprised to hear it's not a CT scanner. It's not a massage device either. But it does have an electric motor in it.

To Anonymous Paul: It's got nothing to do with the twins. and it doesn't keep anything warm.

To M: It's not a holder for toilet rolls. Although we are getting a little low, so maybe it's time for more. (Oh, the joy of impulsive shopping with Amazon 1-click).

To M (again): yes, it is something to do with the cat.

To anonymous: No, the pens aren't relevant. They are the first thing I came across that had an obvious size, so you could tell how big it was (I was looking for a ruler, like they use on CSI). The pens also conveniently cover the label.

To Phil: It's not a personal pampering device.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo (well, we've been)

The boys and I went for a trip to the LA Zoo today, partly because S wanted us out of the house, and partly because there was supposed to be Christmassy stuff going on there. However, the Christmassy stuff was some reindeer (which was slightly interesting), except the boys didn't really understand why it was that reindeer were interesting. "Where is the sleigh? Where is the playground?"

There was a place to interact with goats - you got a brush from the brush bucket, and brushed a goat. Which amused the boys for a few minutes only. There was a rope that the goats went and hid behind when they'd had enough of being brushed - most of the goats were there. As we were in the goat place, we met R, and his daughter A. R is a lecturer at Newcastle and is here for a year, partly working at Corporation of Current Employment, partly at the VA.

It's the way of zoos, especially zoos that keep their animals in conditions vaguely similar to natural ones, that the animals are not especially visible or interesting. We caught a glimpse of some sealions. The hippos sat in the water creating gentle ripples with their breating (and poohing). Only the tails of the crocodiles were interesting. This crocodile on the right was visible, but it didn't mover, and it's actually very small.
All the boys wanted to do was go to the playground, and partly as a result of a new gorilla container being built, and partly as a result of my poor map reading skills, we took an extremely circuitous route, and took a long time to get there.

There was a hot metal sign at the playground, but being December, we ignored it. There was also a shower, presumably to cool down overheated children. Being December, A and D should have ignored that, but didn't.






































Finally on the way out, we got to an exhibit they liked. Snow was being created, to make a pile that children (and adults, I guess) could play in. Huge blocks of ice were delivered from a lorry, and went on a conveyor belt into what I presume was an enormous shredder.

A hose came out of the shredder, and spray the resulting snow into an area that was closed off with bales of hay, occasionally hitting the watching crowds with small bits of fast moving ice.

Snowy adventures

We went to a local park today, where several tons of snow had been deposited by a truck, giving children a chance to play on sledges and throw snowballs, and things like that. Something that was never going to happen in this climate without serious artificial intervention. The picture shows an action shot of someone sliding down the artificial slope.

Health Encounters

We had our first encounter with the health care system when we went to be checked out when we enrolled with the doctor. It was all very efficient, you have a card, that you use to identify yourself to the different sections. When we went to the blood taking bit, we just put our cards on the tray, and they knew who we were, and what they had to do. The doctor told me about checking for testicular cancer, and that it wasn't a problem, because it was easily cured nowadays. I said that they had done their work, and they could whip them off any time. He didn't think that was funny. (Obviously, I do know about their other roles, being an informed sort of chap.)

The use of the internet was very clever (I thought). You can get a password to log into the website, where you can check aspects of your records, like when you last had an immuniszation. When the results of the various tests we had were ready, I was sent an email, could log into the website, and get the results, along with blurb about what they mean. I was right in the middle of normal of most tests, except for HDL cholesterol, which was low. This sounds good, except that HDL cholesterol is the good sort of cholesterol, so you want more of that. Apparently the results aren't hugely reliable, because I had eaten though.

Pharmacies

We didn't go into a pharmacy (or drug store) for a while - after all, we weren't ill, and we didn't need any aspirins. Until I went to Trader Joe's too late, and it had closed. The pharmacy had a sign outside saying that they had milk. We needed milk, and so I went there.

Pharmacies in England could learn a thing or two from these - it was amazing. First of all, all the medicine was out on the shelves - you didn't need to ask for anything. None of this "Is this for you? Have you taken this medication before? Do you suffer from ....". Instead, it's "200 paracetamol and a bottle of vodka? That will be [some amazing bargain price]". Actually, I've not noticed if they sell vodka, but they do sell wine and beer. The only thing that is actually behind the counter that you need to ask for is cigarettes. (The one I was in today had a sign that said "Our main priority is your wellbeing" - but you're selling ciggies! Actually, I don't know if that one did sell ciggies, but I wouldn't have been surprised.)

As I've already mentioned today, they also sell toys. Alarm clocks and radios and stuff like that (I bought an alarm clock which is one of those that sets itself by radio signal, which means it doesn't matter when the boys press the buttons on it - it gets back to the right time).

They sell quite a lot of food (not much fresh, except milk, so no bread). They sell paper and pens and ink for inkjet printers. You could almost live by only shopping in pharmacies.

Christmassy Stuff

Today we went to the Christmas party at the German school. This involved recitals of songs and poems (in German, naturally), and a visit from Santa. It was all a little dull, made only slightly more exciting by the control freakery of the woman in charge - any time anything didn't go the tiniest bit to plan, she fretted dreadfully. She forgot to put the microphone down before shouting at the group of youngest children for touching something that they shouldn't have done, and causing eardrums in the audience to burst. When Santa came, parents had to provide presents, and S was told off for not writing the boys names "so that we can read them". I said that they were the ones without names, so it was easy.

After the recitals, there was a selection of snacks and other stuff - much of it German themed confections. I'd been shopping just before and bought some sushi, which made S cross, because she said it was inappropriate for a Christmas party. When we got there to put our stuff on the table, there was a much larger tray of sushi, so I felt redeemed. S said it didn't make a difference, and was still inappropriate.

A lost his present, almost immediately, and was sad (it was a toy car from the film Cars). He said he wanted one like D had - which was a Lightning McQueen, but there were no LMs left in the shop (originally he had a Mater). We took an unusual route home, to go to another branch (it was Longs Drugs, there are lots of them around, and I really must write an entry on pharmacies here). There were no LMs here either, but we got him a Luigi, and he was happy.

On the way home, we saw a sign that said Local Airport Children's Fair, so we went to have a look at what it was. It seems it was an attempt by the local airport (which is pretty large) to give something back to the community. Or, a cynic might say, to try to persuade local residents that they weren't so evil, and so when they finish moving the runway and making it bigger (so that it can handle Airbus A380s) then they really shouldn't mind, and it's only 50 feet closer to their houses (it's on the other side of the airport from us - if it was our side, I probably wouldn't make jokes). Which they might just buy from them and demolish anyway, so they can build another runway. And if they could wake you just a little earlier in the morning, you shouldn't complain too much. Because they've been nice to the kids.

Anyway, we queued at the start - I wondered if this was to pay, but we were given (age appropriate) raffle tickets for the boys, and wristbands, which allowed them to see Santa (again). There were three bouncy castles, which were so covered in children they looked like a throbbing mass of bodies - the castle itself was almost invisible. D was determined to go on one, so we allowed him. Within about 15 seconds he had to be taken off, having been injured. (The bouncy castles were free, and unsupervised).

We queued up to see Santa, and got a quite impressive bag of stuff - considering it was free - although a lot of stuff seemed to have airline logos on it. There was a pencil and a ruler with the airport on, and an inflatable aeroplane that said "Southwest Airlines" on it. (The food and drink was free as well - the glasses also said "Southwest Airlines" on it.)

The ethnic mix of the place was interesting - the vast majority of people there, probably 3/4 were African-American, then most of the rest were hispanic, a few asian, and I guess somewhere between 1% and 2 % were white non-hispanic - (as we have to say: hispanic is an ethnic, not a racial classification). Occasionally I liked around to see if I could see another white person, and usually I couldn't. It was the first time I've seen a black Santa. With dreadlocks.

There were kiddies fairground rides, including the world's slowest dodgems. The boys thought they were very exciting, even though when they moved it was at a very slow walking pace, and there wasn't much space, so most of the time all 5 cars were jammed in one corner of the ring, with parents pushing on the outside to try to separate them.

Then there was the raffle. And the raffle was (a) the most impressive raffle I've possibly ever seen and (b) free. There were lots of prizes, and none of them real duffers. The prizes were in age order, so they did 0-3 first, and then 4-8. There were quite a few bikes, an MP3 player, several remote control cars, and a bunch of other stuff. I was trying to work out the ticket to prize ratio, but we had 113 and 114. The winners included 114, 124, 106 and some others that were nearby. And then 113!!! We won a remote control car, from RadioShack. We had to run home and charge 6 AA batteries, so that I could play with it for 10 minutes, before they went flat. D and A did play first, but I think it was too complicated. They liked rescuing it when it got stuck.

Musical marathon

I'm up to 'C' in the attempt to listen to all my CDs. I'm onto the bonus tracks that come with the CD version of Safe as Milk, by Captain Beefheart. Amazon has snippets that you can listen to here. I should state I've nothing really against Captain Beefheart (and his Magic Band), and if one were in a haze of some sort, late at night, it would be quite appropriate music. It just doesn't fit well with running DIF models in Mplus (which is what I'm doing today - 204 of them).

Santa Claus, Reaffirmed

As Christmas approaches, it seems that there is a German Advent style tradition that the boys get a present each day. Given that buying and wrapping 48 presents is too much for even a devoted parent such as myself to do, it's lucky that Oma has done it already.

On Sunday, we went to the Apartment Complex Christmas party. In an attempt to make it seem Christmassy and jolly they had the fire (gas, but with fake logs). Given where we live, this make it extremely hot and unpleasant. Santa Claus came to see the children, and this was an impressive Santa Claus. I can't help wondering what he does the rest of the year. He had a (real) bushy white beard, was suitably rotund, a deep jolly voice, and seemed to have an enormous amount of energy to sit and talk to children about what they wanted for christmas, and to sing christmassy songs, and to explain that the reindeer were on the roof and that's why the children couldn't see them.

When it came to A and D's turn, Santa asked them what they wanted for Christmas. They said "a racing car". Next morning, when they came to open their presents, it was indeed a racing car each.

Christmas

Thanksgiving serves a second function, as well as giving thanks (or whatever the true meaning of thanksgiving is). It acts as a boundary for Christmas. Before thanksgiving, there's nothing Christmassy. After thanksgiving (and Black Friday) Christmas is allowed to start. So today, I was wandering around the shops, while "Let it snow, let it snow let it snow", and "there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas ... " played.

But it won't snow, and there won't be snow here. We went out for a walk up some hills today. I wore a t-shirt, and shorts. It was hot. It's going to be hot tomorrow too - we almost went swimming today (except the boys said that they wanted to go up some mountains).

We bought ice creams from a bizarre ice cream van. (It might not have been bizarre, it might just have been American). The van looked very ancient, and like it had been in a number of minor collisions in its time. It was completely full of stuff - it had footballs and beachballs hanging from it - there's a picture of it (it's not very good, 'cos it was taken with my phone). It's almost a mystery to see where the driver should sit. The small sticker on the right says "Drum machines have no soul". On the other side of the bonnet, was a sticker that said "Howard Dean for President".

There was a vast array of different kinds of ice cream available. In England, there's no way an ice cream van would have had that many delicacies on offer. And if they had, they would have run out of half of them. But the woman serving was able to put her hand onto whatever the boys chose. Then put it back, when they changed their mind, and repeat the procedure, several times.

I've got off the point a little, what was I saying? Oh yes, shorts, ice cream, Christmas. It just feels a bit wrong.

Tuberculosis

We haven't got tuberculosis.

We have enrolled the boys into a preschool, which is a parent's cooperative. Which means (amonst other things) we need to go once in a while, to help out. And in order to do this, we need to prove that we haven't got TB, so we aren't going to infect everyone else's little preciouses.

You'd think proving you haven't got TB was easy - you do something like walk there, and that shows that you aren't lying in bed, dying. But you can have latent TB, which isn't necessarily symptomatic. The problem is, like healthy Europeans, we've been vaccinated. And tests for diseases don't test for the disease, they test for the presence of antibodies (which was the problem with vaccinating cows during the foot and mouth outbreak - once you've been vaccinated, you can't tell if you've got the disease.) It seems that for the strains of TB which are common around here, the vaccine is fairly useless, which is why they don't bother.

So, we are going to go to the doctor for our skin tests, which have a pretty high probability of coming up positive. Then we look like we've got TB, so we have to prove, even harder, that we haven't by having a chest x-ray. And we have to get this redone every two years (or less, if the boys leave the preschool, which of course they will).

What to listen to?

I never know what music to listen to. So I've had an idea. iTunes, which came with my (lovely) iPod, says that on my hard disk, I have 14 days and 11 hours worth of music.

I thought about putting it on random play, but I kind of disapprove of that. On the cover of LouReed's album New York it says (something like) "This CD is designed to be listened to all the way through, in order. Like a film or a book." It's kind of pompous, but I sort of agree.

So I've decided to listen to it all. All the way through. In alphabetical order (artist/album). If I listen for 8 hours a day (which is probably an overestimate), that will take 43.5 days. Or almost 9 weeks. I got through A today - Alice Cooper's greatest hits was much better than I remembered. There's going to be some tricky bits though. Leonard Cohen is going to take a day or two to get through, and there's 192 songs by Frank Zappa, and some of them are long. Shut up and play yer guitar has three CDs, but only 18 tracks. That's going to be half a day on its own. Luckily the alphabetical order (rather than thematic) rule, means that there's going to be a decent gap between that and Guitar. (If you didn't know, these are albums of FZ playing [accompanied] guitar solos. None of that verse chorus verse nonsense. Or even any singing. Or gaps.)

There's going to be embarrassing moments too. Luckily no one came in during Let Go ("Ooh" I can hear them say "I didn't have you down as a teeny bopper").

Story ... in foreign

Tonight the boys wanted me to read a German book, that Oma had read to them a couple of times. I said I couldn't, 'cos it was German, but they grovelled, so I did.

It was a surreal experience. I was reading the words, and not understanding most of it. And they were laughing and saying "Nein! Nein!". Occasionally they would translate a bit for me "She's saying POO!", for example, or "She's picking her nose!" It seemed to have a lot of that sort of thing in, and it might have had a plot, but I couldn't tell.

Excursion - part 2

To complete the tale of our adventure away. In the morning, the only thing provided by the motel was coffee. You had to go to reception to get it, so Opa and I set off to reception, to get polystyrene cups which we filled with coffee from Thermos flasks, and non-dairy creamer for those that wanted it. Opa was upset that there was no tea.

We went to Casa Martinez (truck stop and 24 hour cafe) for breakfast - that being the only choice. Oma had a breakfast burrito, which was satisfactory. I was a little nervous that Opa wouldn't find anything to his satisfaction (he usually has tea - made in a saucepan by boiling some teabags, and then putting enormous quantities of sugar in, toast, with a lot of jam, and boiled eggs). He ordered an omelette (with normal toast), and was only slightly disturbed that it came with hash browns. "Potatoes? For breakfast?? Huh." A and D had pancakes and french toast, which they ignored. There was jelly in little tubs, which caused debate with Opa. "What is jelly?" I told him. "No, that is jam. Marmalade". (Confusingly, marmalade is German for jam). It was the cheapest, most disgusting jam I've ever seen. The ingredients to the grape jelly were Glucose Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Grape Juice, Pectin, Beetroot color. Opa took them home anyway. (The mixed fruit jam was the same, but with apple juice too).

We had another one of those incidents where I debate with Opa the precise meaning of a word in English. You'd think that I could pull rank and trump him at the same time, what with being a native, and all that. But Opa went to the till and said "I want cash". They didn't understand (which is good, I would have thought I was being robbed). He repeated this. I went to the rescue, and they were successfully paid. We had our debate about the meaning of cash. "Cash means pay". "No, cash means money. Geld. Geld is cash." "Cash is pay. Bezahlen." "Why didn't they understand you?" "I don't know. Cash is pay." I gave up. You have to pick your battles.

We drove in our two car convoy into the National Park. There was a ranger station, with a shop and toilets, where you could buy maps and things, and bottles of water, but no food. (I was kind of expecting them to sell something - but they didn't, so I made a big bag of peanuts last all day.) We paid $15 per car, and set off. If we hadn't needed to go to the toilet, we might not have stopped, and might not have bought our tickets, which might have meant all kinds of trouble.

They gave us maps, and we read about where to see the Joshua trees. And how to distiunguish between the joshua trees and the yuccas, which a lot of people think are joshua trees, but aren't. I wondered how that would damage the experience of having seen a joshua tree. If I thought I'd seen a joshua tree, then I'd be happy, surely? The fact I hadn't wouldn't really be a problem. And were people only interested in the joshua trees because it was called the Joshua Tree National Park? If it was called the Yucca Tree (or plant) National Park (and if U2 had made an album called The Yucca Tree) would people then say "Don't mistake those joshua trees for Yuccas. You want to make sure that you see the genuine Yuccas, not those Joshua imitations." (I just read on Wikipedia that Joshua trees only grown in (and around) Joshua tree national park. Maybe that's why.

The park was big, as you'd expect (even the Peak District National Park is a fair size, and that doesn't have the vastness of America to spread into), and had a 35 or 40 mph speed limit, so we drove with cruise control on, which was quite strange. But it meant you could look around. Our cruise controls in the 2 cars never quite got to the same speed, so after a while we'd be a long way apart.

We stopped at various points to look at interesting stuff. There were an awful lot of interesting places to look at and potter about. There was a cactus garden - I wasn't sure if they cacti had been deliberately planted or not. There was a pond, created by a dam (called Barker Dam) - it seemed quite surprising to me that it had water in it still, but it did. There were lots of big, round granite boulders, created by volcanoes. When a volcano finished erupting, the granite in the spout bit would set solid, and then the volcano (which wasn't as hard) would erode from around it, leaving a heap of round granite rocks.

When we got out of the park, S wanted to go and visit Black Rock Canyon, but we couldn't find it. Well, we sort of found it but it didn't seem to have a canyon, or any black rocks. We might have had to go more than a few feet from the car, but it was late and very nearly dark, so we went home.

Rain

It rained last night, for the first time since we arrived. Proper rain, which leaves puddles (although it's often hard to tell whether it's rained in the morning, so ubiquitous is the use of sprinklers - when there are people walking on the bike path I try to ride through puddles left by sprinklers that are near them, to discourage them from walking on the bike path again).

It had stopped raining by the time I went to work, but the rain meant there were very few dog walkers and joggers and even other cyclists on the path, which meant it was quite clear. Trouble is, that when it doesn't rain often, there isn't much effort putting lots of drains in, so there were some pretty impressive puddles, and the odd place where so much sand was on the path that you almost couldn't tell where the path was.

Bike/Dog Interaction

First of all, I should say that it wasn't my dog. In case anyone was worried. It wasn't my bike either.

Now it's dark when I ride home, there's a tricky decision to be made about where to ride. The bike path is very dark, with sharp corners, and slippery sandy patches, which means you have to go pretty slow. The boardwalk is wide, and well lit, but it has additional hazards, like people, skateboarders (who are people too) and dogs (who aren't). There's also the road, which is shorter, and is well lit, and is hellish.

I took to riding on the boardwalk pretty slowly and carefully, but one day last week, there was a woman who worked at CoCE who was riding home at the same time as me. She rode on the boardwalk, and rode pretty quickly - much faster than I would have ridden. But she was in front of me, and clearing a path as it were. People saw her coming and jumped out of her way, and then they would be out of my way. If they didn't jump out of her way, then she would crash into them, and I wouldn't.

Which is pretty much what happened. Except it wasn't a person, it was a dog. She was in front of me, on a darkish bit of road, and a woman had a small dog on one of those long leads, who was talking on a mobilecellphone. The bike hit the dog and the front wheel went right over it, at about shoulder level, and then the rider steered gently to the right, into a small grassy hill (a grassy knoll, perhaps?) and fell off (she was going very slowly by now - the dog had used up most of her speed). I had a sudden fear that the dog was dead, but it wasn't, it was yapping furiously, which was probably a good sign. The woman with the dog was screaming into her phone "Oh my gaaaad! A bike ran over your daaaag! Your daaag got run over by a bike!" She was so busy telling the owner about the dog and the bike that she didn't stop to investigate either the dog, or the cyclist. I felt split loyalties, but said "Are you OK" to the cyclist. She said she was, and so I rode over the grassy knoll onto the bike path, and rode off.

The other cyclist rode along the boardwalk (I guess) because she was in front of me next time we met, at some traffic lights. Interactions with other cyclists are strange, because you feel a sort of bond, as cyclists against the world, and I felt additionally bonded because we worked at the same place. But you can only talk to each other on the brief occasions that you are at traffic lights together, but then you are also slightly out of breath. We met at a set of traffic lights, and the dog incident felt like the proverbial 800lb gorilla. We both knew about it, but no one said anything.

"You going far?"
"Just over the creek, and left. And you?"
"Just over the creek, and right?"
[Green light.]
"You just ran over a dog!!!!" But it was too late.

Next traffic light.
"Nice weather for riding."
"Yes, quite warm. And I just ran over a dog!!!" Except that last bit didn't happen.

Where are paths split, we shouted "Bye". That was all the interaction we managed in about 5 miles. I haven't seen her since, and I ride on the bike path now. With two front lights. And slowly.

CSI

As I think I've mentioned, there's a lot of CSI on the telly here. Now we've got a DVR, and it automatically records every episode. Then S tries to watch them. Which is worse than a full time job. The DVR can only record two channels simultaneously - new ones start at 10, but old ones at 9:30, so you have to make sure it records the right ones. (It tends to miss the new NY ones). Most nights there's some CSI, on Saturday night, it recorded 6 hours of CSI: Miami. I asked S if she was coming to the beach today, but she's got CSI to watch.

I also record new episodes of the Simpsons (you can tell it if you want everything, or just new ones), but I've never been allowed to watch them. And S has started deleting them, because she needs space for her CSI.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving Day. I kind of knew about Thanksgiving Day before, but I never really understood how important it was to Americans. Lots of people I've spoken to said that they preferred thanksgiving to Christmas. At thanksgiving, you are supposed to sit around and eat and watch the TV. There's no faffing about having to give presents to people, and no one talks about the "true meaning of thanksgiving" because the true meaning of thanksgiving is to sit around and eat and watch TV. (Actually, the TV bit might be a more recent addition to the traditional thanksgiving.)

It seems to be a much more family-oriented thing than Christmas. On thanksgiving, one goes to be with one's family. This means that half the country tries to get to the house of the other half of the country. Which makes travel hell. There was an article on the news last night about queues at airports - and how airlines find it hard to deal with, because the people travelling are 'infrequent flyers' - they don't know what to do, where to go, and what not to take, so the queues take longer to process than normal. Roads are also hellish. Someone at work had a ticket to see the rolling stones play, on the other side of the city, and he thought that if he left 5 hours to get there, he might be OK.

Lots of people asked what we were doing for thanksgiving. We said that we didn't really know, 'cos we didn't know how to do it. I said it would be like trying to have a British Christmas, having read about it in a book. They said it was easy, you just sit around, eat, drink, and watch TV (ideally, you watch football on the TV, as in American football). I said we'd try, so we dutifully bought a Tofurky from Trader Joe's, and then realized that I don't know when we are supposed to eat it. Is it a lunchtime thing, like Christmas, or does one do it in the evening? I hope it's the evening, because it's 11 o'clock, and the Tofurky takes 1.5 hours to cook.

Also, we forgot to buy any potatoes, although we've some sweet potatoes in the fridge, so they'll have to do. (I don't know what Opa's going to think about sweet potatoes though. And he probably would have been disturbed by roast potatoes - he likes his potatoes boiled. And if you mash them, he gets upset.) There's probably a (in)convenience store open somewhere, where we can buy tinned (oops, have to say canned here) potatoes for some hideous sum of money.

Instead of worrying about all this, we're going to go to the beach. Well, S isn't, because she's got CSIs to watch, but everyone else is. I've been meaning to write abotu CSI. Maybe I'll do it now.

Excursion (part 1)

As we still have honored guests, we decided to take a trip out somewhere exciting at the weekend. We don't all fit in our car, and those nice people at Enterprise were doing a half price car hire deal at the weekend. So we hired a car, and had two cars.

The problem (I always have) with hiring a car is that you book your car on the phone or web or whatever, and then you go to the car hire place. They say that if you cough up only a small amount of money more, you can have a slightly nicer car. That seems like very little more, and worth it. But then they say, for only 5 dollars more, you can have a car that's slightly nicer than the one you've upgraded to. And so on, until you find yourself driving a Ferrari home. Actually, it wasn't that bad, but we did end up with a Dodge Charger.

We picked up the boys from German school, ran around looking for my camera for about an hour (unsuccessfully, hence no pictures here) and set off. We had booked a room at a Motel 6, which I had carefully selected as being somewhere close to where we wanted to be, in a place called Indio.

First stop though was Palm Springs, which we decided to go to because (a) we'd heard of it, and (b) it was on the way. We went to the Palm Springs Visitor Centre, and saw a leaflet for the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway ("World's largest 360 degree rotating cars). Which sounded interesting, so we went there.

Now to me, a tramway is a bit like a railway - it goes along a flat bit of ground for a while. So an aerial tramway would be like that, but lifted into the air. (Like the cable cars at Alton Towers). But they weren't. By the time we got to the place it was dark, but the trams were running.

We parked the car, and went in. Oma and Opa declined a ride on the aerial tramway, so I bought the 4 tickets. (Children under 4 were free, when they asked how old the boys were, A and D shouted "Four!" and held up 4 fingers, just to be clear, before I'd even considered lying.

It turns out that my definition of tramway was wrong (I had a brief debate with Opa about exactly what a cable car was - he claimed that it was a tram that runs along the street pulled by a cable. We have occasional debates about the meaning of English words, and he is always convinced he is right. It's usually easier to let him continue in that belief.) This was a cable car, which went up a mountain. A really, really big mountain. Oma and Opa were sent running back to the car to fetch jumpers while we waited for the next car. The cable car rises 2 miles, in about 11 minutes. That's high. And fast. And made your ears hurt. Poor A and D didn't know why their ears felt funny, and couldn't understand the concept of swallowing (or, on the way down, of holding their nose and blowing).

Their were 4 towers, from which the cables were suspended. S said it was lucky it was dark, because it was very, very high (the highest was 227 feet) and the car swung slightly alarmingly as it passed over the towers. The floor in the car rotated, so you had a view, but this confused A and D, who were trying to hold on to the rail on the wall (which didn't rotate). After falling over a couple of times, they got the hang of it though.

At the top was a large building (which got their by helicopter and cable car). Everything there has to come up by cable car - even the water to flush the toilets. There was a restaurant and a bar, a shop and a museum, and a mountain outside. Trouble was, we were coming to the desert, so weren't really dressed for going outside in 5 degree weather. It did look quite exciting - there were 54 miles of hiking trails up there, and other stuff to do. So we ate in the restaurant, bought two bags of magnets in the shop, and went back down, to where O and O were waiting. (When I got home, I read the Wikipedia entry which lists all the gruesome accidents that have happened there - glad I didn't do that before we went).

We got back in the cars, and went to find our Motel. Motel 6 is renowned as being the cheapest chain of hotels in the USA. We paid $60 per room for two rooms, each of which had two double beds and so could sleep 4 people (that's 32 pounds a room, or 8 pounds a person). Motel 6 is a bit like a Travelodge, only without all those luxurous frills you get in Travelodges. In traditional American style, it had a neon MOTEL sign, with the M flickering. (We did get towels, and soap, and there was a pool, and despite it being November, it was warm enough to swim). There were cigarette burns in the blankets, and an upside down ashtray with a no smoking sign on it. (I thought that they'd be better not putting the ashtray there, but S said at least there was an ashtray when people ignored the signs).

The room had cards to open the doors. Opa was very unhappy about this - he said he wanted a key. He couldn't work the card, and I had to help him the first few times. (It was typical that the next day his card really did stop working, thus confirming his prejudice.)

Opa thought it was very expensive. he kept trying to suggest that they had actually wanted us to buy the hotel. Hotels in Germany are MUCH cheaper than that, he said. However, he also said that they all have keys to open the door, so it's a while since he stayed in a hotel in Germany. S thought that they had room service, because there was a picture of a pizza on the card. But it just said "Phone Dominos to get a pizza".

We had to eat in shifts. so that someone stayed with A and D. Opa and Oma were going to go first, but S was worried about them, so I went too. The only place to eat anywhere nearby was "Casa Martinez 24 hour Mexican and American Restaurant / Truck Stop". Seventy five percent (I later learned) of the population of Indio is Latino / Hispanic, and so there's an awful lot of people with English as a second language. This made communication difficult for me, and close to impossible for Opa.

I asked what sort of beer they had, and the waitress asked if I wanted light beer, or dark beer. This is a common distinction in Germany - dark beer being more like bitter, light beer more like lager (of course in Germany, it's all lager). I asked what light beer they had, and they said Bud Light, Miller Light - this meaning of "Light" is low alcohol, and that wasn't any good. I didn't know what to say to get something like lager, so we got dark beer - called Negra Modelo. Opa asked (way too loudly for comfort) if that was "The beer for the black niggers".

Now Opa is quite conservative (I was recounting this story to someone here, and said "Conservative with a small c. " They, of course, didn't know what that meant, and by the time I'd explained, and then finished the story, they wished they hadn't asked what I'd done at the weekend.) He doesn't, for example, eat pizza. Not eating pizza is a challenge when we're out with A and D, because the only thing we can usually guarantee that they will eat is pizza. So eating in a Mexican-American restaurant, where a lot of the menu was in Spanish, presented a challenge. He ordered steak, which I thought was safe. It was, relatively, except it came with refried beans and rice.

It was S and my wedding anniversary, so we felt we should go out and celebrate in some way. We asked at reception if there were a bar somewhere, where we could get a drink. The two women at reception looked at each other nervously. Eventually they suggested we go to the Indian Casino down the road. We had the map lady, so we asked her instead, and then we realized why the receptionists looked nervous. The bars all looked a bit like that scene from The Blues Brothers where they turn up at Bob's Country Bunker, except that all the clientele was Hispanic.

We tried a couple, and gave up. We went back to Casa Martinez and had a drink there. Then we went back to the hotel, to sleep to the dulcet tones of freight trains going past the other side of the road. As I tried to explain to Opa in the morning, freight trains in America go very slowly, so it wasn't as bad as if they had gone fast. They also have really, really loud horns (I've learned).

We slept (as we always have to) with one twin and one parent in each bed. Which always the twins very happy - they wake up in the morning, and smile. But makes for unhappy parents, as they wriggle, kick (me, the wall), demand their blanket gets put back, shout and snore and sweat, all night long.

Tales of the Inlaws

I can't recount every tale of the inlaws, because it would take so long that I wouldn't be around to see any more tales of the inlaws, so I'm only going to tell a couple.

Black tea: We were going shopping. Tea was on the shopping list. "Black tea" says Opa. "Tea means black tea", I reply. "Green tea, red tea, black tea. Must have black tea. Schwarztee" (that last bit was German).

I know it's called Black tea in German, but in English it's just tea. If you ask for black tea, people won't know what you mean. It's just called tea in English. I try to explain this carefully and slowly. He doesn't understand.

Black tea. Not green tea or red tea. Black tea. He says.

It's my fucking language (!) I know what to ask for when you want tea. Why doesn't he believe me!!! We have this every time we go shopping, or every time we are out and he wants tea. Arrrgggghhh!!!! (And now I've gone way over my exclamation mark quota).

Microwave: Our microwave has the best UI (geeky term - pronounced you-ee, stands for user interface) I've ever seen on a microwave (and I use to think our old one was good). Usually on a microwave, you want to cook something for 3 minutes or 2 minutes or something like that. Often you have to press power, and then the time (two, zero, zero) and then start - that's 6 buttons to press. But the microwave we have now is like an exercise in parsimonious control. You put the food in, and if you want it doing for two minutes, you press 2. Nothing else. It starts and goes for 2 minutes. For 1 minute you press 1. Nothing else. Just 1. For 5 minutes, you press 5. Etc. (There are lots of other clever things you can do, but really, how often do you need them?)

So Opa is confused by the microwave. He asks for help. I show him. He looks confused. I explain it to him slowly (there's hardly anything to explain). He wants to know where the rest of the buttons are. Or what the magical thing I did to control the microwave with the power of thought. Or something like that.

I explain it again. He shrugs and walks off - he thinks it's beyond him, and there's no point trying.

He's like one of those people who, when the computer says "Press any key to continue" phone up the helpline because they can't find the "any" key.

Visitation

Oma and Opa are visiting, from Germany.

On Saturday we went to the farmer's market (I'm going to have to photograph the green stripy tomatoes before they all get eaten) and we bought, amongst other things, sugar snap peas.

Opa does suffer from the habit, common to many Germans, of being absolutely convinced he is correct. (Remember that I've Never Met a Nice South African song that Spitting Image did? One bit went "I've met a normal merman and a fairly modest German" (actually, type modest german into Google, and you get a deconstruction of the lyrics as the first link).

So Opa took the sugar snap peas, opened the pod, carefully extracted the peas and threw away the pod. I told him that you can eat the pod. He looked at me as if I were mad. I ate a pod. He looked worried. S ate a pod, he laughed and carried on eating peas, and discarding the pod.

He showed A and D to eat the peas and throw away the pod. I just ate discarded pods.

Trader Joe's

Our favorite supermarket is called Trader Joe's. It's reasonably wholesome - they don't sell anything with hydrogenated fats, or high fructose corn syrup.

Digression: I don't know what's wrong with high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is in lots of stuff that's good, but apparently it's bad. It's funny that people worry about different things here. All the milk (well, the milk we buy) says it's free from RGBST or BSRGT or something like that. I don't know if our British Farm Standard milk had it in, and we didn't care, or didn't have it in, because it wasn't allowed, or might have, or what. There seem to be lots of things like that. It's really hard to get a good kiddy's fruit yogurt that's not full of sugar and has no fruit in. No one seems to worry about that.

Anyway, Trader Joe's is nice to its staff, in that they get health insurance chucked in, and better pay and chances of promotion than a lot of places, and stuff like that, unlike a lot of other supermarkets. The staff are all quite different from most supermarkets - they're much nicer, in a 'We're being nice because we want to be, not because we have a list of stock phrases' sort of way. I chatted with the last checkout bloke about the Tofurkey sausages I'd bought - he said they were good.

There is a bizarre airport theme about the shops, which I don't understand. The entrance is called 'Arrivals' and the exit is called 'departures'. Above the tills there are toy wooden aeroplanes and balloons and helicopters hanging from the ceiling, with no theme to them. It's like someone was sent into town to buy 10 wooden aeroplane type things, all different. In the one near us, there are wheels and landing gear coming out of the ceiling, as if a plane was landing and then a shop was built. It's always hard to explain that to A and D.

It also has silly names on lots of it's stuff. The American stuff has the brand name Trader Joe's, but Italian stuff (pizza, tomato sauce) has the brand name Trader Giotto's, Chinese stuff is Trader Ming's, and Mexican is Trader Jose's. We bought a pack of sliced cheese of different kinds the other day, it was called 'A real crowd cheeser'.

More on toilets (and other stuff)

I know I said I wouldn't write about toilets much, but I'm driven to doing it again.

The flushing mechanism is incredibly simple - you pull the handle, and it lifts a sort of plug, so the water falls from the cistern into the toilet. Let go of the handle, and it stops. The system in the UK is much more sophisticated (and wasn't actually invented by Thomas Crapper) - which involves a syphon to suck the water up and drop it down again - you pull the handle to start the process, and then it's off on it's own. The advantage of the syphon system is that it flushes hard, even when there's only half a tankful of water. The plughole system (as I'm going to call it, 'cos I don't know another name) means you have to hold the handle for as long as you want to flush for, and then you can stop when, ermm... , the need has passed. Which I guess saves water.

But the American toilets are clever at the other end. They have more water in them to start with (I used to see them occasionally at home - our neighbours had one when I was young , and they had a bidet too, ). When some water goes in, it increases the level enough to start water flowing out, and this creates a syphon which sucks all the errmmm, contents of the toilet away. Then some more water comes in to refill the toilet. This seems more sensible to me - UK toilets seem to work on the principle of massive dilution (a bit like homeopathy, eh?), which means that Domestos, and other stuff, can stay behind. US toilets empty themselves completely, and then refill with water.

However, to create the syphon, the hole at the back of the toilet, that the stuff goes down, has to be on the small side. And that's created a problem twice now, in one of our toilets. We almost got a house with only one toilet; now we realised that it's lucky we didn't.

While I'm on about domestic things, I'll continue.

We've lived in two places now, which both had a dishwasher. So I have an N = 2 from which to generalise, which I think gives me some authority. And both dishwashers (and by extension, American dishwashers) are rubbish.

Dishwashers, as I know them, have a squirty thing at the bottom, and a squirty thing half way up, under the top later. This way stuff at the bottom and stuff at the top, get washed. The squirty thing at the bottom usually squirts harder, so you put dirty pots and stuff at the bottom, and less dirty stuff at the top. It's occasionally a pain, because something too tall sticks up, or something thin falls down, and stops the top squirty thing spinning, which means that the stuff at the top doesn't get clean.

American dishwashers solve this problem by not having a thing at the top. The thing at the bottom just squirts really hard (and on our second one has a sort of showerhead that extends a bit from the centre). But this means that if you put dirty pots at the bottom, they completely block the spray to the top. Stuff at the top comes out almost dry. And if you put them at the top, they don't get clean, because it doesn't squirt very hard there.

I was going to talk about washing machines too, but I'll stop there.



The dishwashers here have a squr

Assistance

I've been assigned an administrative assistant, called A. I is so efficient, it scares me.

On Wednesday she asked me if I want a noticeboard and a whiteboard in my office. I said I did, and had a little chat with her about where to put them. On Thursday morning, before I arrived, they were fitted. She came to see them, but they were wrong. The noticeboard was in the wrong place, and the whiteboard wasn't level (she said). They were supposed to call her over to see them when they were fitted, but she hadn't been called.

I said it was OK, but for one of 'her researchers' it wasn't good enough.

At lunchtime they came to move the noticeboard, and get a spirit level out for the white board (which I told them I thought was OK, but I think that they were frightened of her). A came later, and saw that there were holes and some scratches were the noticeboard was (was for about 4 hours). A went to make phone calls, and someone came to see me later on and said that they would be filled and the wall repainted over the weekend. And would it be OK to just paint those parts, without painting the whole wall. A wasn't around, so I said yes.

Ouch ouch ouch

Rode my bike for the first time from our new abode to CoCE. I got slightly lost on the way, partly because of my desire to avoid going up hills, but mostly because I wasn't really thinking about where I was going.

Did I mention that I'd had a cold recently? I thought I had, but the lack outpouring of sympathy from my loyal readers makes me think that maybe I didn't. Anyway, the fact that I'd had a cold recently, combined with having not ridden my bike for a while made it feel like really hard work.

I did the ride in 45 minutes, but if I hadn't gone the wrong way, I think that would have been about 5 minutes less. And my legs hurt when I arrived. Still, no pain, no gain.

Moving house

We've moved house. It wasn't very exciting. Removal men came, with 180 items of 'stuff', and put it in the new apartment. We opened some of the boxes and put it away.

We've had a phone line installed - I bought two phones for $5 each from Craigslist, although one doesn't work. We went to the thrift shop and bought a TV ($30) and a toaster ($5). The toaster seems to work OK, but smells like a toaster that hasn't been used for a while when you turn it on (I've not actually tried putting bread in it yet). S bought some cups and a very, very large wineglass thing (so large I suspect it's ornamental, not actually for drinking from).

The people in the thrift shop are all peculiarly, well, peculiar. At the till, we were paying for the telly, the toaster, and the other bits and bobs. (Remember now that the telly was $30). They rang up the total on the till, and it came to $29. "That's not enough" I said. The woman looked at me like I was insulting her. It's a thrift shop, and the money goes to charity, and it was a big telly for $30. The telly is $30, it's less than that. This went on, and I won't bore you with it, but it took some time, and two attempts to fix it.

We then went to pick up the telly (there was a bit where you can drive in, to load it). I put the TV in the car, and asked the man about the remote. "Has it got a remote?" he asked? It said remitte #81 on the TV, so I showed this to him.

"Can I get it?"

"Oh yes, it's #81." He smiled.

"Where do I get the remote?"

"#81"

Lots of friendly smiling, but no progress getting the remote. Eventually I went back into the shop where I paid, and discovered that remotes are kept under the counter.

This happens a lot, that people misunderstand me in shops. I wonder to what extent this is because (a) I speak too fast (S says this is the case), (b) my accent (the most common guess from Americans is that I'm Australian, although someone guessed Scottish the other day, one of the removal men said "You're not from London, are you from the North", which was the most accurate guess from anyone here), (c) I don't use the right words.

I went to Subway to buy sandwiches for the removal men for lunch, it was a nightmare. Subways always try to serve you fast, 'cos there's a queue. But there are about 100 choices to be made, and I was trying to make simultaneous choices for 6 sandwiches at the same time, including D and A who wanted cheese, black olives, and nothing else, which kind of confused the chap serving. There are 5 kinds of bread (helpfully labeled), N kinds of cheese (I don't know what any of them are - sometimes they say "American cheese OK?". About 20 different sorts of salad things to put on, and I don't know the names of all of them (gherkins need to be called pickles, chilies need to be called jalapenos). There are all kinds of mysterious bottles of sauce - I know that mustard and mayonnaise are two of them, because they are the defaults. And I know that ketchup isn't one of them, because if you ask for that, they look blank, but I don't know what the rest are. There's salt and pepper, and two other pots that I don't know about, and they don't name them.

We've ordered $300 worth of bookshelves from Staples, and an inflatable mattress from Amazon (although we've nowhere to put the mattress until the bookshelves arrive and we can empty boxes onto them).

There are all sorts of rules in the complex we are in. There was a sign in the lift that said "I'm the new manager and the rules are going to be enforced now". Some people, it seems, were leaving toys on their balconies.

We have two parking spaces, and I had a cunning ploy - I thought we could buy a shed and put it in one of the spaces. But the rules have thought of that - you may only park a car in your parking space. Aha, I thought. I'll buy a knackered old van, park it there, and put stuff in it. But the rules have thought of that - read that first rule again, it's cars only. Not vans. As well as that, the rules say that the car has to have current insurance and have inflated tires.

Another of the rules is that if you have a shade on your balcony (like a blind, but outside) it has to be made of bamboo, so off we went to Home Depot to buy bamboo shades. Home Depot is like B and Q, except that it seems to have staff that are helpful and know what they are talking about. It also had more people that looked like they might do things to people's houses for a job, and fewer who looked like they'd watched "Changing Rooms" one time too often. And it had a McDonald's in it. And, when you buy more stuff than you can fit in your car, you can hire a van for an hour for $19, to get it home.

I also didn't have any electrical tools - there was no point bringing any, because the voltage would be wrong. And there was not much point in buying expensive tools, because one day we might return to the UK, and again, they won't work. And buying cheap tools is just an exercise in getting pissed off when they break after 5 minutes.

Quandary.

The solution was to buy rechargeable tools - then we just need a different voltage charger, and we're away. And if you're going to buy rechargeable tools, you might as well buy De Walt rechargeable tools, especially if, when you buy the combination of six tools, you get a free bag to carry them in, and a free hand Hoover thingy. So that's what I did, and it was very exciting. It also had an angle grinder - angle grinders are great. It's not often that you need an angle grinder, but when you do, you really need an angle grinder. You could put a screw in with a normal screwdriver, not an electric one. But for some jobs, it's an angle grinder, or it doesn't get done.

So I used my electric screwdriver to put up the blinds, and D and A used the vacuum and the light to make sure all the rechargeable batteries are flat so that none of the tools work next time. (The blinds, I should mention, are not just there to be blinds. They make leaning over the balcony and falling off much harder for both children and cats.)

Along with our phone line, we get a DSL line. But that takes longer to connect, and they have to post us stuff like a modem. "But J" (I hear you ask) "how are you typing this on the internet, when you have no connection?" One of the benefits of communal living is that a LOT of people around have wireless networks, and some of them don't password protect then. There are two with a pretty strong signal, and I alternate between them.

It's possible for someone to access some of what I'm sending over the internet if I use their network, but then someone who doesn't lock their network, and who hasn't changed the name of their network from "Linksys" probably doesn't know how to do that. (I feel that this is karma, as I never locked our network back in England. )

Visiting Tinseltown

On Friday I went to a conference at a hotel in West Hollywood. West Hollywood is a weird place - it's a city in it's own right, and it's completely surrounded by Los Angeles city. (It's next to Beverly Hills, which also surrounded by Los Angeles).

It's not as weird as North Hollywood. North London is the bit of London that's North of the rest of London. Northern England is the top half of England. North Hollywood decided to be called North Hollywood, because Hollywood was kind of cool, and it wanted to be cool too, even though it's not even attached to the rest of Hollywood (and isn't even part of Hollywood). You can see North Hollywood on this map, and you can see it's not really near to Hollywood.

I'm in America now, so I drove to the hotel. I drove into the entrance, thinking that there would be a car park. I stopped and a man gestured for me to get out of the car, and asked me for the keys. Oh no! This was going to be my first experience of valet parking.

He gave me a bit of yellow paper, and drove my car away. At the end of the day, I asked T (who also works at CoCE) if this piece of paper now was effectively my car. If someone stole this piece of paper, they could have my car? T said that that was theoretically correct, but given that every other car in the car park was a Porsche, a Mercedes, or (if they were slumming it) a Lexus, that it was unlikely anyone would be interested in mine.

Driving Tests

We've had all kinds of exciting things happen in the last week or so, so I've not had time to sit down and write about them. It's a strange sort of contardiction. . When nothing happens, I've lots of time to write, and nothing to write about, and when something happens, it's the opposite.

As well as that, I've got a cold. It was approaching 30C today (that's 86F), and I've got a cold. I hate having a cold when it's hot, it just feels wrong. I don't like having a cold when it's cold, either. (Notice how I got a mention of the weather in there, without appearing to gloat).

Anyway, this week we've been taking driving tests. Mine was first, on Tuesday, which also happened to be Halloween. Most of the staff at the DMV were wearing fancy dress, and I saw some flyers on a desk that asked people to vote for whoever had the best costume. (I was going to ask for one and say I'd vote for them, in case that helped).

I'd asked G, from CoCE, to come with me, as it says very clearly on the instructions that you have to have someone with a valid California license with you, but he had no role to play, and left again.

I got my paperwork and was sent out to the car, to drive around to the driving test lane and wait. My test appointment was at 8:30, and I was in my place in the lane at about 8:25. But I waited until 9:oo for my test. For one thing, it meant I was bored enough not to be anxious, and for another, it meant that I could watch the initial procedure for the people in front of me. (I wondered if they would ask the arm signals in the same order - and they did).

When my turn came Phil (for that was his name) introduced himself, and then did various checks on the car, and me. They make sure that the car has things like brake lights, and they make sure that I know things like where the indicator is. Phil was wearing a flat checked cap, very baggy jeans (not in a young trendy way) and a cardboard Halloween tie. He told me that his boss had made him wear it, and that she was a witch. "What, really?" I wanted to ask, but I didn't know if jokes would go down well, so I didn't.

Anyway, we set off. I knew there was a standard route, so as well as concentrating on driving I tried to remember where we were (I never did manage to retrace it all). It was fairly straightforward - there was a moment when a pedestrian waved me across the road, and I don't know if Phil noticed that, and might have thought I was driving when I shouldn't.

That's one of the weird things about driving here, - pedestrians have right of way at every corner. Unlike in the UK, where a driver might wave a pedestrian across the road, pedestrians wave drivers. And no matter how long you take, drivers just sit there patiently. You only have to stand near a corner, and cars slow down or stop. It makes driving around very different, because you have to go around every corner slowly, because you might need to stop. A couple of times, before I realized this, I've almost got into trouble. When turning left on a traffic light (same as turning right in UK) you wait for a gap in the traffic, and then when you think there's a space that's big enough, you accelerate and get through it.

But you can't accelerate, because it's a corner, and you have to drive slowly. Because there is a little old lady shuffling across the road in front of you. When it's busy, it's not uncommon for only one car to make a left turn on each green light, because of this.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, you have to reverse the car. This is (relative to any other driving test I've taken) the easiest part, by a long way. You park the car at the side of the road (a nice clear bit, none of this reverse parking, or even parking. It's more like stop the car near the kerb (or curb, as I have to spell it now). Then reverse, in a straight line. Officially, one reverses 2-3 car lengths, but mine felt like a lot less.

We arrived back at the DMV, and parked the car in the car park (I found out later that driving through the car park is part of the test). Phil said "Well, you didn't frighten me too much, and that's good", and followed up with "How long have you been here?"

I said "Never mind that, tell me if I've passed the test!!" Actually, I didn't. I said "Almost two months".

"Have you had a chance to look around much?"

"Tell me if I've passed the fucking test", is what I wanted to say, but actually I said "Oh yes, we've been to a few places".

"You know there are some great art galleries. Really good art - masterpieces. Every one's a masterpiece. And gardens, they really look after their gardens."

My fingers grasped around Phil's throat, he gasped for breath. 'The fucking test you wanker. Tell me about the fucking test" is what happened in my imagination. But actually I smiled and said "Oh yes, my wife likes gardens".

We walked to the test centre (he still didn't tell me, in fact he never directly said it), gave me a bit of paper, and I went home. I made three minor faults. I couldn't work out what two of them were, but they seemed to be "traffic check". I'd also stopped too close to the car in front at things like traffic lights. You are allowed to make 15 minor faults, before you fail. (That sounds like a lot, and I guess it is, but it's easy to do - if you make the same mistake every time you turn right, then you'll make about 20 of the same fault, and fail).

On Friday was S's test. We'd spent a while trying to retrace the route of the test, but never found it all. I remembered turning left at an IHOP [that's an International House of Pancakes] and we found the route up to that point, I never found the place where I did the reverse. But S got a lot of practice at driving around in circles while we tried.

While S did her test, I sat at a Starbucks opposite (hiding behind some trees) and looked out. She got Phil as well (sans tie), and asked if he remembered me. He didn't; he didn't remember the yellow car either. S had one fault - stopping too close.

So now we are legal and stuff, and our lovely new driving licenses will come in the post.

Toilet Rolls

As I've already described, I bought some toilet rolls from Amazon. 96 toilet rolls, to be precise, because you couldn't buy fewer.

We got the keys to the new flat, and went to have a look, so we could think about getting an insect net for the balcony, and think about where to put things when they came. S wanted to pop back to our current abode on the way, to pick something, so the boys and I waited in the car, while she got the measuring device.

When she came back, she had the measuring thing, and a box containing slightly fewer than 96 toilet rolls. Which we took to the new flat. We got there, and did a bit of measuring, and thinking, and I looked at the ice maker in the fridge, to understand how it worked (I still don't). And S put the toilet rolls away.

She put an enormous pyramid sized pile on the cistern of one of the toilets. In the flat we are in now, the boys did something similar. The next day, D went to the toilet, and asked why the toilet roll was wet. I went to investigate, and it was indeed, very, very soggy. I asked A how it got wet. "I didn't flush the toilet, Daddy", he said, by way of explanation. I enquired further "When the toilet roll was in the toilet, I didn't flush the toilet. I are a good boy."

I didn't enquire further. I fetched a plastic bag, which I used as a glove to dispose of the offending toilet roll.

Anyway, as I said, S was making a pyramid shaped pile of toilet rolls on the cistern. I said that this had already led to one undesired meeting of the toilet and the toilet roll, before the toilet roll had been removed from the roll and, well, you know. So maybe it wasn't the best place to put the toilet rolls. They could go in the cupboard instead, say, and that would avoid accidents.

"Yes" said S. "But that won't deter you from buying 96 toilet rolls again."

Toilets

I was going to write about toilets, but that seems a bit too biological, so I thought I'd write about toilet doors instead. The door cubicles have gaps - they don't fit quite right, and there's a gap which approaches a half inch. Which is more than you need, in my opinion. (Well, I don't think you need any.)

The walls are also not quite high enough. At CoCE, if two people in stalls stood up at the same time, they could look each other directly in the eye. From a distance that would be uncomfortably close, even if you didn't have your pants around your ankles.

Some public toilets don't even have doors on the cubicles. I don't know if this is because they fell off, or were vandalised off, or never had them. But I'd have to be very, very, very desperate before I'd go and do my business in one of them. And I've have to have a group of very big men standing outside the toilet (not just outside the toilet, outside the building) linking arms to form a wall, to make sure no one came in. And I'd prefer it if they had some sort of weapon. (Not a gun, just some sort of truncheon.)

Oh, and one other thing, while I'm on about toilets. I've never understood toilet seat covers. What are they for? How do you use them? When I try, they just fall off. And where do you put the flap bit from the middle? At the front, or at the back? I've tried both, and neither seems satisfactory. Normally, when one goes somewhere new and encounters something weird, you can copy someone else. But there's not much opportunity for toilet behavior like that. Well, I could just peer over the wall, but that's the sort of thing that is easily misunderstood.

Weather

One doesn't like to gloat. Well, one doesn't like to gloat too much, but the weather here is almost ridiculous. Some people say it gets dull, effectively having no seasons, but it's not dull yet. The forecast for today is for it to be 75F (that's about 23C, kids and Europeans), and it's been warmer than that the last few days (up to 80). We are going to a Halloween do, only about 10 miles away, and the forecast there is 80F today.

S says that it hardly ever gets hot in England, and when it does get hot, it's humid. It's so unhumid here that it's almost unpleasant. (It's particularly unpleasant if you're a forest and catch fire easily. That's a downside we haven't had yet, but have been told about - when everything gets covered in smoke and ash from fires.) The humidity forecast here is 18% later on, and where we are going, it's -1% (hang on, how can that happen? How can there be less than no humidity? Well, whatever, it's very dry).

We thought about moving to this area and it's a lot hotter there than it is near the coast (where we did move to). This year it set a record for having 20 consecutive days over 100 degrees F (that's about 38c) and set a record of 119F (48C). When we used to go to the South of France as children, my grandfather used to tell us how you could fry an egg on a hot bit of ground (I've got a memory of trying, but I don't recall the result). I've seen a recipe where you cook salmon at lower temperatures than that (no, really, it's here). You wouldn't need to put the saucepan on the cooker, well, you could, but you wouldn't need to turn it on. If you had a bath that was 48C, it would hurt.