Sunday, February 25, 2007

Crazy Day


It was 'Crazy Day' at the nursery. The children go looking crazy. It's more common than you'd think. There were a couple of requests on the 'parents' list at work asking where you could get pink hairspray, or similar things.

S sprayed white stuff on the boys hair, but when they came home, their hair was pink.

The challenge, as ever, was to make them stay still while I took their picture.

Watching whales on a Sunday

And watching Scotland on a Monday. Hahaha.

Today we went watching whales. The plan was to drive to Oxnard (where the boat was, which we would take to the place the whales hang out). We were planning to leave at 10, drive in a leisurely fashion to the harbor, have lunch and hang out, meet up with R and his family, and then check in at 1.

They told us to ring at 11, and make sure that the sailing hadn't been cancelled. We were well on our way by then, just past the Malibu Feed Bin (I'd seen that from the road, and thought that it would have been a really good name for a restaurant, but I looked it up on the interweb, and it sells horse food, and similar stuff). We rang, but it was engaged. A whole lot of people would be trying to ring, so we kept going for a while - we weren't worried, 'cos we'd checked the weather forecast.

Then Robbie rang, and told us that the whales were cancelled. It was, apparently, too windy.

We'd got halfway there, and further in that direction than we'd been before, so we decided to keep going and find something interesting to do. I'd always wanted to go to Zuma Beach - mostly because there's a Neil Young album named after it. (The album is called Zuma, rather than Zuma Beach.)

So we went to Zuma Beach, and found that it was (as the boat people said) incredibly windy. In the photo below, you can see the haze that's the sand being blown just above the surface.



We went to the toilet, and there was a cafe further down the beach (we knew it was a cafe, because it said 'FOOD' in red letters, which were about 8 feet high, and were secured to its roof), so we walked there, to find it closed. We'd walked with the wind, and walking back against the wind was quite a strain - such a strain that the boys couldn't do it. I had to go back to the car, and drive down to the beach.



Then we drove further up the Pacific Coast Highway, and followed the first brown sign that looked like it was to somewhere interesting. It took us to a park area, which seemed bizarrely deserted. There was a Nature Centre (which was closed) lots of picnic tables, some benches arranged into a kind of theatre under the trees, some restrooms (as I have to say), and about 4 people. We walked in a big circle (it was a relief that it was a circle - we weren't sure) and arrived back at the car.

We drove back along the PCH (we call it that, 'cos we're cool) and stopped at a Starbucks for coffee and cakes. I said it was boring and samey to go to Starbucks, 'cos we always go there, and we should go somewhere interesting and different instead. (Bill Bryson wrote about that in one of his books "Let's go to Macdonalds/Burger King / Pizza Hut, because we know what we'll get." "Precisely", he replies. S pointed out that we haven't been to a Starbucks since we went shopping with her mother and she was breastfeeding. Which was a good point.

When we got home I looked to see if the Starbucks was on Wikimapia - it was (here) and S was very upset to find that a number of actors, including Pierce Brosnan, are regulars there (or so it says on WM). She wanted to go back and stalk them.

Finally, we saw another beach with a parking space that looked interesting - it was called the La Piedra Robert H. Meyer Memorial State Beach - you took quite a steep trail down from the car park, and the beach looked sort of interesting - there's an aerial photo here. I thought it was a much cooler beach than Zuma, but La Piedra Robert H. Meyer Memorial State would have been a crap name for a record. We were too weary by then to go down the hill and look, so we went home.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Shoes

After we'd sorted out the tax, S went to meet her pal, and go to an exhibition of Magritte paintings, while the boys and I went shopping for shoes. We dropped S off, and tried to find the shoe shop. The map lady is normally quite good at finding shops by name, but this time she let us down. (Actually, last time she let us down too - S couldn't find the bike shop.) I tried to remember the address, but I wasn't 100% sure, and so I didn't want to risk it.

(Knowing the road is no use, because many roads go on for an awful long time - Sunset Boulevard, is 22 miles long, and the streets will restart numbering when you go to different cities. It's like a bizarre version of the effect you get in England - when you are driving, you get to a road near where you live, and you feel like you're almost home. When you approach Derby from the East, you know you're nearly home when you reach the A38, but if you go West, you can be in Bristol and see the A38 - "Ooh," you think, "The A38, I'm almost home". And then you realise you're not. It's the same here, except it's streets - We can get on a freeway, drive 15 miles, and then get off on Sepulveda. Our local supermarket is on Sepulveda, so we feel like we're almost home.)

Shoe shops in the US are a bit different to shoe shops in the UK. In the US, you suggest that you might like to buy your darling offspring some shoes, and they point to the shop and say "Whole shop full." Whereas in England, we often didn't get out of a shoe shop for an hour. (Because D and A have strange shaped feet, and their shoes have to match - that is, be the same, or if different sizes, be different colours, but the same style. And they have to fit the right width, and the shop has to have that combination in stock. So I asked around at work (there's an email list for parents, called 'parents'), and there was agreement that we should go to this shop called Harry Harris.

Anyway, the map lady couldn't find the shop I wanted, but it could find another branch (there are three) in Beverly Hills. We were near Beverly Hills, so we headed that way. But first we had to eat.

We passed a slightly seedy pizza place, but it had tables, and pizza, so we stopped. For $9 (including tax, plus tip) you got a pizza, a salad, and a drink, so I had one and the boys had one. There was a chap who was folding leaflets sat on another table who insisted that we chat - he did promotions for the World Cup when it was in the USA, and now he did promotions for this pizza shop (and drank beer from a can in a brown bag). I ate D and A's salad, unsurprisingly, and then we left.

We got to the shop, in a swanky bit of Beverly Hills - we were surrounded by Lexus SUVs and BMWs and Priuses, and bought some shoes - they were very swift, but pretty efficient (it was Saturday afternoon, so we couldn't really expect leisurely service). It only took two trips to the back of the shop (each time getting 4 pairs of shoes) before we got a satisfactory combination. However, when it came time to pay, I didn't have my card, which was dull. And I'd paid with it at the pizza place. I had no idea where the pizza place was, or what it was called, and there was no way I was going to find it again, so I had visions of all kinds of bills for beer and brown paper bags being racked up on my card before I got home to cancel it.

Anyway we got back to the car under an hour - which meant that we didn't have to pay (first hour was free at the car park). The car park was so full by this time, that you had to leave your keys with someone, who then spent time shuffling cars about. I drove home, and cancelled my card.

S feels like it's not fair that we never see celebrities, as there are supposed to be so many living around here. (She found out yesterday that Pierce Brosnan lives nearby - in fact, we'll drive almost past his house tomorrow.) The problem is that we probably wouldn't recognise any. Anyway, if celebrities live in Beverly Hills (and only the tacky ones like David Beckham do - the others live in Malibu) then they'd buy shoes from Harry Harris. There was someone there who might have been a celebrity. She had a baby called Franky (Frankie? Phranckee?) who was 11 months old (they asked her age in the shop), but I didn't know who she was.

After we'd got home and cancelled my card, I listened to the answering machine message from S, that said she hadn't got a lift home, and could we go back (almost all the way) to Beverly Hills to pick her up. In those few minutes, A had taken off his new shoes and put on his scummy old sandals from Asda.

But S found a German book shop, which she was excited about, and asked someone what perfume she was wearing (the askee, not S, it wasn't like one of my exciting quizzes). Now we have to try to buy some from Amazon. Except we can't, because I've cancelled my card.

Tax

Today I sorted out my tax. Tax in the US is rather different from the UK. When I started work, I had to estimate how much tax I should pay. I rather thought that they should know, but they didn't. I got points for having different things (like children) and then they suggested that I add a point or two, to be on the safe side - it's better to pay too much than too little.

Then, from January 1st, until April, you have to work out how much tax you actually owe, and either pay it, or get it back. It seems that almost everyone has to submit a tax return and do this. However, for most people, it's relatively straightforward. Unless you moved to the country last year, and have a wife and children with no social security number, and then it's not straightforward. So I needed help.

There are computer programs you can get, which do it all online. S and the boys needed a taxpayer identification number. The computer programs (I tried 2) won't let you do anything without a taxpayer identification number (TPIN). (Well, actually, they'll let you do everything except press submit.) You get a TPIN by sending in a form, with your tax return. But you can't complete your tax return without at TPIN. I decided I needed professional help.

Given that everyone has to do a tax return, there are a vast number of people who'd like to help you. The cheapest seems to be called H & R Block. T, who I work with, said that they employ people from January to April who work as cleaners the rest of the year, but that they were still liable if they get it wrong. Conveniently, they set up desks in department stores, for the tax season, so this morning I trotted off to Sears, to do my tax.

The woman (who might have worked as a cleaner the rest of the time) was slightly flummoxed by the fact that I had arrived. At one point she downloaded the UK-US tax treaty document and started to read it. It wasn't as long as I thought it would be, but it was still 55 pages long. Together we decided it wasn't relevant. (She was quite good at pressing ctrl-F and searching for sensible words, to find the bit that meant that we didn't need to read the rest.) The computer also crashed at one point, but it seemed to have an auto-save feature.

We started at 10:40, and at 11:40, S had to go and get the boys from German school, and then come back to sign forms. We finally finished at 12:40. There are all kinds of things that are tax deductible that we didn't know about. Just for having a long distance phone line, for example, we got $60 (or so) of tax back. Anytime you give anything to charity - be it money or goods, you can get a receipt, and claim back the tax. This includes stuff like going to the zoo - because the zoo is a charity, or giving a box of tat to a charity shop.

We didn't have any of that, but we will next year. (If we don't lose the receipts.)

We also had to send off official copies of our passports, so we need to get them copied and notarized. (There is a thing on the web page at work that says where you can get a notary from. I never understood what it was, even after I looked it up on Wikipedia, but now I know.) Two hours later, and $220 lighter, we had our forms to post off. (They don't do that for you). But $220 seems like a bargain, as our UK accountant charges £75 to fill in a form - even if the form says "What is your name?"

Anyway, it turns out that the taxman (or tax men - you pay federal and state tax) owe us about $3800 - this is for the 4 months we have been here, and means that we paid $1000/month too much tax. Which seems like a lot to me. But it's better than me owing it to them.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Eatings 2

I realised that I ran out of enthusiasm before I described the second restaurant experience.

When G, the german speaking babysitter first applied to us, she gave us a referee to contact, who said that she only babysat once, and was a bit useless. But we employed G anyway - she turned out to be nice, but a bit useless. Well, she was OK when she turned up, but she had a habit of disappearing. Anyway, this referee, called B, mentioned that she owned a cafe - coincidentally a cafe that I went to for a beer when I came here for my interview.

Even more coincidentally, this woman sends her children to the same pre-school that we do, so we thought we should go to the cafe one day. So we did. I ride past it on the way home, so I met S and the boys at a playground, and then we went there.

They had interesting German beer, so I drank some of that, and the boys had apple juice. We ordered food, but they thought that we wanted it in batches (they seemed to arbitrarily decide that some things were starters). I had chips (which weren't chips, of course) and salsa, and guacamole. The chips were either impressively fresh, or alternatively they had sprinkled some oil on them, and then microwaved them. S had a salad (which was supposed to be a main course, but never mind).

Then for what turned out to be the main course, S had some cheesy potato things, and I had spätzle (which I've always pronounced 'spetchley', both of which are traditionally swiss. (They weren't called cheesy potato things). Spatzle is a weird food, a little like pasta - we used to have it occasionally when we were young, at my grandparents, and my father used to make it occasionally. However, what it was, and how to make it, had (I imagined) died with them. Obviously if I did want to have it, I wasn't going to get far asking for spetchley.

The first time I went to Germany to see S, we went to a wedding, and there was some weird pasta stuff to eat. And when I tasted it, it was spetchley! It was quite a revelation, I had this very vague memory of it in the mists of my memory, but when I tasted it again, it was exactly the same. Since then, whenever I've seen it in restaurants, I've ordered it. (Which is pretty rare - I'd estimate that that's the 3rd time I've had it since the time at the wedding. Once of those times was in Ikea in Bielefeld).

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, the starters were quite tasty, but the main courses were pretty disappointing - the spätzle (as I should probably call it) was OK, but it was a really small portion. Cheesy potatoes were, well, cheesy potatoes. Anf the boys had a pizza. However, because they had had fries for their starter, they weren't desperately interested. And the fact that the pizza was disgustingly inedible probably didn't help.

Time dragged on, and the cafe turned into slightly more of a bar than a cafe, with the kind of people in it who hang around at Venice Beach when all of the tourists have left. Who aren't necessarily unpleasant, but might be thought of as a little weird. Some people were playing pool, which D and A were very interested in - although it had to be explained to them several times that they weren't to touch the balls. When the balls went in the holes, they ran around to watch them roll through the window.

When we left, without our asking, they packed the pizza in a takeaway box for us to take. We'll give it another day, to make sure it's completely impossible to eat, and then we'll throw it away.

Bicycle Breakdown

I was riding home on Thursday night, and I couldn't get first gear. I thought that maybe I had sand in the derailleur and that maybe it was all gunged up, so I stopped to wiggle it and see if that helped. It didn't. And then the wire that went from the gear switch to the derailleur came off in my hand.

Now, instead of my (frankly ridiculous) 27 gears on my bike, I had two. One that was too high, and one that was much too high. I phoned S on my cellphone, which had about 10 seconds of battery life left in it, and asked if she could come and get me from the bike shop, and then I rode there.

They said that they could fix it while I waited, but I said "Oh no, don't worry, I've got a ride coming." That way they could clean and service it, and stop that irritating clicking in my left pedal that's been there for ages. That was just before 6.

So I waited for S, and chatted to the people in the shop. It turned out that the original branch of the shop was in Berlin, and wife of the couple that owned it was German, whilst the husband was American. So we had a lot to chat about.

I phoned S from the shop phone, to see where she was, and the traffic was grim, but she was on the way. Anyway, S arrived at abotu 10 to 7. She hadn't been able to find the shop, and had taken so long that the boys had weed themselves. Meanwhile, I'd been making conversation for an hour with the people in the shop. When S arrived, she was tense, and the boys were wet (but I didn't know). I'd sorted out two bikes for D and A to try out, and there was a big, wet dog, and a very little puppy in the shop, that the boys were interested in.

While I was pottering in the shop, I remembered that D and A had somehow got hold of my speedometer from my bike. They had put it somewhere special to look after it, and then forgotten where. They remembered after about 3 days, and it didn't work any more. So I thought I'd get a new one.

You know when you go to a shop to buy a speedometer for your bike, and you say "I'd like a speedometer" and they say "What do you want it to do?" and you say "Tell me how fast I'm going. And how far I've been." And they say "For five £/$ more, you can have one that tells you your average speed", and that seems like a bargain. And they say "For 5 $/£ more, you can have a wireless one," and that seems like a bargain. And they say "... you can have one that can store two trips" , "... you can have one that measures your heartrate", "... you can have one that measures your cadence [that's pedalling speed, non-cyclists]", "... you can have one that counts calories", "... you can have one that shows where you were at the same time yesterday so you can race yourself", ... "... you can have one with a GPS device that shows where you are on a live satellite linked up map, and plots the position of other cyclists, nearby restaurants and a display of the weather". And you only really want one that tells you how fast you're going, and how far, but you end up with a small laptop computer attached to your handlebars?

Well, it was nothing like that. I said "I'd like a new speedometer." The man in the shop reached over, and gave me one. I said "What's that do?" He said it did everything you could want. I tried to explain that I might be able to want a lot. He said "It's got average speed". I said "It doesn't tell me what the weather is going to be in the next 5 minutes." He looked blank and said "It's got everything you could want. We don't sell any others." So that's the one I bought.

I got the bus to work this morning, and then picked up my bike when I'd finished. We'd chatted for a long time about houses - the shop owners are looking at buying a house near-ish to us, but the house they looked at yesterday wasn't so good - it was too near the freeway. They had looked at another today - they showed me the details and we chatted about that - it was nice on the outside, but a bit pricey (they said). ON the inside, everything was a bit old.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Eatings out

We've been to restaurants twice to eat out, in the last week. Going to a restaurant is much easier now that the boys are big enough that we can be pretty sure that they are not going to puke, with little warning. It seems that some children's response to choking is not to cough, but to vomit, and we were lucky enough to have two of them. On a number of occasions I've picked up a child and run for the door, leaving confused onlookers in my wake. Once, I didn't make it and A honked in the entrance of a pizza restaurant in Clacton. They've also vomited into a bowl in El Piano (we left a large tip) and a tray in a pub. Usually, because we know the warning signs, we managed to get them to a flowerbed, or gutter, or car park.

Anyway, the first one we went to was a place that I first went to when I came for an interview. It's a very rural sort of place, built on the edge of a valley. It's mostly outside (under cover) and there are two very large dogs which wander about. The dogs are completely oblivious to all attention, they just walk slowly and hoover bits of food off the floor. The boys were a bit sad about this - they chased the dogs and tried to stroke them; because the boys were slightly nervous, by the time they got around to stroking, the dogs had usually moved. And if they got one stroke in, they usually didn't get a second one, because the dogs had moved.

The service was epically slow (we knew that, it's renowned for it), and we were say by the kitchen, so we could see all the tasty things other people had. Next time, I'm having enchiladas. I had a veggie burger, which was a little disappointing. A and D had quesadillas, which they ignored and just ate their fries (as I have to remember to call them).

We went walking after that - which was the point of the trip to the country. We made very slow progress (as we tend to), so didn't get far. There was a woman with a baby on her back who got stuck behind D - every 10 feet he picked up another stick, added it to the bulging collection in his hand, and ran back to show her. She had to stop and say "OOh", but she was very tolerant.

She eventually got past D, and caught up with A, and got all distressed, because she though she'd got away, but I explained it was a different one, and he wasn't going to show her sticks.

As we were heading back the clouds descended, and did sort of blow along in wisps - with a very definite barrier. I thought that the boys would be excited about this, but they didn't really get the idea. I tried to explain that there were clouds, like in the sky. And they looked at me confusedly, and then pointed at the clouds and shouted "Fire, fire!".

I suppose you want to see some photos. Well, I'm going to put them here anyway.

Here's the cafe:



This is a lizard. R, who we've met here has a 9 year old son who is quite good at (a) spotting lizards, and (b) catching them. A and D always try, but never succeed.
Clouds.


That's the view. It's not a bad view. And what's even more impressive is that just over the top of those hills is an enormous city. The hills in the far background are a long way behind, and the city is between us and them. We are about 16 miles from downtown Los Angeles here.


Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Blu Tack

I asked someone if there was any Blu Tack in the stationery cupboard today. They looked at me blankly. I tried to describe it. "A post it note?" "A nail" "Two sided sticky tape".

I gave up. It seems to not exist here.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Palm Springs / Indio

On 24 last week, there was an exchange which went:

(Oh, hang on, if you are worried this is going to give some part of the plot away, it's not. Not that I'm gloating 'cos I've watched more 24 than you have.)

  • Rita: I just want to get out of the city, and get to Vegas.
  • Darren McCarthy: We're not going to Vegas.
  • Rita: Oh, no, I'm not going to Palm Springs. No, no, if that's right you can just drop me off right here, that place is like assisted living for an entire city.

Rita's obviously never been to Indio.

Valentine

S came home from the nursery and asked what a 'Valentine' was. It's usually an adjective - Valentine's day, Valentine's card. I didn't know what a valentine nous was so I looked it up. Obviously, a Valentine is a sweetheart (as in 'be my Valentine').

That didn't help, because S said we have to buy a Valentine for every other child in the nursery. All 30 of them. So a Valentine is some sort of present. So we have to buy 30 presents, and (30 * 29 / 2) - 1 = 434 presents will be exchanged at the nursery. (The -1 is there, because A and D won't give one to each other).

Apart from the drain on the non-renewable resources of the world, does this mean that each child is going to go home with 29 items of tat. (Given that no one's going to spend much on each one, it's hardly going to be something that you are going to keep and hand down to the grandchildren.)

Well, this is America, and capitalism came to the rescue (with help from an artificially depressed Chinese Yuan, and a sweatshop near Beijing). S went shopping at the supermarket and came home with a box of "Valentines". 27 of them, for $2.99. They are little cards with 3D pictures on, the kind that change when you look at them from different angles. With pictures of dogs and cats.

Hooray for the globalization and the free market economy, that's all I can say.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Ride to work

Here's a video of my bike ride to work.


Some people (who shall remain nameless, but we'll call JD) have complained about the music in some videos so we'll have a change of style here.

I did it by taping a mini-tripod onto my handlebar extender, and putting the camera on that. It was a bit shakey though (as you can see). It's not absolutely accurate, because I started from the apartment, not from outside the garage where I keep my bike (because I forgot something, and I didn't want to leave my bike with the camera attached in the garage). I'd have taken a photo of the bike with camera on it, except that I couldn't, obviously.

Remember those books that you used to be able to get that told you where to fast forward your video to get to the naughty bits in films? (You don't? Oh. Well, someone told me about them). Well, in a similar vein, here's a guide to things in the video. Not naughty bits though. Interesting bits. Maybe slightly less boring bits is more accurate.


0:42 - You can just glimpse our yellow car - S was returning from dropping A and D off at nursery.
0:55 - normally there's a nice view from here. But not today, it was misty.
1:11 - Yum Yum 24 hour donut shop on the right. (Yum Yum being the name of the shop).
2:01 - if it wasn't a misty day, you'd be able to see the sea ahead.
2:17 - I'm looking in my handlebar bag for something.
2:37 - Marina is on the left here 'creek' is on the right.
3:19 - A bicycle jam
3:36 - Overtaken! He won't get away with that.
4:40 - I caught him. A brief traffic light chat, about why I had a camera tied to my handlebars.
4:51 - this is a park with exercise equipment. It's common to see people exercising here, very seriously.
5:33 - He did get away with that. (Note to self - don't try to keep up with people who are obviously fitter than you, and on racing bikes. Or legs will hurt. For days.)
6:10 - If I went straight on here, I'd be on Venice Pier.
6:15 - This is Venice beach, but it's not what people think of as Venice beach.
6:39 - There is an ambulance here, with it's lights flashing, and a lifeguard car next to it. I couldn't see if they'd just heroically dragged someone from the water though.
6:50 - This is what you think of as Venice Beach. There are courts (for handball? Not quite sure) in the picture. Muscle Beach is to the right.
6:54 - The red thing on the left is a homeless person in a sleeping bag.
7:03 - That's a man pushing a pram with twins in it, whilst rollerskating. (Rollerskating pram pushers are very common).
7:11 - Shops and stuff at Venice Beach, with shutters down.
7:53 - There is a caravan thing on the right, with aboutusnow.com written on the side of it. I've been to that website, and I still don't understand.
8:06 - about here we enter Santa Monica - I've never quite worked out where the border is.
9:00 - If it wasn't misty, you'd be able to see Santa Monica pier now - it's 2 blocks down, but I turn off the beach here.
9:32 - CoCE is on the left here.
9:35 - Mushroom cloud sculpture on the right.
9:40 - CoCE are a bit fussy about being photographed, and so here we stop.

Souplantation

Eating out here is cheap. (That, and Levi's jeans, I've discovered.) We went to a restaurant last night that excelled in cheapness beyond my wildest dreams. And it was quite good.

It started with a salad bar - I didn't measure it, but they claimed it was 55 feet long, and I believed them. It had salad. A lot of salad, of lots of different types - the special salad of the moment was spinach leaves with cherries. When you got to the end of the salad bar, you paid - I think the limit was what you could get on one plate, and it was a reasonable sized plate (although not huge). The price was $8.99 for adults, and $1.79 for kiddies - and drinks were $1.79. For four of us, the price was around $31 (tax probably got added somewhere there, so there's no point trying to make it add up), that's about £16, although I usually think of it as more like £20 (when I'm translating, in my head).

Once you were past the salad bar, you could eat as much as you could of anything. There was soup (4 kinds, including a very chunky vegetable soup, which I thought would be watery and horrid), 4 kinds of pasta (the boys were fond of macaroni cheese). There were baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes and two kinds of pizza. There were desserts, tapioca pudding (when was the last time you saw that on a menu that didn't have a dinner lady standing next to it, taking your 25p off you?), jelly, watermelon, apples, cakes, muffins, apple and cherry cobbler and a frozen yogurt dispensing machine, with vanilla and chocolate.

The thing that surprised me is that they made a big thing about fruit and vegetables, and not just in a McDonald's-y lip service sort of way. (Well, they couldn't, with that much salad). They said what proportion of your 5 a day was contained in a bowl of soup (most of it) and things like that. It's seems weird that somewhere selling really cheap fast (ish) food does that - I can't imagine it happening in the UK. They said what was vegetarian or not (if it wasn't obvious, like with some salads).

The other thing that surprised me was that there was a supermarket next door. If I lived anywhere near that place, I'd never go shopping for food again. Except for cornflakes to have for breakfast.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Flying Spaghetti Monster


I bought a Flying Spaghetti Monster sticker thing for the car. S said that if she'd known how big it was, she wouldn't have let me buy it. And if she'd known I was going to put it on the car, she wouldn't have let me buy it either. (What else was I going to do with it?)

Anyway, here's a picture of it. Which also displays the fact that I left the car door open, and someone had to come and tell me to close it.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Two pics of our neighbourhood

Here's a couple of pictures taken near our house. The first is a panorama shot (I'm not bored of them yet!) of the lagoon near our house. You need to click on the picture to make it bigger. It goes nearly 360 degrees, so the playground at the left and right is the same playground. The lagoon is fairly stagnant, and is a wildlife reserve - you're not allowed to swim in it, paddle in it, or have any kind of toy in it. If you look extraordinarily hard, at the end of the lagoon there is a white triangle sticking up - that's a yacht, on the other side of the causeway, heading into the marina. (Which sounds pleasant, but adds 2 miles to my bike ride, 'cos I have to go around it).

Just to the left of where the sun is setting is the beach - there are some sand dunes in the way, so you can't see it (or the sea).

On the left are the public toilets - if I forget to go for a wee at home, before I set off, I usually go here. It's the most secluded restrooms (as I say now) that I pass, and you know by now that you're not going to make it to CoCE.

A and D were on the sand when I took it, but they seem to have disappeared in the merge.



In that picture, you can just about see the hill on the left, which we live on. The first thing to note about the hill is that it makes the last part of my bike ride home considerably less pleasant than it might otherwise be. The second is that it's an enormous sand dune. It's the sand dune that continues into the Sand Dune Park (which I've written about before).

And the fact that it's a sand dune, and the fact that there is the occasional earthquake in Southern California (and Northern too, so I could have just said California there) makes me feel nervous every time I see the house in the second photo.

Avocados

Also at the farmers market, there were avocados for sale. I grew up with avocados being eaten out of a pear shaped dish, with a dash of tomato vinaigrette, but I've never seen an avocado treated that way here (come to think of it, I've never seen an avocado treated that way in the UK since I was about 15, but anyway ...)

They way I've almost never seen an avocado treated in the UK is to put them in a sandwich (except for at Mair's, a delicatessen near our house, and they sold all sorts of weird stuff in their sandwiches, my favorite on the weirdness scale being chili-peanut butter and banana; they also did garlic peanut butter and chocolate). Here, avocados go in sandwiches and on burgers - in Subway, it's an optional extra on any sandwich, in The Shack, which is a bar that sells burgers near us, it's an option, it's standard in one of the sandwiches at CoCE, and always an option.

Anyway, where was I, oh yes, the farmers market. They had a stall selling avocados, and they had 4 kinds (bacon, hass, fuerte and zutano). They varied in price from $1.50 to $3.00 for an avocado. Does this mean that your average avocado buyer in these parts can (and does) distinguish between different kinds of avocado, as I might distinguish between different kinds of apples? But at least different types of apple look different - these looked like, well they looked like avocados. I bought $2.00 ones because I didn't want to look like a cheapskate, and I thought that maybe if they cost more, they were better, and because they were 3 for $5. And then the man threw an extra one in for free.

This last point was a problem, because if there's one thing that gets me in trouble with S (well, there are lots of things but this is one of them) it's buying too many avocados.

Quiz Time

We haven't had a quiz for a while, so let's have another.

I went to the farmer's market today, and I bought these:



What are they?