Caught!

We've been in London for the last couple of weeks, where I've been teaching at a Summer school, and Susanne has been staying at my sisters' (two sisters, both houses, hence correct placement of apostrophe there, pedants).

Coming back, my backpack was x-rayed, as normal. They asked me if it was possible that I had a screwdriver in my bag. I said that it was possible (it was possible that there was almost anything in my bag, but many possible objects were unlikely - I thought that they probably weren't in the mood for debate, so I didn't elaborate on the possibility), and they looked through my bag - finding a screwdriver, which they took away. It was one of my favorite screwdrivers - part of a set from Screwfix.

Then they smeared special bomb detecting stuff on lots of things, and checked that I didn't have any bombs. If they hadn't found the screwdriver, they wouldn't have checked for bombs. So the moral of the story appears to be that if you want to smuggle a bomb onto a plane, don't also put a screwdriver in your bag. (Although S pointed out that if there had been a bomb in a bag that they had actually searched, then they would look really, really stupid.)

A second moral is that it appears (from my very small sample) that your chances of getting a screwdriver shaped weapon onto a plane are much higher at Los Angeles and Calgary (where the screwdriver containing bag had been screened) than at Heathrow (where the screwdriver was detected).

Our Sofa Cover

I'm too lazy to tell it twice, but here's our story.

Dan's Letter

Dan's Letter
Originally uploaded by Jeremy & Susanne

Dan wrote a sad letter. He doesn't let his lack of spelling knowledge cramp his style.

Valentine's Day

A week or so before Valentine's Day we got a list of all of the children in each of the boys' classes sent home with them. The first time this happened we were confused, but now we understand. If one sends a Valentine, one has to send a valentine to every child in the class, regardless of gender. And a valentine isn't a card, it's usually a small sweet of some sort (or candy, as we have to call it now). So Valentine's day becomes a day when the boys bring a vast amount of chocolate home with them, and eat it until they feel sick. So Valentine's day and Halloween, which are theoretically pretty different are actually very similar.

Here's their stash of stuff:



Ana made a special Valentine for Alex:


And one for Dan:


(Notice that Dan's doesn't say the L word. And that Dan ate his M&M's before I got a chance to take a photo).

Dan made a Valentine's for me, in the form of a book.

It says: "All about me. By Daniel. And Valentines".

"I am Daniel and I am 6????? [Can anyone translate? Click picture to embiggen.] I have a brother. My!!! [Possibly me?] All about Valentine's. We give hearts to other people. Here is the Valentine for you. From Dan."

"The End."

I never found out what was in the little package - when I saw it next it had been opened, and presumably consumed.

Hangin' Out

Yesterday was (as you probably know) Valentine's Vay, so the boys went to someone's house (who foolishly offered to babysit) and we went to the theater to see a musical called: Hangin' Out. Or, to give its full title: Hangin' Out: A New Musical Revue in the Nude, at the Macha Theatre, in West Hollywood.

It was a series of songs, all of which related to being naked, sung by six people, who were naked, and accompanied by a pianist, who was clothed. Many of the songs were about being naked, with titles like "I'm Naked", and "Birthday Suit" (My birthday suit, my birthday suit, I look so cute in my birthday suit). Others had a fairly sexual theme - like "A duet for one" (you can probably work out what that was about) or a choral styled song about Saint Viagra.

The Macha Theatre was very small - it claims to have 99 seats, but I could only count 85, and almost every play there is produced by, written by, directed by, and stars Odalys Nanin (who also seems to be a realtor when she has a few seconds spare). It is, apparently, the only Latina lesbian theatre in the country, and it runs as a non-profit organization.

There wasn't a great deal to link the songs, and I couldn't work out any order to them. They were sung by varying numbers of people - I think each person did at least one on their own, and there were songs by all 6, by all the men, and by all the women, and some other combinations.

The whole thing was very well done, and mostly very funny (I thought that the couple of romantic songs in the second half didn't work quite so well), and the performers were good at singing, and seemed pretty comfortable, considering that they had no clothes on, and were about 4 feet from the front row. The best endowed male, in particular, was good at dancing with the correct rhythm to get, errrmmm, a good pendulum action going.

A very silly thing

I haven't posted much recently, 'cos we're buying a house, and it's a bit time consuming. I'll try to soon. But for now, here's something very silly.

It's subtle, but it was me

I'm talking about here.

Bottoms

"Dan, wipe my bottom, wipe my bottom", shouted Alex as he got off the toilet.

Luckily, Dan came to ask me first if he could wipe Alex's bottom. I said no. (Meanwhile, Alex kept shouting "Wipe my bottom". Dan asked "What if I wear rubber gloves?"

I still said no.

Selection of Beasts

Our book told us that when we went to Kapalu'u beach, if we were lucky, we'd see some turtles. So we went there, and saw an amazing selection of beasts.

When we got to the beach, there was a seal lying there, surrounded by cones. The boys thought it was dead, and were very excited, but then they noticed it was breathing. It was, it turned out, a Hawaiin monk seal, which are very rare, and on the Big Island, extraordinarily rare. Because they are so rare, they are loved and nurtured, and as well as the cones there was a lifeguard who dispersed the crowd when it got too big (or took too many pictures.) There are about 1200 of these seals left, and a really small number (like 6) on the Big Island.



A special seal team came (with seal team t-shirts so we knew), and they knew everything about this particular seal - it was one year old, and it usually hung around on the other side of the island, which they (the seal team) prefer, partly because there are fewer people there, and it's not good for seals to hang around with people, and partly because that's where the seal team are based. We spoke to someone else later who'd been at the beach, and apparently at about 6 o'clock in the evening it flopped back into the sea.

After the excitement of the we ventured into the water - and sat there, very close to the beach, in very shallow water, was a turtle. The turtle seemed pretty oblivious to all the people getting excited and shouting 'turtle' and just carried on nibbling on seaweed. It seemed to unexcited that people got bored and wandered away. Then someone new would see the turtle and shout 'Turtle, turtle!', and not understand why everyone else nodded and said 'Uh-huh'.

Plus, it's very, very illegal to touch or 'interfere with' a turtle in any way, so when waves made the turtle drift towards people they had to run and leap out of the way. Apparently turtles can bite pretty hard too, if you piss them off.

The turtle was so exciting that I went to buy a crappy overpriced waterproof disposable camera from a stall on the beach. Results below.






Now that I had my disposable camera, I went out to take pictures of fish, of which there were impressive numbers.

Here is a selection of fish:


Here are some more fish:




Here's me.

(Not getting to) Green Sands Beach

Today we went to a place called Green Sands Beach. Well, we tried, but we didn't. It's called that because the sand is green - which is kind of unusal.

In our guidebook, it says that you can either park in car park and walk, or if you have a 4 wheel drive car, especially a 4 wheel drive car that you don't feel attached to (because you rented it) you can drive there.

Here's our car, in the car park. Notice that there are only two cars there, and they both have four wheel drive.




We tried to set off from the car park, got about 10 feet, and then reversed nervously.


Bits of the road where relatively OK.



Bits of it were a bit grim:



Bits of it were kind of damp:


And bits of it (and this is the part that made us hit reverse) were just silly.



We tried to walk, but it was very, very windy, and didn't manage.


Thanks to the power of the interweb (and Flickr and Creative Commons) I can put a picture here anyway.

Green Sand Beach
Originally uploaded by theohiosource

Lava Tube

We were on the way to a beach, when we saw a lava tube. A lava tube happens when lava hardens on the outside (where it's cool) but keeps flowing on the inside, until it's all dribbled out, leaving a huge empty pipe made of rocks. The boys and I went to investigate it.


Here's the entrance (click on pictures to embiggen).



In some places there seemed to be two channels, here's one. The boys thought that the route was through the hole (that I wouldn't fit in) and climbed in when I wasn't looking. It's lucky Susanne wasn't there.






Here's another alternative route they found. I couldn't fit through (at least, not without a lot of pain), but I could stick my camera in the hole they were heading out of.


In places the roof had collapsed, leaving rubble all over the ground. Here they are climbing up one such heap of rubble.




And down the other side:



During this time, Susanne waited relatively patiently next to the car. When we climbed out at the end,I took this picture of Susanne. If you look closely, you can see how far away she was. Actually, you can't. If you click on the picture to get the bigger version, and know where to look , you can kind of see something that looks a bit like a person.

Double Photographic Whammy

The first whammy is that Susanne was persuaded bought me a new camera for Christmas (which was nice of her). Whenever one has a new camera, one takes a lot of pictures. Susanne doesn't see what was wrong with the old camera, and so the existence of the new camera makes her feel tired - every time I take a picture of her, she is reminded of this, and so when her grandchildren look at the old pictures, they'll say "Grandma, why do you always look anguished in 2009"? (After they've finished laughing at our primitive technology).

Almost a second whammy (but I've decided not, as then I can't call it a double whammy) is the speed the camera takes photos. If you ask it nicely, it can take 6.5 photos per second. Remember when you took a roll of film on holiday (or maybe a couple), and it held 36 pictures - it can use them up in a little over 5 seconds.

The second whammy is that we are on holiday, in Hawaii. And being in Hawaii, as you'd imagine, gives you lot of opportunities to take pictures.

Combining these two means that you're really lucky that (a) I haven't got a slide projector and (b) you're invited to ourhouse to look at them.

We arrived in the late afternoon, the day before yesterday, and I've take 1,608 photos. You'd be obliged to look at them all, but I'm 'borrowing' the wireless internet connection of someone called 'Francine' (or maybe they call their wireless internet connection that, as some sort of pet name). And Francine doesn't pay enough to make it a particularly fast connection, and has positioned her wireless router in a spot where I have a very weak signal. So you're going to have to wait a while. if you can hold out without the anticipation being too much.

Oh, and if you really, really like pictures of twins running about on cold lava (what's that called, after it's hardened? Stone?), well, you're in for a treat.

Ice Skating

The fact that Los Angeles has completely inappropriate weather for winter sports can always be solved with a hefty dose of (possibly imported) fossil fuels. So even though the weather today was a relatively balmy 60 F (that's just over 15C, kids) - cold enough to make Southern Californians moan about the cold, but not even close to making water solidify - we went ice skating.

Or ice hanging onto the edge and falling over. We did one circuit of hanging onto the edge and falling over when Daniel fell over, banged his nose and forehead on the ice, and started bleeding. I lifted him over the fence, so he could walk, and bleed onto the ground and not the ice. This was into someone's birthday party, which meant that they had napkins that could be used to mop up his blood. (I couldn't, because I couldn't get over the wall, and had to shuffle around the edge to meet him). Alex managed to do two more circuits (Dan just watched) - and got good enough to let go of the wall for a few seconds - he adopted a skating system of very rapid, very short steps.

The ice rink was sponsored by Starbucks, and with entry, you got a voucher for a free drink from Starbucks. There was a cafe there, which sold Starbucks stuff, but wasn't a Starbucks, so you couldn't get your free drink from them. It was the Gay Cafe, and was a fundraiser for college scholarships for Californian children of gay parents. That's a genuine California licence plate.


Then we went to the beach:


And on the bumper cars.

The Heating

Today we turned on the heating. It's the 17th of December and for the first time since, well, last winter when we turned it off, we turned on the heating. I had to repeat that, because I want it to be very clear, so you understand the next part.

Susanne said "We need the heating on already. It's freezing cold here."

See what I have to put up with? See how hard it is for me to ever achieve what is expected of me?

Opa's Photo

Opa borrowed my camera to go and take some photos of Route 66. When he gave it back to me, this photo was on it. He isn't forthcoming with the story.

295 miles

295 miles
Originally uploaded by Beautiful Freaks

At least when we'd gone 295 miles on this road, we were almost where we wanted to be.

Great Los Angeles Walk

Los Angeles is known for a few things - one of them is cars. Lots of cars. Walking is rare in LA, because a complete dearth of any kind of planning has led to no centralization at all of anything, so you can't walk from anywhere you want to be to anywhere else you might want to be. And public transport is fairly poor - if you're lucky, there's a bus that goes from where you are to where you want to go. If you're really lucky, there's a subway. I've never been on the subway. Again, it's the fault of the sprawl, there aren't enough people in one place who are trying to get to another place to make it economic to build / run a decent public transport

So, Two years ago, someone called Mike decided to walk along Pico Boulevard. All the way along it. And the next year they decided to walk along Wilshire Boulevard. But they told some friends about it, who told some friends about it, and in the end about 100 people went, and they called it the Great Los Angeles Walk.

And this year they decided to walk along Santa Monica Boulevard. Except Santa Monica Boulevard is only 14 miles long, and that wasn't considered long enough, so they added a bit of Sunset Boulevard, and then a bit more so they could start at Union Station.

So Oma and I drove to Santa Monica, and then caught the bus to Union Station (although there's a subway stop a couple of miles from our house, this was actually quicker).

Susanne wanted to walk some of it, so we had to have a bizarre procedure where she would drive the car to me, I would then drive it forward a mile or two, and then walk back as fast as I could (to about a zillion comments that I was going the wrong way) so as to not violate the integrity of the walk. To preserve my integrity I then carried one of the boys as far as I could.

Daniel walked about three miles, and rode on my shoulders about another mile. He then burst into tears with exhaustion. Alex walked about the last mile with me, and then vomited.

Here's a bunch of people at the start (I was standing in the middle, so I couldn't get everyone, but there were an estimated couple of hundred.)



One advantage of walking is that you see all kinds of things you don't normally notice..






I think about 100 people took a photo of these next two:





Here is me and Opa, at the very end. Opa walked about the last mile, and a mile in the middle.

Granparent Visitation

Oma and Opa are visiting at the moment. Today, they have gone to see the spot where James Dean died, which is a non-descript junction, on a non-descript road, near a non-descript town. And it's not the place where he died any more, because they've moved the road.

Oh, and it's 190 miles away.

Anyway, I know you're all seeking an example of how exasperating it is to have them here, so here we go. Susanne sent them to pick up the boys from school. It's really (really) easy to get to the school from where we live. You walk out of the gate, and there's a school in front of you. But there's a fence, so you turn right, and walk until you reach the gap in the fence - i.e. the gate, and you wait for the boys to appear.

So, this is what they did. But also waiting at the gate was someone else - I think they worked there, but they might have been a mother. And they were African American. The fact that they weren't white is enough to worry the grandparents, but it's hardly surprising, given that 39% of the kids at the school are black (I don't know that off the top of my head, I just looked it up on greatschools.net, if you're interested 29% are white, 26% Hispanic, 9% Asian [which means East Asian, not South Asian, as it does in the UK) and 1% something else. )

In addition, one of the security guards in our complex is black, and female. (I make it sound like there are teams of security guards, there aren't, theirs one at a time). Therefore a black person waiting outside the school was probably some sort of security guard. This person said something to them. We don't know what, probably because they didn't understand, but Opa won't confess to not understanding anything in English - we have argued about both the meaning, and the pronunciation of English words. Whenever Opa finds a word he doesn't know, he displays shock and astonishment - and this happens pretty regularly; in a restaurant yesterday he displayed shock and astonishment that Susanne used the obscure word 'check' when she wanted to pay, rather than saying "Please I want to pay". Whatever it was that the non-white non-security guard said to them, frightened them and made them go away, so that when Susanne came to pick them up with the boys, she found the boys, but no grandparents.

After circling the block a couple of times, she found them by a different school gate.

But it's not all bad. Opa has finally acquired a credit card, and he is very proud of his move into late 20th century banking practice.

Pledging Allegiance

Yesterday was the Laterne Umzug in Santa Monica, which means 'Lantern Walk' - children walked around a Clover Park, carrying lanterns. I don't quite understand it, but it's a big thing in Germany, apparently. (You can see pictures on Flickr, if you want to get the gist. Not of our Laterne Umzug, but of Laterne Umzugs in general).

We bumped into Karin there, who was off to the Mar Vista Neighhborhood Council meeting, to talk about the joys of having a charter school in their neighborhood - for which she would be given two minutes. She was a little nervous, and so I said I'd go with her for moral support. She was very grateful for my altruistic gesture, which wasn't altruistic at all. I'm going to do a similar thing next month at Westchester Neighborhood Council, and had no idea what to say, or how it worked.

Anyway, I got there before her (I was on my bike, she had to go home first) in time for the Pledge of Allegiance. I'd never done the pledge of allegiance before, but I knew it was coming so I'd read about it on Wikipedia.

First, I wasn't sure if, as a foreigner, I was supposed to pledge allegiance - I mean, it wasn't strictly true. Given a war between the US and the UK, I guess I'd be on the UK's side (unless I was stuck in America, in which case I'd pledge allegiance to anything they wanted me to pledge allegiance to, rather than be stuck in Guantanamo Bay). I wondered if I should cross my fingers or something.

Second, although I knew the words (because, as I've said, I looked it up on Wikipedia) I didn't know that there was a rhythm to it, which everyone else knew. I imagined it would be a sort of drone, something like when we had to recite the Lord's Prayer at school. ('Cos of the separation of church and state, the boys don't learn things like the Lord's Prayer at school - which makes me worry about what will happen when they meet vampires). The rhythm goes kind of:

i PLEdge allEGiance to the flag [slight pause] of the UNIted states of AMERICA [pause] AND to the rePUBLIC for which it STANDS ....

So I didn't need to worry about crossing my fingers or anything, 'cos I was completely out of synch and just mumbled along.

I asked the boys about it this morning on the way to school, and they could recite it, and had the right rhythm. So, thankfully, it looks like they will be able to visit their father in PoW camp.

Hue Test

I'm pretty colour unaware. Sometimes people have asked if I'm colourblind. It's not that I can't see colours, it's just that I'm not really interested in them. I don't really mind what colour stuff is, and I don't notice. Sitting here, for example, I couldn't tell you what colour our bedroom is. I'd guess it's yellow, 'cos the room I'm in is a bedroom in our apartment, and it's yellow. But it wouldn't surprise me if it was red.

Hang on, I'll go and look.

Gosh, it's a kind of slightly rusty, mellowed orange. That's fairly close.

It's lucky I don't care about what colour things are, 'cos Susanne cares a lot, and if I cared, we'd have to fight about it all the time. She claims that there is a colour called 'English Red', and often seeks things out in that colour. If there was such a colour as English Red I, being English, would know about it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. But that's the point of a blog, isn't it. I mean, no one would sit there politely and listen while I spout this crap. And, on reflection, it's possible that no one is still reading.

I came across a Hue Test the other day, which tests your 'Color IQ' - that is your ability to distinguish between different, but similar colours. I scored 12 (which means 12 errors), but it didn't really give much information about what that meant, relative to anyone else, except to say that people of my age and sex have scored between 0 and 1999. If you do it, let me know in the comments what you get.