Shøp

We went to Ikea today. I've now been to Ikea's in 3 different countries, and they're all remarkably similar. The machine pushing away at a chair to prove how robust it was gave me a spooky feeling, it was so like Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham and Bielefeld.

One difference was the restaurant. There was the bistro at the end, which sold hot dogs (but no vegetarian ones) and meatballs and lingonberry juice (or whatever it's called) but the restaurant in the shop was very small - there were about 8 tables, and I bought a very unpleasant sandwich, because the menu consisted of three kinds of sandwich ' vegetarian', and two others that I didn't bother to take in. Drinks were cheap though, cans of Pepsi were 75c.

One similarity was the fact that when you got to the end you couldn't find anything, and there was no one around to ask. So that felt like home too.

There was a car hire place next door, where you could hire a van by the hour, which I though rather cunning. And it was on three floors, you started at the top, and worked down (I think that I've seen that before, being an international ikea veteran). There were lifts and escalators between floors, and a special excalator for trolleys, which was supposed to hold the trolley, but occasionally didn't quite manage, causing the trolley to skeeter down, scattering crockery and light furnishings until it crashed into the trolley in front. The boys thought that was very exciting.

[Update: I found a picture of it on flickr.]

We bought a thing I've forgotten the name of, but it wouldn't mean anything to you anyway (Trafort, or Rotfart, or something like that) and tried to buy another thing but the shelves were out of stock. (As in the shelves that go in the thing, you could buy the outside, just not the inside. Is this making any sense?)

We bought a clock (for $2.99), a big kitchen style one, to go in the boys room, so they don't have to ask if it's time to get up, they can just stay in bed. And a non-stick frying pan.

And I took another one of those panoramic photo things, because I could. One day I'll find something to take a panoramic photo that's worth taking a panoramic photo of. To make things worse, it's the side, not the front - when we'd finished I was going to drive around to the front to try again, but when you've been to Ikea you barely have enough energy to get home, so I didn't bother. To attempt to make it more interesting, I've done a perspective correction thing. You can see the escalator on the right that you use to get to the top. The people look a bit chopped in half, because they weren't considerate enough to stay still while I took multiple shots.

(Click on the picture for a larger view, click it again for even larger.)



While we were in Ikea it started raining. It doesn't rain often (as I mention whenever I can), and it seems that drivers don't remember that wehen water falls from the sky, the roads get more slippery - it must have been too long ago that it last happened. We passed three minor accidents within about 10 miles. (Reminds me of that joke about what accident and emergency, errrmmm, I mean ER, doctors call motorcyclists when it starts to rain: "organ donors".)

On the way home, we went to Trader Joe's on the way, and bought some 'Avocado's Number' Guacamole. Which I imagine is a joke about Avogadro's number. I'm impressed that a supermarket make a joke about something that obscure that very few people are actually going to get it.

(I just typed 'Avogadro's number into Google, and found that (a) it knows it, and (b) it can do calculations on it. Don't you just love Google? I mean, if you ever wanted to know the square root of Avogadro's number to the power of pi ...)

Panoramas

I found a program called hugin which lets you create quite cool pictures, like this one:


Actually, it's not that cool, 'cos it wasn't very interesting. But if I took some more interesting pictures, it would be cool. It stitches all the photos together and stretches them appropriately, and averages the bits where they don't match so it looks smooth.
If you click on the picture, you get a bigger version, and then if you click on it again, it gets bigger again, and you can scroll left and right. (At least that's true in FireFox. If you use IE then it's your own fault.)

I'd always thought that scenes from films and the places they were shot were based on criteria like 'interesting' or 'authentic'. But now, having lived near places that make films, I've got a theory that an important criterion for the selection of film sets is 'near'.

I'll illustrate my theory with two examples. (Because two examples is enough to prove anyone right.)

One iconic film is the lovers driving out to a layby at night, and parking so that the city is beneath and behind them, and lit up. In any city I've lived in or known especially well, there's about a total of one place where you get such a view. I'd therefore thought that there must be a queue of film-makers and couples trying to propose all waiting to get to that one spot. Buy now I've realised it's not.

The two photos below are taken from a hill to the South West of downtown Los Angeles. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and there was no one around. And if I'd wanted to park a car there at night, well, the gate would have been closed, but presumably if I'd wanted to make a film, they would have let me in.

The first picture looks towards downtown - the little mushroom of skyscrapers is downtown LA. The second photo I'm not so sure about, I think it's looking towards Hollywood and Beverly Hills - somewhere like that, anyway.

There were a huge number of places near to me that would have been suitable vantage points for making my iconic scene. And you can also see, that on the other side of the city, there are some more mountains which also provide a plethora of opportunities for trading hostages.

Second example. Whenever they want to show gritty industrial stuff, they show those nodding donkey oil pumps, out in the desert. I'd always imagined that they had spent hours searching for something to represent slight dereliction and abandonment, with a hint of machismo (like the beginning of day 5 in 24). But, after taking the other photos, walk 100 yards, turn around (actually, maybe do that the other way around - turn first, then walk) and you can take these photos.

Whole Words

I can never remember the arguments about whole word versus phonics approaches to reading. I know what whole word approaches are forced upon children by well meaning, but fluffy minded liberals, and that phonics are beaten into children by well-meaning but stuffy traditionalists. Or something like that.

However, watching D and A learn to read, both are happening. They can recognize every letter of the alphabet, and know how a lot of them sound.

But they can also read some whole words:

• Yes
• No
• Cancel
• OK
• Print
• Save
• Play

You'll notice that those are all words that appear on buttons on computers.

What would you say ...

There was a talk today at work, by a chap who has been a professor (not emeritus) in the same institution, for 56 years. (That means that when I was born, he had already been doing research for longer than I've been doing research now.) Anyway, that's not the point of this entry, but I thought it was interesting, so I popped it in.

He did research on predictors of behavioral problems in teenagers, and looked at risk factors (like having friends who smoked or living in an area where there were gangs) and protective factors (like having supportive parents and friends who disapproved of taking drugs). His conclusions were (very approximately) that not all people turn out bad, even if bad stuff happens, because the protective factors can protect them. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

The thing that I found most interesting was the end of the talk, when someone asked what the policy implications were - if he had the ear of the president, what would he tell the president should be done? The speaker replied, and said that while George Bush was president, there was no point telling him anything, because he didn't listen and he always believed he was right.

I'm surprised that people feel that they can express such strong political opinions in an open arena like this - I never heard anyone say this sort of thing at University of Prior Employment (or any other university), at least not so completely unsubtley. And this is, don't forget, at CoCE, not a university, a place that originally grew out of the military.

Shane's Inspiration

We went to a park called Shane's Inspiration. Shane, I read, was a little boy who was born prematurely and who would have been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his days, but he died when he was two weeks old. However, his parents discovered that had he lived, he wouldn't have been able to play in a playground, so they built one.

(This spirit of philanthropy that Americans have surprises me - I wonder where it comes from, and why other places don't have it, but anyway ...)

There are some pictures below. Notice the wheelchair accessible ramp to the climbing frame. (The pictures aren't very good. The boys were a bit nervous about the size of the playground - it was big, and were determined that Daddy stay in one place, where they told him to.)

Trapped

Remember that episode of South Park where all the townsfolk get trapped in the town hall, and after about 10 minutes someone says "Well, I'm feeling mighty peckish, we'd better eat someone", and so they eat the minor celebrity (the minor celebrity was part of the plot - I forget why). Then a few minutes later they select another person to eat, and when they are released after four hours, all the people left inside are fat and bloated, and surrounded by bones?

Well, I've just looked for it on the South Park Episode Guide, and it doesn't seem to exist. But it's there in my memory, all nice and clear.

Well, never mind. That was a bit like what happened today. Except no one got eaten.
The cat walked into the cupboard in the kitchen where we keep food and stuff, when the door had been inadvertently left open (notice the passive voice there). Then someone shut the door. The cat was trapped in the cupboard for about 10 minutes.

Something like this went through it's head, after 4 minutes. "Hmm... I'm trapped. Might be here for a long time. Might as well piss on this food now."

Then, after about 4 minutes "Hmmm... I'm still trapped. Might be here a long time. If I'm going to have to rip open these packets, and then shit on them, now's as good a time as any."

Earthquake Kit

For the nursery, we needed to prepare an earthquake kit. In case there's an earthquake, it's not a science project that involves making them or anything like that.
The earthquake kit contains very detailed instructions, but because we don't know what details are important, we don't know which ones we can ignore. We needed, for each boy, a 12 oz can of fruit juice, with a pop-top. Now fruit juice doesn't normally come in a can with a pop-top, that's for fizzy pop and stuff like that. Was it OK to have cartons of fruit juice, or was it better to have cans of something that looked a bit like fruit juice, but wasn't exactly fruit juice? We didn't know. After much trawling around different shops, we found 12 oz cans of fizzy apple juice in WholeFoods Market, and they would have to do.
We also needed three cans of meat, again with a pop top. Now, if you're vegetarian, getting cans of meat at all is a bit tricky, and if they have to have a pop top, that really narrows it down. We didn't really know why they had to have cans of meat, and didn't know what it could be substituted with. Beans? Carrots? So, we tied to get some sort of meat substitute, which the boys were never going to eat, and we'd just have to hope that any earthquakes could wait until they boys were at school. Wholefoods Market couldn't help - the assistant tried really hard, but was confused. "We've got soya mince over here." "Is it in a can?" "Errmmm no." No good then.
Eventually we tracked down a selection of things like meatballs, which weren't in pop tops, so we bought two can openers to put in the earthquake kit bag, with the cans of meat. We bought a third can opener to keep at home, and every time we open a can, we try to get the boys to help. (They don't.)
We also needed crackers. The nursery is very, very strict on allergies, so these crackers must not contain nuts, peanuts or shellfish, and must be in a packet that says that they are made in a factory that does not process nuts, peanuts or shellfish. Our first attempt at this failed, and the crackers were returned to us with a note. (It wasn't a production line, it was a factory, that must avoid it. The nursery single out Trader Joe's as a shop that you can't buy stuff from. If you ever send your children with something that looks like peanut butter, but isn't (for example soy butter) you have to make sure the teacher knows, so that your children isn't physically removed from the school. The children are also not allowed to share any food.
Sorry, got off the point there. Where were we? Oh yes, the earthquake kit. It also had to have a family photo, and a comforting letter. What were we supposed to write in a comforting letter after an earthquake.
"Mummy and Daddy will be there, just as soon as the sniffer dogs find them under the kitchen table in the ruins of what was our house."
"Mummy and Daddy will come and take you to the Red Cross Evacuation Centre as soon as the competent people at FEMA say that the risk of aftershocks has gone down."
"Mummy and Daddy probably weren't washed away by that tidal wave because our house is on a hill, and although Daddy rides his bike along the beach he knows that if the water goes away a long way you shouldn't go and look but should ride your bike in the other direction. And he can ride quite fast."

The Nursery

That last post (which might be the next post, if you read down the screen in the conventional manner) reminds me that at the nursery, there is a special folder into which one can place pieces of paper that you have written the cute things that children said at the nursery.
"And why might you hear what the children say" you all ask, as one. (All four of you - I check the access logs and know how many people read this.) Well, the nursery is a parent's cooperative, which means it is owned and run by the parents. (I wonder if the parents could decide to sell the nursery and keep the money - in the current housing price climate we could then afford a full time nanny, at least until they went to school.) But what this also means is that the parents work at the nursery (along with some people who actually know what they are doing.)
We were on standby last week, but were called in. The powers that be (i.e. S) decided that I should go and do the first shift, so along I dutifully went. There are 4 parent helpers each day, and each wears an apron, with a label on it that tells you what you are supposed to do. I asked the boys what I should do, from the choices of Art, Dressing Up, or Bikes. Obviously there's only one choice that any red blooded male can make there, and luckily the boys did choose bikes for me.
After I had donned my apron, I discovered that there were two bikes aprons - one is Bikes and Gates, and the second is Bikes and Toilets. By a stroke of luck, I'd chosen Bikes and Gates.
The apron has a laminated sheet on it describing, almost minute by minute, what one should do. I had to rake the sand, looking for cat poop (as they say), litter and PEANUT SHELLS. (There's a big thing about peanuts - I'll come back to that.) Then I had to hose down the sand (this stops it getting too dusty), fetch the tissues and first aid kits (the first aid kits say 'Contains Epi Pens' on them - where I come from Epi is epidemiology, but I didn't really know what an epidemiology pen might be, then I realised it's an Epinephrine pen - which, as regular viewers of ER will know is American for adrenaline (which I can accept, but I have always had a problem with noradrenaline being norepinephrine).
I just looked up EpiPen on Wikipedia, and it's got an entry.
Anyway, I had to hang around while the children did stuff, then get the bikes ready, and supervise the riding of bikes. Sit with them while they had their snack, and then supervise the block room. Or that's what it said on the card. And all that sounds relatively straightforward, but it almost killed me. Partly it almost killed me because there were a lot of children involved, and partly it almost killed me because A (especially A) wanted Daddy to be at his beck and call, like normal, and didn't understand that Daddy wasn't allowed to leave the block room / leave the bikes / get a different sort of paintbrush / play dinosaurs outside ....
When we left I had to hose some more things down, replace the tissues and first aid kits, take the signs off the toilet doors (it wasn't my job to put them on though - seems strange that) go home and lie down. For the rest of the day.
I forgot to sign out the boys, which is apparently a heinous sin, and didn't bring their lunch bags home. S tried to make me go back to redeem these failings, but I couldn't bear to go near the place. It's lucky my route to work doesn't involve cycling past it, or I'd have to take a longer route. Just thinking about it still makes me tired.
Currently, the boys are going 2 mornings a week - soon, it will become 5 mornings a week, and someone will have to go every week.

Cute things that children say

I've tried to avoid writing in this post about cute things children say, because to me they are cute and fascinating, to you they are a bit dull. It's like when parents get together and chat about the cute things that their offspring do, and while any one parent is talking the other parents are thinking "Shut up and finish. My offspring is much cuter than yours and my stories about the cute things that they do are cuter. And therefore better." Is that just me? Ours are cuter though. And they are twins, which you can trump a lot of stories with. (S used to go to the twin and multiple birth association outings in City of Previous Residence - someone there had triplets and trumped everyone's stories).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was going to tell you about the cute things they said. We read a story called "Room on the Broom", pretty much every night. Sometimes we get to read another story, but then we have to read Room on the Broom as well. Anyway, there's a bit in Room on the Broom (I'll try not to give any of the ploy away) where a dragon tries to eat a witch, but fails because the animals that they witch had with her (for whom there was Room on the Broom) frighten the dragon away. The dragon flies off through the sky, looking a bit sad. "Why the dragon sad Daddy?" They ask.
I explain that the dragon was hungry, and wanted to eat the witch, but now he can't and he's still hungry, so he's sad.
"Oh. The dragon can go and eat some dead children, then he won't be hungry." They say.
Fine advice.

My First Computer

I got my first computer aged 22 (or maybe 21) when I bought it. It had a 286 CPU, and 1 MB of RAM (that was more than the standard 640 of the day, and you had to fiddle so that programs could use it - memory above 640k had to be decreed as extended or expanded, and not all programs could use both), it ran at 16 MHz, and had a 40 MB hard disk.
Today, we bought computers for the boys. None of this VTech business. We got a Panasonic Toughbook, and an IBM Thinkpad. Although we paid $300 for the pair, from an ad on CraigsList. Partly this is because it's good for their development and stuff, but mostly because it means that when we want to (say) check our email: (a) We'll be able to find the Firefox icon - it won't have been moved, deleted, renamed, or disappeared off the screen because it's been changed into a resolution that my first computer would have been able to run, and (b) there won't be a little voice next to us saying "I want 'puter games".
Photo on the left shows the new (to us) 'puters. Notice that a toy mobile cell phone has been sellotaped scotch taped to the screen of one of them. Maybe that's (c) - there won't be grubby fingers all over the screens of our 'puters.

German Shop

I forgot to say that the reason we were near the sand dune was because we'd been to a German shop. One of S's friends had told her about his place, and so we made an expedition there. It was full of German people, wandering about wide-eyed and open mouthed, and saying "Och! Jaegermeister!" and "Och! Kloese" (which is pronounced Klurzer), and "Och! Dr Oetker" (which is headquartered in Bielefeld, where S comes from). Their non-German spouses looked on and tried to feign interest. We bought $177 worth of Knoedel and Schwarzbier and Kinder Surprise (you didn't know that was German did you? Well, maybe you did, but I didn't - and it wasn't even Easter) and Pumpernickel - actually that doesn't sound like it comes to $177.

Then we went to the German cafe next door, where S had a coffee, that was served in a china mug, was small, and was strong. The boys had a chocolate pudding to share - the server took pity on us ("I know what it's like having children"), and gave us another for free. I wanted to explain that we only bought one, because they weren't going to manage to eat even that, but kept quiet.

There were signs up asking people not to throw away the plates, cutlery ('flatware', as they call it) and mugs.

There was a little beer garden outside, which was playing German music, and was authentically full of old people drinking beer and smoking. S said that it was enough German for one day, so we left.

Sand Dune

We went to a park today, that is (mostly) a massive sand dune. One climbs up it (or goes on the steps) and then runs, slides, rolls, tumbles, stumbles or just falls down it. I've pinched a picture from Google Maps, which shows it, although doesn't really show it's glory, so the following two pictures try to do that better. Some people try to slide down - there are rules, which say you can only do that on cardboard, and the occasional person that tries to slide down on cardboard ends up sitting on a piece of cardboard on a sand dune, and not moving.



The sign at the bottom says "Children on the left, adults on the right".

Here's a video of J, running (with considerable elegance, if I may say so) down the hill.




At the risk of being somewhat obsessed, if anyone can name the band/singer of that song that plays in the video - well, there won't be a prize, but I'll be impressed at your knowledge of (only slightly) obscure bands from LA.

The free paper

I was going to write about the free paper last week, but I thought it might be unrepresentative, because it was a Christmas-new year issue. The free paper is one o the things that reminds me I'm in a different country - while I'm riding my bike, apart from being on the other side of the road, which is a pretty small thing really, it feels the same as riding my bike anywhere. But the free paper - that's a different matter.

Actually, there are several free papers which cover different areas of the city - there are three that cover our area (we seem to be in a sort of overlap zone - we're not big enough or interesting enough to warrant our own, but the nearby ones spread to here. You can also get The Onion for free in some places). The one I'm talking about is the one that covers the whole city, and comes out weekly.

One possibly important difference about the free paper is it's not delivered to houses (at least, it's not delivered to our house), you have to pick it up somewhere. There's a pile of them in the club house, there are dispensers on street corners, I picked one up today from next to the ticket booth at the cinema.

Anyway, the first thing you notice about the paper is its bulk. It's 156 pages long (last week's was the same length, so that might be a rule). For something free, that's pretty hefty. If we had a fire, and if it was cold, and if we had one of those machines that they used to sell in the innovations catalogue for turning newspapers into logs, we'd never need to send out for coal deliveries.

The second thing you notice when you open the paper is the ads. It's got a lot of ads - it's a free paper, after all. The first ad on page 2 is for cosmetic surgery - you can have Botox for $10 per unit (I've no idea what a unit of Botox is, but you have to buy at least 30), you can have Restylane (no idea what that is) for $399 per cc, and a lunch time face lift for $1100 (per session). The 3rd advert is also for plastic surgery ("The New Lipo - have it done on Thursday, back to work on Monday" none of this lunchtime nonsense here), page 6 is for Laser surgery ("monthly payments as low as $31") page 8 has a full page plastic surgery advert ("Breast augmentation $2999"). Page 11 is another full page one ("Botox $100 per area, (2 area min)" - what's an area? that's a bit vague, it's like saying "Bananas, 12p per unit weight. But I digress.) P 13 is cosmetic dentistry. Later on in the paper are slightly more disturbing (and only slightly smaller) ads for "Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation", one can be rejuvenated in two ways, it appears, the first way is "for the enhancement of sexual gratification", and the second "for the aesthetic [sic: UK spelling there] enhancement of the vulvar structures". I'm sorry, but my genitalia are insufficiently beautiful, can you fix that for me doctor?

The next most common type of advert (at least in the front of the paper) is other medical stuff. These adverts tend to be smaller, usually quarter page: "Unhappy? Manic? Moody? Call for an evaluation". "Headache and migraine sufferers - could this muscle be the cause of your pain?". An impressive number of these are for 'medicinal cannabis' - "First 420 patients will receive a gram of Cannabis"

At the back of the paper, there's a new kind of advert - for "gentleman's' clubs". (There are a lot of other adverts for other stuff too, of course). "Almost naked go go girls", "Showgirls - totally nude", "Full alcohol bar, topless dancers, watch all major sporting events!", and several pages of "adult massage".

After that's finished surprising you, the next thing is the writing. First, it's quite, errmm..., I can't think of a good word, maybe risque is it. There's a regular column called "Ask a Mexican", where you can write in (under a pseudonym) and ask a Mexican (obviously) the kind of question you wouldn't want to ask a Mexican that you knew. Last week, the question was about whether second generation Mexican's didn't like recent Mexican arrivals - the answer was that they don't, and they have names for them, but the names differ between areas ('wab' was one of them). This week, the questions are "How did the patron saint of Mexico get a name derived from Arabic", and "Can the Dec 12th roundups be construed as just your everyday harassment and discrimination against Mexicans by a corrupt government and corporate slave masters hellbent on intimidation?" (The answer to the second was no, not really but that it wasn't nice to do it on a religious feast day "even the Nazis had the decency not to stage the Kristallnacht during the Sabbath.")

The problem page makes the problem page from Playboy read something like Beatrix Potter. (Actually, if you've not read it, it's remarkably dull in places. It's called the Playboy Advisor, and here's a link to one of their frequently asked questions "What are the duties of the best man at a wedding?") One question this week is from a gay man whose new (ish) boyfriend won't allow the writer to penetrate him. Part of the answer is "... maybe your dick is so big so absolutely ginormous, so ass-splittingly huge that you've scared his gay butt shut". But it concludes "the only way to find out ... is to promise not to dump [him] if he tells you the truth." There had, it seems, been a recent story about a lady whose boyfriend turned out to have something of a foot fetish. Someone wrote in and said that this wasn't so bad, and their boyfriend was the same, and now they are getting married. The response is that this is a nice happy ending, and that more letters like this might make a nice Valentine's issue, so "I'm putting a call out for letters from vanilla types who took a chance on a kinky motherfucker ...and they took home to meet mum and dad."

However, the most surprising thing about the paper is the quality of the writing. It's very, very well written. Not in the way that The Sun is well written (which it is - it's hard to write crap like that), I mean in it's sophistication. There's a large feature every week, and this week is about Muslims in California. Here's a quote, from the beginning of one article "Iran is a society based on a dichotomy, a place where people live separate and sometimes clashing public and private lives, and where duality of identity has become a major social issue for youth".

There's also an article discussing assaults by black people on white people, and whether these can be considered 'hate crimes' because power is the root of the issue, and whether the media generally were not taking notice of a story, because it was difficult to present (in, I very approximately estimate, 3000 words).

There's a cartoon of George Bush holding a skull in Hamlet and Yorick mode, with the caption "George W Bush looking at the 599,999th Iraqi skull created by his lover of peace, freedom and democracy and deciding that the world will finally be safer now that Saddam Hussein is dead". Now apart from the political extremism of that cartoon, which one would imagine in The Guardian, but not the Burton and District Promoter (that was the first free paper we had - there was a rabbit called 'Promoter Percy' that you had to try to find). Where were we, yes, apart from that, there can't be many papers in the world that run a cartoon which need to know about Hamlet to really get.

There are restaurant listings, with elaborate descriptions "a monument of conspicuous consumption, bottles of champagne and expensive sake ornamenting the tables, the most exquisite tuna tartare ..."; " a chef with a wobbly idiosyncratic style that couldn't be further from the finish-fetish crowd pleasers"; "only in the 21st century could you find a restaurant quite so mid century modern, with sleek love seat sofas and machine polished wood and a quantity of prefabricated design that probably would have amused Ray and Charles Eames back in the days when their aesthetic was found more in your kindergarten classroom than in a fashionable cafe". (I've no idea what that last one means - which might prove my point, or might refute it). Anyway, the restaurant reviews go on for two full pages, in small print).

I was going to write about the film reviews as well, but I can't be bothered, so I'm just going to cut the first paragraph:

As a child, I couldn’t stand Beatrix Potter, and not just because her cute jacketed critters bored me senseless. I loved tough children’s tales, but Potter’s stories were manipulative and twisted, filled with punitive authority figures — Mrs. Rabbit is a prissy scold, Farmer McGregor an evil-tempered lout — visiting tightlipped moral justice on insipid mice, bunnies, and the truly insufferable Jemima Puddleduck. Small wonder that poor Peter Rabbit cowers under the bedclothes while Mrs. R. looms menacingly over him like some demented Nurse Ratched on all those quaint plates and mugs that fuel the multimillion-dollar Potter industry.

The free paper almost summarizes America for me. It's crap and cheap and nasty and superficial. And at the same time it's sophisticated and intelligent and cultured.

Critical Mass

Last night I went on the Critical Mass bike ride, it started very near CoCe, and ended near home, so really there was no excuse. It was surprisingly good fun - there were a lot of people despite the fact that it was pretty windy, and not very warm - some said there were 175 bikes - I don't know how they counted them, but it looked vaguely correct. There were people on lightweight racers, and tandems, and what they call 'beach cruisers' here (they're very common - designed for comfort, not speed or hills) - here's a Wikipedia link , and a couple of people had children in trailers. Two people had trailers, which carried amplifiers powered by car batteries, which played music and added to the generally party-ish atmosphere. It was very empowering, to be surrounded by bikes, because one felt very protected and safe -there's no way a car wasn't going to see you.

We rode a pre-planned route, which included a roundabout - there's only one roundabout for miles around, at the route usually takes it in. When 175 bikes go around a roundabout the front and back join together and so it goes around about 4 times before peeling off - makes a good picture.

I guess we covered about 12 miles, in almost 2 hours, it was pretty slow - so slow that I wasn't wearing enough to keep warm. We stopped a few times, to regroup, and people handed out biscuits and fruit that they had brought. I chatted to a few people - mostly to a chap called Dave, who was doing a PhD in pure maths (something about differential geometry), but wasn't actually dull; a bloke called Ted, who was a substitute teacher and never wore long trousers, and a woman whose name I forget, and I wouldn't recognise anyway because I was looking forwards.

At the end, there was a brief gathering where people hung around and then they split off into vaguely organised groups. People who were going home in similar directions went together, some went to a bar where a band was playing that someone knew, and the largest contingent (with me in it) went to a bar nearby which sold burgers (which we all needed after riding in the cold). If they were surprised that 50 cyclists turned up wearing fluorescent jackets, trying to find somewhere to lock their bikes, and wanting burgers and fries and onion rings and beer they didn't show it.

It was karaoke night, and the quality was surprisingly high (Bicycle Race, by Queen, was the second song - this was kind of obligatory). The high quality isn't unusual for this area, what with showbiz being the thing it is. We were pretty off the beaten track, so it wasn't too bad, but Dave told me he went to a bar downtown (like we say here) and someone who sounded exactly like Stevie Wonder sand a Stevie Wonder song, and then, at the appropriate moment, whipped out a trumpet for the solo.

Shopping

Today I went into a shop called REI (and I've forgotten what that stands for - I've looked it up Recreational Equipment Inc.), which sells outdoors stuff - I was there 'cos I wanted a new backpack. Anyway, this shop was interesting for a number of reasons. One of them is that it's a members co-op, and one can become a member by paying $15, which gives you a discount, and a dividend at the end of the year (which is based on what you spent).

But the most immediately striking thing was that the chap who helped me out by pointing at the different sorts of rucksacks (and then 'cos I got overexcited, looking at head lights, and bar extenders and bike servicing and cycling shorts (because they were in the sale)) used a wheelchair. "Ooh, that's surprising", I thought "he's in a wheelchair" as I ran after him in the shop, in the direction of bicycle lights that attach to your helmet. Then I thought "Ooh, that's surprising that that's surprising". There's no reason that people in wheelchairs shouldn't work in shops.

The Quiz: The Answer

The quiz was here.

It's a Litter Robot. For the cat to crap in. Instead of trying to explain, I'll direct you here.

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).