Haze

LA is famous for it's haze and smog - this is actually (trivia fans!) an accident of geography - here's what the Freakonomics blog has to say about it:

air pollution in the region long predates the arrival of the automobile. In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the first European to lay eyes on Santa Monica Bay, saw the area shrouded in smog from native campfires and named it the Bay of Smoke.

The haze is always worst in the morning, and then gradually clears up over the day. So I thought I'd record that with my video camera, and the haze would miraculously lift revealing the mountains and their famous landmarks (Hollywood sign, Griffith observatory) in all of their glory.

Problem is, of course, that when you start recording (at 1oam) you don't know if the haze is going to have lifted. So it didn't quite go according to plan. I didn't think you'd want to watch 10 hours or so of haze not going away, so I've speeded it up about 500 times to just over a minute. I realize this is still way beyond my average reader's attention span, but what can I do?

No pizza

We went to the Theodore Payne Foundation Nursery today, to buy some plants (they sell native Californian plants, some of which are endangered and which don't need much water) - but that's not what this is about. On the way the boys were hungry, so I went to buy some pizza. I went into Little Caesar's on Crenshaw, and all the staff were on the phone. I waited, and they kept on the phone, ignoring me. Eventually someone got off the phone, and wandered over to the register. They poked at it a bit, and looked in the drawers. Eventually they acknowledged my existence.

I asked if they had any pizzas ready. She sort of looked confused, and said no, and closed the door on the place they keep the ready pizzas. I asked if I could have a pizza, with the complicated selections the boys wanted (involving one quarter black olives, one quarter tomatoes AND black olives, etc). I spent a while explaining it to her - she didn't seem to get it. Eventually she said "We've got no pizza. We've got no money. We've been robbed."

Then two policemen came in. I said I'd return later (which wasn't true, but I didn't want to make her feel bad). As I was leaving I heard her saying "Two black guys ... semi-automatic".

Pool permits

Now we know about the pool restrictions, we are in the stage of planning and permits. The people at Mr Carlos pools will apply for a permit to build a pool from the city. The city might decide that we live on a hill (I'm not sure why it's something that needs deciding, but I won't trouble myself with that). If it turns out we do live on a hill (and I'd say it was pretty obvious we do) we'll need a soil grading report, which will cost $450 and delay things.
If we don't need a soil grading report, they'll start digging in (optimistically) 10-11 days. After they have dug the hole, then the inspectors from the city will come and do whatever inspections they do.
On Saturday, someone is going to come and put fences on the walls - the fences need to be 6 feet high - this is part of the inspection. We also need to get the gates fixed - they have to be self closing and automatically locking.

Neighbors, everybody needs good neighbors

There's a rule which applies in LA (County, or maybe city, or maybe California) about how far your pool can be from the boundary to your neighbors. If you want a 6 foot deep pool, you have to be 6 feet away. But if you want to have an 8 foot deep pool you need to be 8 feet away. It's not hard.
However, if you want to, you can get closer than this by getting permission from the neighbors, in writing. Our neighbor is about 107, has 24 hour care, and possibly never gets out of bed. (We've met a couple of the carers, one of whom was in her 70s. So we wrote a nice letter (recorded delivery) to the neighbor (I had to use propertyshark.com to find out her name) asking if she would mind if we built an 8 foot deep pool 5 feet from the boundary. The cool thing is, if you don't get a reply that says no within 30 days, you can take that as a yes. So we sat back and prepared to wait.
A letter came back, 4 days later - through the post, which I though curious, as the nearest mailbox is considerably further from her house than our mailbox (I'm trying to use American words here, and getting confused. What's the equivalent of a postbox, where you post the mail for the postpeople to pick it up? And what's the thing that we have outside our house that hte postpeople leave post in? Are they the same word? How do know if I mean postbox or letterbox if it is the same word). It said "I do object to ...."
Oh well, back to the drawing board ....

Pool Plan

Here's a photo of our yard, with the plan for the pool drawn on it (using my extraordinary graphic design skills) - after 3 consultations with Steve, from Mr Carlos Pools (sometimes it's Mr Carlos and Associates).
The yard slopes in a slightly tricky fashion, so the pool will be slightly raised above the ground, and dug into the ground. On the back left corner there will be a wall about 2 feet high, then a gap between the pool and the wall (we can't do anything with that gap, 'cos the wall to the neighbor's is a bit feeble, and if we fill it in, there's a chance it will fall down). The D shaped bit will have three steps going into the pool.
The nearer side of the yard is fairly flat so that will be level. The soil that comes out will be used to make a slope from the left hand side, going down to ground level.

Dogs names

We have acquired two dogs from the nice people at Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue. They never lived in a kennel or a pound - we picked them up from their previous owners, who were giving them up, for reasons not really established.
A number of mysteries came with the dogs - the owners tell us that they are nearly 2 years old (they'll be two in October), and that they are golden retrievers. The weird thing is that they don't look like two year old golden retrievers - they are much too small (about 45 pounds each - they should be closer to 60, and 80 wouldn't be vastly excessive, in my understanding). We suspect that either they are not golden retreivers (they have the shape of Irish setters, but they're too small for that) or they are not 2 years old - but why would you not tell the truth about that? (We were also told that they were housetrained, up to date on shots, and good at walking on a leash, and none of that was true).
The dogs are extraordinarily devoted to one another -we bought two dog beds, but that was a waste, because they sleep in the same bed.

The plan was that one dog would be Alex's, and one dog would be Dan's. At least nominally - we wouldn't rely on them to do things like feed them, or we'd find dead dogs after a small number of days. So we had to decide on names. The boys don't have a good track record of naming animals (ask Karen and Karensander) so we had to try to encourage them to choose sensible names.
Early choices included A, D, X, Nicky and Nicky-Giana, Nicky and Nicky-Rover, then Nicky and Nicky-Rover, then Nick and Rover. Alex called his dog Powerbomb for about a week, whilst Dan's was called Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax (20 a's, very important). When we said that that was too many a's, it became Maaax. They suggested Jeremy. I said that that wasn't a very good name. They said "It's your name Daddy, so it must be good". When we finally settled on Maxwell and Boulder I ran to the pet store and fixed their names in plastic, so the names could be attached to them and not change.


The dogs are a little nervous. Particularly of the cat. They are generally unconcerned about cats, but the cat is not unconcerned about them. It is a little wary of the dogs, but they are very, very scared of the cat. The cat usually sleeps on the stairs, to stop them coming upstairs. Even when the cat isn't about, they are too worried to come upstairs for longer than a few seconds (just long enough to grab something they are not allowed to have).

Dogs in the park

The dogs have had their bits whipped off. Well, I imagined that they whipped them off, but they don't, they make a hole and pull them out. This involves less trauma (in the physical sense) for the dog, but as the dogs were already, errrmm..., developed there is a bizarre empty bag of skin now hanging there. Which isn't especially aesthetically pleasing. (There are alternatives - but I can't believe that that is going to be any more attractive).

They've also had all the shots that they are supposed to have, and so are allowed to go out and play. There are very few places around here that one is allowed to have one's dog off the leash (it's a leash in this country, not a lead) - one of them is the dog park, but as the dogs are scared of almost everything, including other dogs, we didn't think that was a great idea, so instead we went to the Kenneth Hahn State Park. You're not supposed to allow your dog to roam free there, but there's an area which used to be the Baldwin Hills reservoir, but the dam holding it back failed in a rather dramatic fashion in 1963, and now there's a big bowl shaped grassy area. There are usually very few people there, and people often let dogs off the leash there.

Here's a map, in case you're interested. (You can see the two green stripes leading to where the big storm drain is).


View Larger Map

We got there on Friday afternoon. There was a poodle (which seemed to be called Poopsich) there, with its owner - the owner had such a strong Russian accent that I had trouble understanding him, and he didn't understand the boys. I thought that he was potentially a recent arrival, and so we could bond and talk about visas and things, but he had been here since 1980. (He also told me that his dog was two months old, and he got it in January, so maybe he had a problem with time, or maybe there was more of a communication problem than I thought). The small poodle was frightened of the dogs. The dogs were frighted of the small poodle. At least to start with.

But after a while, they played nicely.



Stevi, from Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue, wanted a nice picture of the boys with the dogs, so they can prove how lovely they are. This was the best we could do:

First day of School

After an extraordinary amount of work (a trivial amount of it carried out by us) the Goethe School started on Tuesday (it's pronounced gurter - which you'd never guess if you didn't know about German pronunciation). There was lots of excitement on the first day. Kiddies shuffled into their classrooms (here's Dan going in).


Then there were some speeches and prizes and general recognition of all the people who'd been doing stuff for the past 4 years to get it going. The kiddies shuffled out, sat on chairs and waved Goethe flags. Here's Alex:

We've commissioned Mr Carlos Pools

We've spent months since we moved in agonizing and thinking and having people over and then agonizing and then thinking some more about getting a swimming pool . On Sunday we finally bit the bullet, and got Steve, from Mr Carlos pools, around for the third time, and made him measure and think and draw plans and calculate and measure again, and so on. Steve seemed to know what he was talking about more than some of the other designers we had, didn't suggest that we needed a landscape designer (that made S really cross) and also was amongst the cheapest.

Then we signed a contract to build a pool in our back yard.

But there's a weird Los Angeles (or maybe California, or somewhere anyway) that if you want a pool that's seven feet deep, you have to be seven feet from the neighbors. Unless you get permission from the neighbors, in writing. Trouble is our neighbor is about 107 and bedridden, and we've never seen, let alone spoken to her. (We know she exists, because an ambulance turns up once in a while, with red flashing lights, to revive her; or something). Anyway, you don't have to get permission if you write them a letter (recorded delivery) and they don't respond within 30 days. And we think that her responding is pretty unlikely.

So the nice people at Mr Carlos and Associates (weird name for a company - but apparently it was started in the 1950s, and Mr Carlos is still about) said that they would send me a letter as an example of what to write to her. Except they don't have a scanner, and I don't have a fax. So they copied it and posted it. Except they were too moronic to notice that the photocopy (which was of a fax) was so poor that they might as well have sent a blank piece of paper.

So, in our usual fashion of finding highly skilled tradespeople, we expect people who can't read (it appears) to be able to build a swimming pool made of steel and concrete and electricity and chemicals. (And water, I suppose.)

But maybe it's different people. We'll see.

Picture at the top shows the letter they sent on the bottom, with a random letter that I had lying around (it's actually about driving in Mexico). The letter they sent really is the right way up.

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.