Visit the Kelpforest (pt. 2)

I have so wasted so much time composing a farewell page fro RK's retirement book. The best I could come with was this:

Cedric Cooney hired me in 1989, and that holiday season, he told me I was welcome to come to the Fish and Game Christmas party. It was held at Rolf Mall’s house, and everyone was having a great time. I stood by the Christmas tree, hesitating because I didn’t know very many people yet. Suddenly, I felt an arm around my shoulders and a big smooch on my cheek. I was a bit surprised and I’m still not sure whether it was because you wanted to make new sci aides feel especially welcome or just that the eggnog had been spiked more than once.



In any case, I‘ve been lucky enough to stay for as long as I have, and you’ve been among my many mentors. Fish and fishermen alike will be missing a valuable ally.

Enjoy your retirement, Rick. Wishing you many future low scores…

I toyed with the idea of adding this story:

Shortly after I started as a permanent biologist, we started doing shark tagging cruises on our research vessel, once a year. I found it somewhat amusing that we were using the R/V MAKO to fish for and tag mako sharks. After I returned from being the BIC (biologist-in-charge, or biologist-in-competent, or biologist-is-crazy, take your pick) on my first cruise, another biologist asked me how it went.

"We had a lot of fun and tagged lots of sharks!" I exclaimed, somewhat unscientifically I suppose.

Replied the other biologist, "Well, for god's sake, don't tell Rick you had fun, or he'll never let you go again!"

I decided I'd better not.



For some reason you are supposed to put a picture of yourself on these things, I suppose so the retiree can remember who you are, so I picked one of me being the intrepid biologist.

My garden club is fun, but not usually very exciting. We are a group of middle-aged to elderly ladies - again, I'm one of the younger ones. Angus came with me last night and sat there scribbling with a pen on a page from my planner (he brought Megatron with him, but I told him Megatron made any noise, his batteries were getting taken out) . Carole gave a few hints on flower arranging, and Angela was going to talk about native plants. It turns out hardly any of us grow any; I have some evening primrose in one of my planters, but it's probably from Mexico.

Just to show it off, Angela had brought in her night-blooming cereus cactus, which had a big flower bud on it. Linda was talking about hers, saying "We know ours are about to open when the bud starts tipping up - then we know we have to watch it that night, or we'll miss it."

Someone else said "Like that?" pointing at Angela's.

"No, not really," Linda replied, and the talk moved on to other things.

Not more than two minutes later I glanced at Angela's cactus again. And was surprised to notice that the bud was half-open!

I pointed it out, and all club business ceased while we all oohed and aahed. I pulled out my camera and took Angela's picture with it. Talk about perfect timing!



Over the next fifteen minutes or so, the bloom opened completely, and we could all smell the fragrance coming from it. You could actually see some of petals snapping further open; the outermost petals were completely recurved against the stem.

Well, it's not the gigantic Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) that blooms at the Huntington Library every two years (and makes every local news broadcast), but we thought it was pretty exciting, even Angus.

The Astronomical Picture of the Day's picture from yesterday was just gorgeous - go look at it if you haven't yet. It's now my wallpaper at work. The dust cloud structures in the center remind me of a dragon breathing silver flames, which are actually newborn stars. How that for a creation mythos?

Fairly pleasant weekend. V. had a Partylite candle party on Saturday - I mostly went along for the ride, but I did buy a set of little floating frog tealight holders. I can't do too much with smelly candles, although they do smell wonderful. I can't burn them in the house because they will set John to wheezing. So I look for a few things I can put outside or on the patio. I miss candlelight sometimes. MN decided to have a catalog party, so after payday, maybe I can order this tree thingie for Halloween. V. gave us a tour of the house since they've done a lot of painting since I was last there - all the rooms are different colors and she painted fish on the walls in the bathroom. Her husband has a pretty amazing collection of comic book hero mini-busts; several of us were drooling over Gambit. (She told me today she got about $180 worth of free stuff!)

John had started up the BBQ when I got back - he is such a purist. Hates gas or briquets, and will only get the special mesquite charcoal that look like actual chunks of wood. He usually comes up with two or three variations of BBQ sauce as well, one for each thing he grills, and also made a fresh basil and rosemary vinigrette for some skewers of onion and home-grown bellpepper, which we threw in the salad. I'm not usually a fan of Italian dressing, but that was rather good - mmmm, if you get a chance to grow some Siam Queen Basil, it is heavenly. He's probably happiest when he's cooking. He also sauteed mushrooms - we had no wine so he used a shot of Jack Daniels....

(Behold, my very first homemade animated gif!)


They were quite tasty - had it been in a restaurant, I would have never known they were canned. The kids ate their mashed potatoes,and that was it. I'm afraid Avalon is getting to this not eating stage as well. I was hoping at least one of them would bypass it, but both Gareth and Avalon seem to be getting their cues from their older siblings.

Later, after they were in bed, I put in Mr. Accident, which I had just gotten from Netflix. Yahoo Serious is as kooky as ever, and doesn't seem to have aged much, maybe a few crow's feet, but still just as cute as a bug's ear and playing the naive, clumsy, but lovable goof. Now that I notice, he seems to draw quite a bit on Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd; there are a lot of the same style of body movements, timing, and facial expression. He's also in pretty good shape, which I suppose is a requirement for such physical comedy. It's probably not his best, and it's no Young Einstein, but a silly, enjoyable 90 minutes or so, if you're a Serious fan. However, John seemed to agree with most of the Netflix reviewers and fell asleep 20 minutes into it. I was a little disappointed that there were no extras on the DVD, except for a movie trailer.

My brother Dave in Portland has been asking about the holidays so he can get the time off (his last email said "everyone and their bother is asking..." heh, ain't that the truth). Thanksgiving would be nice, but Angus has school that week, so it will probably be Christmas. John doesn't want to leave his mom alone that day, so we will probably stay here and they will come down. We should see what my Aunt Margaret in Napa is doing as well; maybe we can meet halfway. However, I know last year my cousin Jim took her on a trip. Ah well, it's a few months off yet.

RK is retiring at the end of the month. and my supervisor asked if I could scan some slides and photos for a retiement party slideshow. A few minutes later, SO came over and told me "I'd like to put this one on top of the cake."

It was a photo from 1980, when folks were still allowed to smoke at their desks (I can't imagine having to work in that if you were a non-smoker), and he's about to light up. Since my department is now a non-smoking agency, she was hoping I could fix it. So I tried.


Apologies to Ray Troll.

And I'm finding I really like Photoshop.

Yesterday was Angus' first day of kindergarten - I stayed home from work so we could all walk to school together. The school is undergoing major renovations - probably much overdue, since it's the same school I went to from second through fifth grade - so many of the classrooms are in trailers. I remember several of those from when I went to school there, and now there are even more. Angus is a "Later Gator" since he starts at 10:21, and he and all of his classmates get a purple bandana with an alligator on the back. The kid starting earlier than him are "Early Birds" and are done at lunchtime, but they all overlap in the middle of the day.

They let us stay for the first half hour. There was one other mom who could not get off her cell phone - she didn't hear when the teacher asked her to go outside, and it wasn't til another parent went over and asked her that she did. As I figured, we were the oldest parents there, and Angus was easily the tallest kid of his classmates. He did not go to preschool, and I hope it's not going to make him too far behind. I know he knows his numbers, and quite few of his letters, but the kids who've been to preschool already knew how to sit cross legged and give the "quiet sign," and may have known how to write their names - he doesn't quite yet. He also seems to have a problem with eye contact.

We snuck out as Mrs. K was having them draw a picture of themselves by filling in a blank outline. After perusing the PTA stuff in the next trailer, and being bombarded with "Volunteer opportunities" (which I'd like to help with, but I don't know what I can do when I work during the day) John and I walked home. He was so filled with nervous energy his friend Jerry took him to the park to throw horseshoes, until it was time to pick Angus up.

Mrs. K said Angus was kind of confused about a lot of things, but it's also his first time in this kind of environment, so she wasn't too worried about him getting used to it. Unfortunately, we put a pair of pants on him that needed a belt, and when he had to go to the bathroom, he didn't know how to refasten it. So I feel bad about that. I brought the camera this time, since I had spaced in the morning; John wanted a picture of him with his new teacher. On the way home, Angus started having a tantrum, because we were "going the wrong way," and subsequently refused to tell us anything about how his school day went. However, he did relent later and said they read another story, watched a video about computers, and had a hot dog for lunch.



I don't know exactly why, but I felt kind of sad and worried all evening, and this morning when I got up, enough that my stomach hurt. Maybe because I won't get to walk him to school very much, before he stops needing the accompaniment - John tells me I got provide something special for them when they were small, and it's his turn to do that now. Angus was happy to see his new lunch box that John got for him last night; it has a little magnetic screen inside that you can leave notes on. John called to tell me that he was first in line to walk in the door of his classroom with no qualms whatever.

Growing up, indeed.

........................................

While I was typing this, that male hummingbird buzzed up and hovered right by the dining room window, fixing me with a beady glare, as if to tell me, "That feeder is gettin' pretty low - you'd better be filling it up today!"

Yes sir! As soon as I get home, sir!

Whaddacoinkydink...
....as my college roommate Mara used to say. How very odd.

First it was teapots, now it's Neil Gaiman. You're just going to have to bear with me until the obsessiveness fades.

He posted a link to a very interesting article about scientists and religion (something I may have to talk about later, but not just now) in the Guardian Unlimited, a British newspaper/website. I read the article, and digesting it, scrolled back up to the top, where I suddenly noticed the following image:



I gazed at it for a moment, thinking it looked awfully familiar. Then did a short search.

Sure enough, it's the Point Vicente Lighthouse. Very close to home for me - it's only a short drive around Portuguese Bend and past the old Marineland site from where I sample boats in San Pedro. I visited on one of their open house days a couple of years ago, although it was a hazy day with not nearly the view of Santa Catalina Island you can see on the website's picture.

It's just a reminder that the world is small and the internet makes it smaller. It just kind of amazed me to see a tiny picture of something close to home on a site from halfway around the world.