Today's walk report: 120513

Fact...

Frogs eat flys [sic]. It looks as though there may have been an effort to spell "flies" but it was erased.
Don't worry kid, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein

Some more previews from the famed Candy Cane Lane, etc...

Santa faced lamp.

 

Santa faced palms.

Santa's icy pink flamingo.

Bow tie kitty and plastic deer.

About a 6 km (short) walk. My left foot isn't playing nice and I was a little late getting out. It might be time to move to a new pair of Nikes. I hate it when shoes wear out. It reminds me of how expensive they are. However, I already have two new pairs waiting in a closet.

Today's walk report: 111413

Lost kitty?

I was flying again today but this slowed me down just short of the 1/2-way mark. This cat saw me coming and headed straight for me, meowing away. I think it was trying to tell me something. I think it was lost. I picked it up both to and fro to take it from the street, I could feel it's bones. The poor thing was way undernourished. I walk this street 4 days a week both up and down and have never seen this cat. It was reading me like a book too. I asked a couple of teenagers if they knew whose cat it was but apparently they didn't live on this street. I contemplated the dilemma I'd be in if I came back to get it. Tomorrow is a campus walk and it's a long diversion to this street but I think I'll visit this spot sometime tomorrow and see if she's still there. I'll bring some dry food. She has a collar but it's just an old plastic flea collar, no ID. Poor kitty.

I took note of my slower pace about a block from the cat and think that once I move from the flow of the music and the initial pace of the walk gets interrupted I lose it. I kept contemplating the cat. But I did well and made up some for yesterday by doing the regular 8.26 km M-Th walk p.d.q.

Today's walk report: 101313

Out behind the barn, I was chewing on a piece of hay...

Not too exciting, it was a really nice walk though. Right now I just had a pizza delivered since I realized there's virtually no food in the house and I'm going to sack down on the couch and catch up on Dodgers' baseball.

This here is a 1947 Gibson, Model D. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

and this is a 1962 Oliver, 440. Pierce Jr. College in Woodland Hills, CA is the campus I walk on weekends. It started out as an agricultural college founded in 1947. Now, from what I understand, the academic east side of the school doesn't really want to have much to do with the agricultural/animal husbandry west side of the property.

This is something I've been expecting to see. The campus never had so much as a squirrel when I was a kid. Field mice and gophers sure but not more than that. Now the property is loaded with tree squirrels, ground squirrels and jack rabbits so natural predators like coyotes and snakes have naturally followed, all having been pushed out of outlying areas by homes expanding out of the valley and into the foothills and canyons.

That "snake area" is the local cross country course for most of the nearby High Schools. I ran it in H.S. We worried about tripping on gopher holes back then, not rattlesnakes.

Onto the snake area... This was called hernia hill back in the day. Funny it seemed a lot more daunting back then, of course we had already raced about a mile before getting here so that certainly made it rougher.

Not yet sunset. I decided I didn't want to wait this one out and I headed home.

Today's walk report: 081713

The sting.

It was an odd day. Even though I got up early, 6:30, I kept finding myself falling behind with every task at hand. Not that I really had a schedule to adhere to but everything seemed to move in slow motion or have this hiccup feel to it. I had planned to be outside before 8 AM to water. That also meant laying down some mulch that I picked up from the city yesterday.

Here's a couple of old shots illustrating what that's about. The Cherokee is ancient now (1993), it can be vacuumed. I've filled up the back of that more times than I can remember over the past couple of years. I just shovel it in the back with the back seat down. There's a sheet laid down but that's more to facilitate getting the last of the mulch out of the car than trying to keep things neat. It's filthy in there but the mulch is free and it borders on compost. The soil here at home is like clay so this was a cost effective method to try and get it to be workable for growing new plants once again.

Anyway, what happened once I finally got to this and it was already 93º outside, was me filling up a large shovel and taking trips back and forth from the car to spots in the yard where I wanted to lay down the mulch. Somewhere around the 10th shovel full a bee had apparently decided it liked something about that mulch in the back of the car and I regretfully missed its presence whilst pushing mulch onto the shovel with my right hand. The bee took issue with that. Now without too much background story because this is already pretty boring--I was always led to believe growing up that I was allergic to bees. I often questioned the validity of this claim but I never wanted it tested. Bottom line... it hurt like a bitch but I was fine for the most part after the initial agony subsided. Thank you for caring.

Here's the deal with me and bees. I often tend to get very close to them...

Even closer...

and I enjoy having a good rapport with the little fellows.

In my confusion after the bee sting I ordered a $30 pizza (it won't happen again) just BECAUSE...

Evidently being 4 miles from that shop meant I had to pay $4 on top of the price of a rather exorbitantly priced large pizza with 3 toppings. Then I tipped the driver. No offense Barone's but $4 is a gallon of gas. I felt a little sorry for the driver thinking the delivery charge isn't going to him, or not much of it would and how it must adversely effect his tip situation. Obviously, it was his car.

So pizza and a movie. I saw the 2nd 1/2 of this on NetFlix, leftover from when Time Warner dropped my connection last night. I thought it was pretty decent but wonder how I'd react had I not such a keen memory regarding the Zodiac killer back when it was happening. At 12 or 13 when that started it was pretty creepy and the media really made a point of talking about how much ground this guy was covering from SoCal (near here) up to the Bay Area (San Francisco, etc.)

After that it was Dodgers baseball and me dozing off once Philadelphia got a hit. Dodgers won 5-zip.

Top of the 9th and 6:00 PM I was finally off to a late walk. A short walk. A not too exciting walk.

More bee... A black carpenter bee. There are more than 500 species of carpenter bees in 31 subgenera so take your pick.

Then these guys again. Boxelder bugs. They're everywhere and you know why? 'Cause they're doing this ALL THE TIME. They don't have a mating season they just mate. The narrow-leaved milkweed is censoring the action a little but trust me they are coupled and they do everything together like this.

Lantana up close.

Today's walk report: 072413

Peace.

I suppose if you do this for your Christmas lights one year and take them down, after the 2nd installation you would probably have to think... "why don't we just leave that up there all year?" The lights are regular Christmas lights braided to make the peace sign.

This is sort of the bastard street on the traditional "holiday season" decoration hood just south of me. The infamous name for two of the streets is Candy Cane Lane which cover 6 blocks. Online, if you Google it, the reviews somehow come up with 8 blocks but trust me I walk these streets up and down most Mondays-Thursdays and it's 6 blocks. However, there is the street before the main drag which was dubbed Avenue of the Bells for the holidays way back when but adds 3 blocks to program and then there's this one at the other side of the main drag. This particular street runs two blocks and dead ends. It doesn't get the traffic (lucky them) that the other streets get for the holidays.

I took a bunch of photos of the house decorations last year during the day. Some of the best ones are the really tacky displays. I'll try to do this again in 2013. I might even venture out on foot at night with a triposd and get some timed exposures. It's a little scary to walk (I got into it on a bicycle at night last year!) because people drive with their headlights off and they pay little attention to the road.

Happy holidays!