What happened to November???

A lot of stuff happened in the last few weeks, so much that I have been neglect in my blogging and I'm afraid that I will invariably forget things and muck up the chronological order of things.

I braced myself early for the coming onslaught of holiday happenings and I think I did fairly well all things considered. I made a goal to finish the brickwork for the patio by Thanksgiving. And I did accomplish that, although mixing and throwing mortar the morning I am also preparing for a feast was probably not so wise. Let me put it this way, I was so busy scrambling around before and during Thanksgiving I actually lost several pounds.
I started working on Cindy's show on the 19th which made for an interesting juggling event, trying to do a good job and homeschool Skye and deal with the Thanksgiving (I will go into more detail in a separate blog), very interesting indeed. I created several lessons out of visits to prop houses and research on Afghanistan.
We had 16 people over on Thanksgiving Day. It was potluck so I didn't have to prepare everything, mostly just the turkey and its fixings. It was a wonderful success although it almost killed me.

The following week put Skye and myself on location in Victorville a few nights with a monumental amount driving. We had lots of long discussions along the way, carschooling. Don't laugh I actually have a book with that very title and CD to go along with it. I shouldn't really read while I drive now should I?

On Monday night I recieved an e-mail telling me that a Danish girl who I'd arranged a house-swap with was indeed arriving. Now don't get me wrong, while it was a surprise, it shouldn't have been, I mean, that was the plan and what was discussed. I think I was in denial and was hoping for Cindy to be my voice of reason, but she too was in denial. So because I was coming back to LA so that Skye could make it to her Flute lesson and to Taekwondo and I could shop for the set, it worked out that I could make it back to house in the evening in time to welcome our guest.


Skye started taking Taekwondo at the same studio where I practice Juijitsu.

A very dear friend of ours from Florida was going to be in town this week as well. I was going to be back and forth to Victorville, and then it rained on Friday and I had to work on Saturday, as did Cindy. And oh yeah I had signed up for one of my crazy races, again teaming up with Kip Haynes. Realize, along with all this madness, are all of the events that just start coming up, a few birthday parties, Kip's band, Beautiful Criminal had its first show in LA, Terrell Moore's art opening and, Skye's park dates, lessons, soccer, of course the slew of reality shows I'm addicted to.

The Great Urban Race
I had planned on training and getting into racing shape. I did sign up for the LA marathon, so I had to start training anyway. I squeezed in one day of running, but I was feeling good the day of the race. Ok the photo is a little weird, but it was one of the dares and we took second place and more importantly had a fun time. We took second place.






While waiting to receive our prize at 5pm, guests were arriving at my house for a pizza party. Had we come in 4th or realized what the prize was(a $20 gift certificate at the restaurant we spent $40 on drinks and bar food while waiting to collect our prize) we would've been home by 2:30, plenty of time. I raced through traffic, snuck to the pizza oven to get the fire started and was hosting by 5:30. It was another wonderful party with our Floridian friend, our new Dannish housemate, Kip and his family, including his wife's Theresa's brother, Tim who whipped together not only an amazing pizza but a wonderful dessert out of what he was able to find in the refrigerator and pantry. And then off to the desert, leaving at 5 the next morning.



Skye chillin' out on the road to Victorville.

11-11 Ramblings, Catch up

So today's blog is a lot about not having the shots of my bruises be the first thing that pop's up on my blog. Cindy left for Chicago last Sunday. She'll be back on Wednesday, so it was a quick trip. Skye and I have had several little adventures, ranging from a day at the zoo to check out the new gorilla habitat, (a disappointment we all thought), and a fiasco involving the monumental task of cleaning a rented brick saw, (too much to get into), to preparing to help Cindy out on her show doing a ...(can't tell you, much top-secretness on Cindy's movie, Eagle Eye. Oops can I say the title?) and AYSO soccer(they lost this week, so sad)


A beautiful hawk has taken to hanging out in the neighbor's tree.


Skye and Micah checking out the one gorilla that graced us with an audience, the other four were apparently too busy to make it to the gala event.


Skye, Micah and River as condors


I can fly.

The evolution of a bruise

The Aftermath of the Muddy Buddy

One might think that there's not much going on, a slow news day as it were or that this has something to do with the writer's being on strike, but it's really just my fascination with the changing colors of this major bruise. It looks worse than it feels.


Monday 11-05-2007

Tuesday 11-06-2007

Wednesday 11-07-2007

Muddy Buddy Results

Results were posted and we did alright. Not great, not bad. Pretty much right in the middle of the pack. In our age group there were 49 teams that finished. The winners ran it in 37 minutes and 29 seconds. We were 25 with 53 minutes 41 seconds. Interestingly the team that came in behind us at 26 was 1minute and 20 seconds behind us. Less than 2 minutes seperated the 10 teams that came in before us. Next year we'll break the top ten.

Muddy Buddy

Yet another crazy fun race event, the Muddy Buddy. And again Kip Haynes steps up as my racing partner at the last minute. I've been wanting to run this event for a while now and it turned out to be a lot of fun.



The race; 1 teammate starts on a bike, the other starts running, 2-minutes behind. There are 4 obstacles on the course, each serving as a transition point as well when teammates trade biking/running responsibilities. It was a tough one to figure out a good pace, at least for me. I went out pretty strong and was dying by the end, actually grateful to do something as simple as crawl/swim in mud.

One of the obstacles that I "went out strong on" was the balance beams. You know there are like five balance beams alongside one another, a turn around moment for Richard Gere in "An Officer and a Gentleman". Anyway, I started to lose my balance, my legs were a little wobbly from the bike, so I jumped over to the beam next to me, no problem. Oops lost balance again, just jump back. Not so fast, I missed and landed hard on the beam with my thigh, luckily not my ribs, they would of cracked like toothpicks. My leg however could withstand the blow. I shook myself off, told the race officials I was fine, no I didn't need an ambulance and took off running.


This mark is 11" by 2.5", swollen and growing more purple as the hours pass.


We made it!!!


I am going to fire my photographer. Just kidding Cindy.


Their showers consisted of around 20 sets of hoses. This only got more interesting as the day went on.





Check it out. We've got video.

Happy Halloween

We ditched the tree costume. (I have no idea what we're going to do with it. Cindy suggested using it as our Christmas tree this year. I suppose that's the environmentally sound fiscally wise thing to do and it would certainly be different, we'll see.) We scrambled the day before to get a new costume.

My favorite little devil, Skye out trick or treating.





Skye and Amandla checking out their goodies.

Tru as Wednesday

A few days earlier, an amazing sunrise. One of the only good things to come out of the fires.

GOODBYE OCTOBER, WELCOME NOVEMBER

The Tree

A couple of weeks ago we started discussing what Skye wanted to be for Halloween. She didn't have any idea. I would throw out a suggestion and to each of one I got some variation of NO. "Then what do you want to be?" " A tree"
That's kind of interesting, certainly challenging. I really should of thought about what an impractical request it was but instead I started thinking of how to make it happen.

Every fourth Thursday of the month there is what's called a Super Duper Show and Tell at one of the Home school park days . This month was to be a costume parade. This would be a good chance to try out the costume almost a week before the "real" event. I figured this would be a good opportunity to teach some craft skills, work toward a Girl Scout badge as well as creating a different kind of costume.

And so it began.

The frame for the tree which prompted Cindy to ask, "How are you going to transport that think?" It started to hit me early on that a costume that starts with transportation concerns probably will have other issues. But I moved forward.



Skye helped me with paper mache for around two hours,. To do three layers of paper,(we used some heavy duty paper which was harder to work with but didn't require as many layers) took around 9 or ten hours. I attempted to add a layer of bondo(two part epoxy). The sample patch turned out perfect but when I tried to cover the entire tree I ended up with a small bucket of unspreadable hard stuff. And when I tried mixing it on the tree itself I ended up with patches that wouldn't dry and areas that would just crumble off. I ended up with some good areas as well but it was certainly not worth the toxins that I had exposed myself(Skye was not involved in this part of the project)


Then we painted it, pretty straight forward, a couple of coats, some highlighting and shading. I also had the practical matter of devising a way for her to carry it. Workman's suspender solved that. We also figured a way to have an owl puppet that she could operate from inside, directing people to put the candy in her nest which would have a bag under it and inside the tree.


The final product was finished just hours before the show and tell. I also ended up making a couple of pumpkin pies from scratch, all the way down to making it from fresh pumpkins. So I ended up with only a couple hours of sleep and getting to the park late.
As we were driving to the park, I suddenly realized how disastrous it would be it Skye fell over. Her arms were by sides, so if she fell it would be a free fall faceplant. Oh sh**, I had created a death trap.
We got to the park, rushed to join the others and set Skye in the tree. She could move, just very, very slowly. I meanwhile nervously followed behind, my hand almost in constant contact. Well everyone loved her outfit but when it came time for the parade she made it around 20 feet and then stopped. She wouldn't budge. She couldn't keep up.She would take a short cut to meet the kids at the end. She wouldn't let me take it off of her. She was too frustrated and embarrassed to do anything. Meanwhile the sun beat upon it adding heat to an already bad situation. I finally talked her through it and she joined the other kids for the picnic and play. We both agreed that the tree was fun and cool but way impractical. A new costume was needed.


Picture time

Past couple of week

No big news recently, a lot of little things. I'm not crazy busy but I have more to do than time to do it. So that plus I'm baking in my office, which is just too weird because it is the end of October and in the 90's, plus the toxic air is getting to me, both from the fires and Skye's Halloween costume project. For that reason I am going to rattle off happening and thoughts, draw from it as you may and I promise a more coherent entry soon. AYSO continues,"Go Green Lizards", NBA preseason, season begins for Lakers Oct. 30, Kobe? Jui jitsu is kicking my ass and I'm loving it. Homeschooling park dates and adventures, like the Spider Pavilion at the Natural History musuem. Pumpkin patch with family and friends, awesome corn maize, over 2 acres, 45 min with a map, sorry no pics. Skye's Halloween costume has become a big project with more impracticalities than I foresaw.
LA is burning.





Skye's Halloween costume, Stage 1


Skye and Micah playing King of the Hill, corn maze in background. Just look at the bottom right and you can see the top of the corn stalks.


Skye's soccer team, the Green Lizards

Skye pictured next to spider. Forced smile


Beautiful big spider, forgot the name.

Stair Climb to the Top

Another entry in the fun and wacky race series. I thought it would be interesting to see how long it would take me to climb 75 floors, around 1500 steps of the highest building West of the Mississippi. The web sight said it took on average 30 to 45 minutes. How bad could that be? That's around a 5k, a kind of slow and easy 5k.




Okay, that's a pretty tall building.


Looks even taller from right below it.

I was running in the 40-49 year old men's division. I was the baby in the bunch, one of the few perks of summiting that mid-life peak.
We were sent up in twos with 8 second gaps. I thought it would get crowded or difficult to pass, but I only passed 5 people, one from my age group the other four were from the 30-39 women's division which started around 15 minutes before us. And I was only passed by 3 or 4 climbers in my age group.

After 10 flights of stairs, I was going too fast and started to try to pace myself. After another 20 flights of stairs, I thought I was going to die and couldn't really figure out how this whole pacing thing was going to work out. I was half-way up, 37 floors or something, in lots of pain, coming up with different methods of climbing the stairs, skipping steps using the handrail more and less and moving along pretty fast and the only pacing concept I could come up with was just not to stop. I figured I'd start pushing it a little the last 10 or 15 flights, but at floor 70 I went back to the just don't stop theory as I started feeling like I was going to hurl and even got a little dizzy.

I made it. I was heaving, gasping for air. My lungs were burning. I looked down at my watch and it was 17 minutes and something seconds. The overall winners finnish in under 10 minutes and I heard one guy say his earlier time was 11:55. (Yes, he ran in the elite division in the morning and had just finished with the 40-49, and was in shape enough to talk about it. I didn't say anything to anyone for a good 20 minutes.)

The only training I had done for this was running the steps in Santa Monica on Wednesday, which may have helped or may have made my legs sore. Now I'm curious as to how fast I could have done it had I trained or at least got a decent night's sleep the night before.

Field trips are FUN and educational

We're finally in the home school swing of things, hitting the park dates and show and tells, back in AYSO soccer, flute lessons, Skye became a Junior Girl scout and we have started up our Wednesday field trips with our special guest Nija.
This week we went to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.
I don't think I've been there since I was a kid. I think it was on a school field trip. Well it's changed a lot and is quite improved. The new exhibits are very beautiful as well as being interesting and informative. Many are interactive and most relate to local beach and ocean issues. And it's free. I think there is a voluntary parking cost, but I couldn't figure out how or where to pay and since the lot was empty and we were there just around an hour I didn't worry about it.



Skye and Nija checking out how it feels to live in a fish tank.


Can we come out now?


On second thought, I think I'll hang out here and investigate the kelp bed.




What cute little grunions.


These were some amazing jellyfish.


Oops I almost left Skye in one of the tanks.

Wacky crazy fun Sunday

Sunday had us all waking up pretty early and heading down to Long Beach for the Urban Assault Race,
a bike race with checkpoints where you do some crazy challenges, like carting team members around in wheelbarrows and racing around on adult-size (small adult) Big Wheels and crazy logic/math problems.


Looking forward to a good race

We had to run to our bikes at the start. They had three different start times based on a trivia test we took online prior to the race. We were seeded right in the middle on group 2. As you can see, even with a staggered start the beginning was a little hectic. That's Skye almost falling.

We headed out toward to the Shore Line Aquatic Park, the check point furthest from the Start. It was a little sketchy, with some hills and downtown Long Beach traffic. Thankfully it was Sunday morning and not too many people were out yet.



The first check point had us riding these big bouncy balls up and then down a hill. My legs were already burning and this was only the first of five checkpoints.


Like a scene from the Teletubies.

Beanbag toss, not too bad. We blazed through this checkpoint and somehow our team photographer, Cindy/wife/mom missed us on the next checkpoint the wheelbarrowing of Skye. But otherwise cool and thorough record of journey. Check out videos on previous blog entry.


Great teamwork Skye.

Skye rode the entire course, probably 12 -15 miles, 2 1/2 hours including challenges, through traffic, up and down hills. I helped out a little here and there, but she was quite a trooper, so when it came to the stunt bike slalom, I thought it only fair that she be the passenger.

Checking in at the finish of the course. We came in second place in the family division with a time of 2hr46m. The first place team were riding a tandem bike, so I thing we did even extra good. Note there were only 5 teams in the family division and 1 didn't finish.


Almost three hours of pedaling, dodging traffic, getting yelled at(from the coach/teammate/dad) and all I get is this burrito, water and no where to even sit. Com' on man.

Later we went to a big picnic with ferris wheels and climbing walls and all kinds of other fun stuff sponsored by our Union's local. Got to see old friends and make some new ones