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

Race Videos

Check out the videos from the Urban Assault Race

Tripping up to Mammoth and bits and pieces

I finished working on "Wild Child" Friday. Skye reminds me that I promised to take her camping in Mammoth. When it rained here, it snowed there, so I realized time was running out. On Sunday after getting beat up at Jujitsu, I decide we should go up on Monday so we can get back by Wednesday night to make it to the screening of "The Heartbreak Kid", the movie Cindy worked on and Skye can make it to the Talent show at the home school park day, her talent being hula hooping. Yes it sounds a bit crazy but we had a lot of fun.


I bought this tent like two years ago along with a couple of sleeping bags, part of a e-bay crazed shopping spree, finally they get a taste of the great outdoors. I'm very glad I bought a couple of good sleeping bags, cause it was 26 degrees at night.

One of objectives of the trip, beyond living up to the promise I made was to strengthen Skye's bicycling skills because we're racing in the Urban Assault Race this Sunday. We made some pretty long rides. Skye was a trooper even when I miscalculated the length and steepness of a hill that we ended up pushing our bikes up for the better part of an hour. But we got some amazing views and a fun downhill ride.


That little patch of green in the middle of the photo above was where we started our ride.

It was a great little escape.

Upon return, just before heading out for Cindy's screening I try to check my e-mail only to find out our computer has crashed, total meltdown, the computer is dead. I'm writing this on a new computer, just about the most basic model available seeing as how these machines seem to become cheaper to buy than to fix after a few years and they seem to inevitably crash after a couple of years or even if they are working become obsolete by the time you get them home. Oh the madness.

Also on the horizon, Oct. 6 I'm running or rather climbing in YMCA's Stair Climb to the Top, 1500 steps up the US Bank Tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Check out my official race webpage to help raise money for the Y.

Skye news

Skye is back in soccer. She is now a proud Green Lizard.





Meeting Emma Roberts aka Nancy Drew, Claire from Aquamarine and now she's the "Wild Child". Skye had a lot of fun on the set and was a big hit with the crew. We caught up on a lot of her history lessons with a great CD set, History of the World. Call it carschooling. We started hitting the books in earnest this Thursday.

Week in Review

Actually, this is the week before last, week in review.

As the summer winds down and a new school year is upon us, Cindy and I started working on the L.A. portion of a movie starring Emma Roberts, "Wild Child". Which is great, cause we needed to work. But then Cindy gets another, longer, bigger, better job,(in L.A. thank goodness) Anyway it's been a bunch of juggling, with Skye in day camp and me trying to prepare for home school and house guests coming in town. And top it off with a weird heat wave that coincided with my drip-irrigation system going on the fritz. I know it sounds convoluted and not making much sense, but it was that squared.

So working in LA. Culture shock!!!! I forgot how much driving we do as Set Decorators. My carbon footprint just got a couple sizes bigger. And how much traffic there is and how nonsensical its patterns are, crazy!!!

House guests--Lovely couple, Susanne and Fady. Documentary film makers, she from Barcelona, he from Iraq. Both so gracious, warm and wonderful. Back story long and not uninteresting, just, as usual I am behind schedule, with too much to do, so main thread is Fady was one of the producers on Hometown Baghdad . Amazing online web series about life in Baghdad. Must check it out. Just click on above link and off you'll go. So Cindy's longtime friend, Laurie Meadoff founded Chat the Planet, and there is the link to Fady. Unfortunately, we were very busy, they were busy so we didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked. Susanne returned to Spain and Fady, well he's studying here at U.S.C. graduate film school so hopefully we'll be seeing more of him.

But their visit was a perfect excuse to host another pizza making party. Throw in some kids, a heat wave and the last days of summer and it becomes a pool party as well. Great fun, but man it gets hot in front of that pizza oven, around 1000 F, with heat from the grill coming at you from the other direction. I got cooked pretty good. But it was all worth it.

Stop, pause, and quick rewind, to one more gardening project I'm embarking on and very excited about, heirloom tomatoes. Picked up some fall-winter varieties from Laurel's Heirloom Tomatoes. It might sound silly, but I'm very excited, yummy, yummy.



What's up Kaya?


Wonderfully eclectic group.














And night descends......



Susanne and Fady




Ping ping was part of the second wave of guests







Good night. Thanks for sharing.

Urban Dare

So, on Friday, I'm just surfing the net, avoiding work and other things I should be doing and I come across the Urban Dare calender and realize the LA race is tomorrow, Saturday, (which is now yesterday) The race is part trivia, part road race, kind of like the amazing race, but one day and one city and..., you get the picture, or not, but anyway.

So I immediately register and then, after I've committed to it, then I start searching for a race partner(you must have a partner, there is no solo division). After frantic phone calling and mind racing, I find willing and able race partner Kip. Then I start trying to line up a support team. You need someone or better yet several people at computers to help answer the insane trivia questions and help navigate etc. End up enlisting my nephew Adam and Kip's wife Teresa, both awesome and huge help, really you can't do it without someone on the internet with advanced Google skills. Anyway here are some photos at various check points along the course

At the Grove, first check point, still looking fresh and smiling.




Second checkpoint, a little confused on clue, lost some time.



Made up some time, moving now.



Hey Kermit, moving along fast now and building up a sweat.



After a long run down Hollywood Blvd, photo and little rest(not really)



Ok, I'm not looking so good, looking pretty geeky. Yes I know the matching baby blue shirts had a looking like nerds from the start but now I'm really not looking so photogenic, at lest Kip's sporting cool shades and remembers that we are actually being photographed. Don't worry it gets worse. Also at this point we are running neck and neck with another team, so we will be trading cameras and taking pictures of each other from here till the finish.




This was an obstacle I opted to do. Find gum in a whip cream heap and then blow a bubble. Sounds easy but the whip cream sugarized the gum to make blowing a bubble virtually impossible.



Just before nasty gum challenge, sweety and promising myself to lose some weight and work on my cardio.





So close to the end.






The winners, note how young and fit they are. We came in 7th out of probably 30 to 40 teams, in just over 2 hours. Along the way we had some basket ball shooting obstacles, push-up/sit-up/squats, bubble blowing and finally some dart throwing before celebrating with some beers. Tons of fun, highly recommended and I look forward to the next one.



This was the team that we slogged it out with for the last few miles and check points. We just edged them out by hitting a bullseye before them. Fun competitors and good conversation after.
A final congratulations and thanks to Kip and our support crew of Adam and Teresa. Cindy who usually mans the computer and has gotten incredible at it was getting her hair done(No Joke) But gave encouraging phone just prior to the race and salon job.