BeachHead

He said:

Historical Window Restoration

Act 2, Scene 1.  At the Property Manager's Office

Contractor:  You said paint the windows shut.  My boys painted the windows shut.
Property Manager:  Paint the windows when shut.
Contractor: What's the difference?
Property Manager: The difference is now you have more work to do.
<Property Manager hands Contractor box of razor blades>

Can anyone guess why we're using our AC this week?  

She said (twelve hours later): Sometimes things really do get fixed quickly.  Now we can breathe port freely, and hear the guy in the street cussing his woman....the skateboarder on the way to work at 5am....and the drunken girls stumbling home on the weekend.

 

She said: Yarr, I completely forgot that yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  It's one o' me
favorite holidays, and it completely passed me by.  Bilge rats and land lubbers unite in the tumbly ballast!  It's got to be Talk Like A Pirate Week somewhere, aye!

She said: The best darn entertaiment of the week: watching this video with Mike, Max and Milo alongside.  Crikey -- my stomach is cramping, I've cried all over myself, my cheeks hurt, I almost peed myself.... and I had to share.

She said: Today, I was reminded why Shannon (college roommate) dubbed me "Gully" long ago:  Because I fall for stuff when I shouldn't.  I get sucked into an idea when someone's trying to snow me.  I want to believe the best.  Or maybe just believe. 

So what was it today?  A too-good-to-be-true coupon for a free iced beverage at Starbucks *only* between the hours of noon and 9pm, one offer per person, expiry end of September.  Keyword being "too-good-to-be-true," right?  Hmm....not so much.  And besides, it was forwarded by a trustworthy source: a coworker and a friend, whose brother had tried it out and it worked for him...so why not, right? 

Excited, I then forwarded the PDF to coworkers.  An hour later I, skeptical but hopeful nonetheless, stuffed the printout in my back pocket and sauntered on over to my "neighborhood" Starbucks.  At the counter, I presented the page to the barista and said, "is this for real, or totally fake-o?"  He smiled, looked at me, and confirmed the latter.  Apparently he'd already seen a few of these.  He assured me, though, "well, you can still try it iced!"

So...was it a prankster, or a brilliant marketing scheme from inside corporate?  The jury's still out, but I did buy a small iced coffee...and I just blogged about it.  I think that's one for Starbucks.   

Update: seems it was an internal bene that got loose, thanks to the SEND button. 

She said: At least I hope disaster is averted.  And I am thankful that my flight today is from the Long Beach airport, rather than LAX.  4 hour lines for security at LAX....and 4 people in line at Long Beach.  Yet again, I am reminded why I would rather have a slightly longer trip with one connection out of Long Beach than a direct flight from LAX: easier to get to and from the airport, better experience at the airport, and in case of emergency things just plain run more smoothly.  The SWAT team in full gear at curbside doesn't hurt either.

I'll be working in Saint Paul for the next week, assuming I don't get marooned in Salt Lake City on the way there.  Will keep you posted! 

 

 

I believe in public transportation.  I really do.  So it really pisses me off when it just, plain -- doesn't work.

Coming from a city with a strong bus and train network -- Boston -- means I have high expectations.  I admit this freely.  And even though LA is famous for its car culture, it IS a world-class city, right?  And, my ideal-addled mind tells me 'world class cities have good public transit...'

I ride the Metro Blue Line every workday from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles.  That's about 25 miles each way. The trip's usually about an hour, give or take a couple of minutes, and it usually gets me to work on time.  But every few weeks something goes haywire.

In February, it was a dramatic accident where a vehicle flew off the freeway and landed on the tracks, cutting the train's electrical cables.  Two weeks of two hour commutes. A few weeks later, the train ran over a car.  Down to single track and a 2.5 hour trip home. Other times the delays are unexplained.  There's rarely advance warning, and usually it doesn't seem like the Metro employees who drive the trains know either.  The common cause, though, is usually a fender-bender on the tracks somewhere between Grand and Washington stations.  Again, and again and again.

This is the problem with above-ground signalized tracks and a train that must contend with the ebb and flow of rush hour traffic, bad driving, and general urban liabilities.

It's a rare LA household that doesn't have two cars.  But that I can take the train to work allows my S.O. and I to live in an apartment we love, and only have one car.    

If I were to decide to bail on the transit system, how much would that cost?

I figure I'd get a used car, not too old.  I have a soft spot for older-model BMWs, with the bumper that looks like a fat lower lip.  Associated costs?  Loan payments, gas, insurance, parking, maintenance.

• $150/month loan payments.
• $200/month gas.
• $200/month insurance.
• $80/month parking
• $500/year maintenance.

Broad strokes here, but that's $8060/year.

Meanwhile, my Metro pass costs $31.20/month, after my work subsidizes 40%.  That's $374.40/year.

So how inconvenient or impractical would the train ride have to be to justify a more than TWO THOUSAND percent increase in cost?

 

She said: I'm a bit of a public radio geek.  A few months ago I discovered that Google Trends makes for great entertainment....of the geeky sort.  Here's what I learned today about public radio from Google Trends.

• Minnesota Public Radio has better brand recognition than American Public Media.  But we knew that. 
• Big fans of 89.3 The Current live in Prior Lake, MN.
• All Things Considered is more popular than Morning Edition.  But This American Life beats their pants off.
• People seem to be more curious about Weekend America than about Weekend Edition.
• People are more curious about public radio than about Ray Bradbury.  Except in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Mexico City. 

 

She said: Apologies for the gap.  Over the July 4th weekend we made our way to Vegas with friends Andrea, Michael, and their 6-week old son.  Vegas is a weird place.  But before I get to that.... en route through the Mojave Desert, traffic on the 15 came to a halt.  Temperature on the blacktop was 122 degrees (yup you read that right), and after 5 minutes of total stoppage, people started turning their engines off and getting out of their cars to chat and crane their necks.  We had binoculars in the car, so I stood on top of the guardrail hoping I could peer ahead, but to no avail.  Muscley guys in pickups were amused by the girl in the dress with the binoculars in the median.  People ambled away from their cars up a nearby hill to piss in the bushes and stretch their legs.  After a little while, an old Dodge minivan a couple of cars behind us lit on fire.  Yup you read that right, too.  Its engine just straight-up ignited while the driver was trying to get the thing to start again.  Apparently the only thing keeping that engine from overheating had been the movement of air under the hood. 

While hot and stark, the desert was beautiful.  Terrain I've never seen before -- terrain I hadn't even imagined.

Just across the Nevada border, tall & brightly-colored hotels and casinos with ridiculous names sprouted up.   Only 40 or so miles after the border, Vegas started to fill in.

OK, so why is Vegas a weird place?  Because it -- especially some of the neighborhood areas -- feels like my mind's eye image of a Martian colony.  We stayed at our friends' mom's house in a 55+ neighborhood in Henderson, the city just south of Las Vegas.  Every house is the same color stucco, with barely differentiated architecture and landscaping.  In three days, not once did I see a human being out of doors outside of a commercial area.  Walking outside at midnight, though, I did see one bunny, two beetles, and a flitting bird.....real estate signs and one US flag twitching in the hot breeze.

He can give you his impressions of other things Vegasian.

He said: Sitting on the roof with a book and a glass of Shiraz at the tail end of a hot day.  The kind of day that makes you sorry to have to lay hands on the steering wheel.  The temperature is dropping fast with the dying light; a wind convinces me to relocate to the edge of the hot-tub.  From here, with my jeans rolled up and my feet in the  water, I am enjoying my reading and the view by turns.  The haze, now a mixture of purples and oranges, has brought the horizon close.  Very close.  I can barely make out the edges of Long Beach and the port beyond it  - Palos Verdes and the rest of the city are obscured.  Instead of making the world seem stuffy and cramped, the strange light makes it seem as if I'm sitting on top of the world.  I'm in a summery snow globe, and the sun sinks into the haze which obscures it like a mountain.

She said: Weather on the east coast...which is why I'm sitting in the Long Beach airport, enjoying the free wireless.  I'm heading to DC to go to a conference for work....to do some story recon.  Prior to working at the Sustainability Desk I didn't tend to consider how many flights I take in terms of their environmental impact.    In the last year it's been a lot, what with the move to Cali.  Every time I take a flight the plane spews emissions into the atmosphere and nudges the atmosphere just that little bit.  So I'm more conscious now than I used to be, and am disinclined to fly twice if I can fly once....but still I fly.  And most of us do.  It's a rare traveller who cuts back flights to keep their carbon footprint bragging rights.  For the rest of us, we can just gamble on what the weather's gonna do.