Saturday - Went out to Red Rock Canyon State Park and wandered about for a few hours, taking pictures. There are some dramatic rock formations, and I took some photo's.
I was curious about the campgrounds, thinking about a star-gazing visit
later this month. As the map suggested, the campgrounds are directly
under a several hundred foot high cliff to the west of the CA-395. The
western sky would be blocked, but there would be a pretty good view to
the south and the east. But the buildings used by the rangers are in
the same little valley as the camp sites and I suspect would be
brightly lit at night. So, a maybe
for that idea. One could, of course, pack the tripod and telescope
along one of the trails and out of sight, but staggering around in the
dark on rough trails loaded with expensive equipment isn't really smart.
It wasn't overly busy, early in January.
As an Amazon "Prime" member it turns out that one book per month can be
checked out, free. So, I have a copy of Christopher Hitchen's
biography. Interesting, in its way. Not really my cup of tea though,
name dropping about various artistic and literary people, and attacks
on miscellaneous corrupt and incompetent politicians (in his view).
Friday 6 January
2012
Friday
- mucked around in the yard a bit, raking and bagging leaves, helping
the help prune the trees and turn over the earth in the raised
planters. More needs to be done. We put most of the leaves back into
the raised planters - by spring they should be well decomposed and good
fertilizer.
Riley will miss the dried tomato plant stalks - they made perfect
camouflage for his brown/white fur. He never caught a bird but when I
needed to bring him inside it might take me several minutes to figure
out that he was in among them.
Thursday 5 January 2012
Thursday
- Book #1 for 2012 is His Majesty's Dragon: Temeraire #1.
Dragons and Napoleonic war. Not bad. There is apparently an entire
series, but it's hard to find the second book in the series in the
local libraries. Temeraire is the name of the dragon, and he is smart. In particular, he likes math - makes his rider (Laurance) read Laplace to him since his claws are too big to turn book pages.
Sailing near Arch Rock, Anacapa Island.
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Wednesday - Took some friends out to
lunch at the Thai Cafe, good food but the boy is trying to be a vegan
for a week. So his mother and I ate tasty Thai chicken stuff in
sauce while he had tofu soup...poor guy.
But never let it be said that I'm not supportive, I sent him this:
Heh. We also talked about the reading lists that the various service
academies have. I sort of like the Marine Core list, because it's
broken into categories depending on rank.
A friend had taken his kids to Disneyland, having research the day and
deciding it was a low attendance time. Heh. Apparently not - I received
a cell phone pic showing a virtual sea of people. Ah well, it just adds to the experience for kids!
Art (the human) lives with a cat girl, bird man, four squirrel girls, a platypus and the "denizens".
Monday 2
January 2012
Monday
- Doing bills and running various errands.
In the evening I watched Episodes 1 and 2 of 'John Adams'
on DVD. It was good, as I'd heard, and it attempted to be a fairly
realistic portrayal of the man and times and true to the book.
The depictions of Adam's defense of the Boston Massacre soldiers, and
of the slow and irritating pace of the Continental Congress was well
done.
I wasn't sure if Adam's had really ridden to see the battlefields of Lexington and Concord, but Wikipedia says that he did.
Also, entertaining to see the depictions of John Quincy Adams (future
president) and his brother Charles Adams, as small rambunctious boys.
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