“Every human want to justify her decisions.  It’s what makes us human,” was her reply.

I had noted that I would be glad not to have to worry about the size of open parking places in the really impacted Whole Foods parking lot.  This was after saying early this very afternoon, that I would be glad:

1) Not to have to worry about the enormous blind spots on the FJ

2) Not to get 18 mpg

3) Not to have my car mistaken for a Hummer ever again

I may have come up with another thing or two or three.  Or eleven.

You see, friends and blogreaders, it’s a mere three years after procuring my Toyota FJ Cruiser and enduring the summer of 08, where filling it up was a $65-75 endeavor that had to be done every 300 miles (or fewer).  Usually fewer.  And my time with the FJ is drawing to a close.  Not because I leased it.  Not because there’s anything wrong with it.  But because I just can’t deal with it any more.  I’ve got other reasons.  I’ll throw some around now:

I’ve been furloughed from work two days a months with an accompanying 10% pay cut.  I would like my car to be cheaper.

It has faux-suicide doors and very few adults want to get into its back seat.

It will need new tires in the next six months and that will cost $1000 or more and I still won’t be able to change them by myself, given how large they are.

Gas is back up over $3.00 a gallon.

Americans still want “cute” SUVs and the FJ is cute.  And newish.  And retro.  Someone will want it.  It still has value.

I don’t like having to hoist up into it.

I would like to make less impact on the environment.  It qualified for Cash for Clunkers.  A 2007 vehicle.  Seriously.

I know, by the by, that someone else will buy it and use it and they will make an impact on the environment with it.  That will be partially my fault.  I’m ok with that.

Ok, see what I mean about justifying what I want to do?  A lizard brained serial carogamous, I am.

Anyway, all of which is to say, I put a deposit down on a 2010 VW Golf TDI.  Clean Diesel.  40mpg.  German made, just like my Passat of yore.  $1300 tax break.

It won’t be here until December or January.  In the meantime, though, I’m a little obsessed.  In a good way.  Want to see what it will look like?!

That one is British, but it’s the color I ordered.

We had our usual terrible time with car dealers trying to get one ordered.  We went to test drive the Jetta TDI (same engine) to make sure I liked it and to order one.  It’s not even worth going into much detail about how much both dealers we visited did sucketh.  Van Nuys VW and Livingston VW both refused to take my order, had marked up the TDI cars above MSRP, and said that the dealers who would take orders were “lying.”   Commonwealth VW has my business in buying the car for sure.   Some car advice:

1) Do your research on the interwebs before you go

2)  Walk away from people who call you “ma’am” in a condescending way and

3)  Always always always always bring Teresa.

Then you’ll be fine.

More details to come, I’m sure.  Vroom (in a clean diesel way).

Anyway, the place where we usually go to the beach has just the one bookstore and prominently features authors from the South Carolina lowcountry. (It drives my copy editor Honey wild that there is no consistency in how one “styles” (as she would say) those two words referring to the swampy beachy part of the more southern of the Carolinas). I’m not a big fan of most Southern writing, post, say, Yoknapatawpha, so the lowcountry fare wasn’t going to do much for me. I chose, instead, a book called The Ruins. I didn’t like it, which was a pleasant serendipity for Honey, who promptly started it and then recounted the plot to me when she was done.

I liked her telling of it much better than the 30 pages or so that I read of the book itself. Now, if you pay any attention to the current movie releases, you’ll know that it has just been released as a film. The LA Times review described it as: “depressingly inert and blithely gruesome.” The basic story of the The Ruins centers around killer ivy that eats you inside out.

Killer ivy should not be confused with Poison Ivy.

That’s Poison Ivy.

That’s killer ivy that eats you from the inside out.

I think I ended up reading a Spanish novel whose name escapes me right at the moment at the beach that summer.

Flash forward to this morning. I sometimes read the Sunday paper in what we call “the middle room.”

Aside: does everyone have these kinds of labels for rooms? When I was growing up we referred to one room in our house as the “green room” even though it wasn’t. I do understand it had been at one point.

Anyway, Honey and I are two people with many more pets than we need. We also have more bedrooms than we need. The “middle room” is a very small bedroom that we’ve turned into a sort of denette. I like to use it sometimes to escape the various technologies in my life. So, this morning, I retreated into it to read the paper. I was finishing the travel section (always my last section–paper section preference sorting is important to me) and I rolled my head around on my neck as I sometimes do.

As I did so, I noticed a vine. A vine. IN THE HOUSE. Poking out from under the blinds. Killer ivy. In the retreat room. It had grown THROUGH the window. Ok, really, it had grown through the gap in our 50 year old windowsill, but still.

Ten minutes of mild effort and I pulled all the ivy off the side of the house and Honey got the inside ivy into the trash can.

I’m not sure what lesson to take from all of this Sunday drama. One, lesson to be learned certainly focuses on using the middle/retreat room more and scouting it for unauthorized plant life more often. Another is that neither Honey nor I should really be allowed to own a home if we can’t control our ivy.

Finally, for those of you who see me IRL, could you keep an eye out? If I start looking like that girl in The Ruins, help me somehow. Calling me “depressingly inert” might be a place to start.

Theoretical fingers in theoretical ears… Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala Done with eight year old sex thoughts.

Ok, I won’t give you a whole travelogue, but here’s a highlight/thought list.

*They can dress it up all they want, but Innovations (in Tomorrowland)=superverylame.

*The redo of Space Mountain is awesome. It seems faster and you can’t see the track any more. It’s like a roller coaster in space. Wait, it IS a roller coaster in space.

*Disneyland rides with pictures they take and then try to sell you do NOT take flattering pictures of me. Nope.

*This image is funny and is on almost every ride. I kept trying to be these people. My body won’t do the things it suggests.

*Cynthia, who was having a birthday and brought her coffee onto Thunder Mountain in the pouring rain, reminded me of how great people can be. I don’t even know her and we rode behind her on the ride for all of three minutes. Still, she and her friend Susan rocked.

*As a child, I was DEEPLY disappointed to have spent one of my E-tickets on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (aka the submarines). The 35 minute wait we experienced on Tuesday did not improve my liking of it a lot. It was ok, but it was the longest wait of the day.

*I kind of loved (actually really loved) the Tiki Room. I’d never been there before. Full props to Disneyland for not tearing it out. It would not have been worth an E-Ticket, though.

*Fewer full props to them for tearing out the gallery above New Orleans Square for the new luxo-suite. I did like the Disney employee at the “Disneyana” store who described the gallery space as “having moved on to its next life.” She did this all why I dripped onto the rug, having gotten soaked in the rain on Big Thunder.

*We didn’t bottom out our Small World boat! I’m also pleased to report that Small World is less annoying at the holidays, because they intersperse Christmas songs with the eponymous song. I’m not a fan of either, but less of both overall makes it more bearable.

*I was pleased to do Tomorrowland first. Why we always do Adventureland first is beyond me. I’m a big T-land fan, Innovations notwithstanding.

*Bring back the People Mover.

*Indiana Jones has gotten more jerky. Panic attack inducing jerky.

* I know, I know, SOMETHING has to make you want to go to California Adventure, but why oh why can’t Tower of Terror be in D-land? I heart it but not enough to pay $20 more to ride it.

*I wish we had parked on the Daisy level instead of the Mickey level. I’ve never much cared for the mice. The ducks, I like.

*La Casa Garcia has really good albondigas. Really good albondigas tastes especially good when you’re wet.

*I would say I need a rain coat, but I live in Southern California.

*The best part of the day? All of it, of course. What’s not to like? A day with my Honey at Disneyland.

I like my inner eight year old sometimes. She has good ideas.  Besides, my outer 39 year old can afford to buy her extra E-Tickets.

At the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room…

The United States has never issued a one million dollar bill, just for the blog record.

The two largest bills ever offered by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing were the hundred thousand dollar bill and the ten thousand dollar bill. The B.E.P. should not, by the by, not be confused with the Mint. The Mint does the coins. And has a lame gift shop.

Here’s a picture of the 10K bill:

Know who’s on that bill? What, you don’t recognize him? Come on! Salmon P. Chase is a household name. Still not ringing a bell? He was one of the leaders of the Free Soil movement, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. While I’m sure you’re now all thinking, “oh, right HIM” here’s another factoid. Chase Bank. Hokay.

You may do better with the 100K:

Wilson. As in Woodrow. It wasn’t really a circulating bill, so much as it was a gold certificate, though William Jennings Bryan would have me note that it was issued (in 1934) after the gold standard was repealed. It was used for interagency exchanges of money and was orange on the reverse. Roosevelt (as in Franklin) was the man behind the 100K bill.

The 10k, really, was the biggest bill ever in circulation and featured pilgrims disembarking from the Mayflower on the reverse. The 5K bill featured James Madison and Washington resigning his Army commission. History on the money!

Nixon did away with all bills larger that $100 in 1969 to try to better control organized crime. That worked out really well for him (and us). I’ve long been a proponent of doing away with the $1 bill. We should use $1 coins. Oh and we should also eliminate the penny. I should stop mixing Mint issues and Engraving and Printing issues. Still, those are my money opinions and I’m standing by them. Also, we should go back to the silver standard.

Ok, maybe not, but I do like the idea of being able to go and demand silver somewhere. Hey–here’s a five, gimme some silver!

When I was in college, I was friends with a number of economics majors. They contended, usually when a little drunk, that the great tragedy of my life would be not taking economics in college. (My dad sometimes contends I should have taken HOME economics in middle school. I wish I had taken typing.) My usual counter argument to the econ majors was that the tragedy of their lives was not taking philosophy. I still think I’m right, but I do wish I knew a little more about economics. Oh and there have been other tragedies more significant than my lack of economic understanding. Plus, I’ve read Marx and Engels. Doesn’t that count for something?

I’ll settle, for the moment, I guess, with knowing that there is no such thing as a million dollar bill. I wish I had a real one so I could but people I love the things they want. Lately, I’ve been wanting to exchange bills for another metal. Why wasn’t there ever a titanium standard? I’d love to trade a slip of paper for two of these (one for me and one for my honey):

The problem is, people who sell the above want those plastic card things. I learned about that once, but have forgotten most of what I know. I seem to recall you have to use the regular money to pay back what you spent on the plastic dohickeys at some point. Like in graduate school, when I took out student loans, and was required to go to a meeting wherein the main message was “YOU HAVE TO PAY BACK YOUR LOANS.” I sometimes misunderstand messages. For example, Honey and I went to see No Country for Old Men this weekend. As we were walking out of the theater, she said, “so the message of that movie is that everything is going to be ok.” It was not the message I got. Maybe my college friends were right. I just reread the “Cross of Gold” speech and Bryan says nothing about titanium. I’m going to have to think on this. In the meantime, if anyone has any deep thoughts on economics or moving toward a titanium standard, please let me know.

Tree Aside:

That’s the Grant tree. It was declared the “nation’s Christmas tree” by Calvin Coolidge. Eh. Honey and I walked around the back side of it first. It’s big, but not as pretty as I’d like. I prefer the Sentinel with its “average” size.

Back to the Bears:

My family wasn’t much of a National Park kind of family. We visited a few, but the best ones are in the West. (You can deny the previous statement all you want, but denial has therapeutic value–discuss as needed with your therapist). My family did visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park a couple of times. I recall very vividly that both times we saw bears.

Black bears (ursus americanus) are found in most of the large National Parks, including Great Smoky Mountain NP and Sequoia and Kings Canyon NP(s). They’re not particularly aggressive bears, and rarely attack humans. Grizzly bears (ursus arctos horribilis), their larger cousins, are typically only found in four National Parks. And, no, the St. Louis Arch is not one of them. OK, fine, the arch (properly the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial) is not an actual National Park. I just liked the idea of grizzly bears riding in that weird conveyance you use to get to the top of it.

The four Parks with grizzly bears are: Glacier, Yellowstone, Katmai, and Denali. Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska (2), for those of you keeping state score. Grizzly Bears will kill people. Black Bears can hurt people, if the people are stupid.

That’s a black bear next to the trash can, by the way. They can be brown. Confusing, I admit. The real problem for the black bears, as it is with so much of modern life, is trash. Both times I saw bears in GSMNP as a child it was near a tumped over trash can.

Bears like human food trash. It doesn’t distinguish them very much from dogs, now that I think about it. Until recently, many bears in many parks had learned that humans had food. Smart animals that they are; they figured that begging might get them some.

Yogi didn’t help matters. Who wouldn’t want to share a picnic with Yogi? Ok, I wouldn’t, but some folks would.

Then Smokey was always hanging around telling us to prevent fires. He’s a nice spokesanimal. Friendly bear spokesanimals are likely to produce friendly feelings about bears by park visitors.

Smokey isn’t my favorite spokesanimal, though. As a person of a certain age, I feel more connection to his anti-litter buddy, Woodsy Owl. Recently redesigned (2006), Woodsy first appeared in the early 1970s. While he now urges, “Lend a Hand, Care for the Land,” his original exhortation, “Give a hoot don’t pollute” should bring a song about “dirty bird(s)” to the minds of many.

There are currently some licensed Woodsy pants available on ebay. It could be a new fashion trend. Think how good you’d look in Woodsy pants. The belt buckle, the weird length. Sigh.

Being bear aware dominates a lot of thinking and efforting at our National Park. The new movement at the National Parks is anti-Yogi, anti-cubs begging at woodie station wagons.

Not only did I have to certify that I was bear aware and that Honey was bear aware, we also had to remove things that might cause bear break-ins from our car. Food? Yep. Drinks? Yep. Also lotion, chapstick, lipstick, Purell. Really, anything with a scent had to be secreted away to our room. I can find no evidence that a bear ever tore apart a car for chapstick. They have torn apart cars for food. But chapstick? I’m not so sure.

Really, day visitors get left off the hook. They’re told to keep “food out of sight.” Staying overnight? Get that chapstick out of the car! Now.

I saw these signs all over the park. I don’t want to be responsible for a dead bear. Not me. Nope. Nuh uh. I do like some of the advice the sign offers.

“Gather together and make noise by banging pots and pans.”

Damn, we forgot to bring pots and pans. Are they required even when we don’t camp?

“NEVER try to get items back from a bear.”

Do you really mean that I shouldn’t use my soft hand to hit the big bear on the head to get my chapstick back? It’s MY chapstick. Who’s going to buy me another stick? Also, if he takes my L’Occitane lotion, somebody is going to pay. I’m just saying.

“If you are afraid, back away and contact a ranger for help.”

Mmm Kay. So, there will be a ranger nearby? Not just the pretty one in the booth an hour back where I paid my $20? That’s super handy. Each bear has an assigned ranger. Thanks!

“You may see rangers using hazing techniques to chase bears away.”

That is especially awesome. Do they shave their heads? Make them drink lots of beer? I do hope they get to join the fraternity afterwards.

Ok, snarky aside done. I do love the picture of the people.

Clearly one thing you should certainly do is make an “o” with your mouth. Honey and I practiced that all weekend. The problem for us, really, was who wanted which role. We had no pots or spoons, so neither could of us be the dad. I decided the best thing to do was consult the bear’s ranger about what to do beyond the “o” mouth.

As we descended into the San Joaquin Valley and headed home yesterday, I thought about what I had learned. I learned a lot about sequoias, but not much about bears, really. I realize that the sequoias aren’t going to break into my car, but think about if one of them fell on me. I’d be way more dead than if a bear took my lotion. It’s unlikely that a sequoia would fall on me, I admit. Still I should have asked the pretty ranger how to protect myself from the unlikely. With all those sequoias, they’re probably not able to have enough rangers to assign one to every tree. Standing near them, then, is a risk I must be willing to take. I’m nothing if not brave. And bear aware. I’m also very bear aware. So is Honey. I certified us.

I was a newish graduate student at a fine university in Southern California. Not the one with the good football team. The one with the good basketball team. I was helping a woman with her senior thesis. I met her through the lesbian rap group on campus. I encouraged her to present her senior thesis at a regional conference I was also going to attend. Academics present papers at conferences. It’s a thing. And this woman thought she might want to go to graduate school.

I rode up to the conference with this woman and her girlfriend. I was a little intimidated by her girlfriend. She was sexy, had a shaved head, and rode a motorcycle. The girlfriend had a two door SUV and I, as the non couple person, rode in the back on the way to Davis, where the conference was to be held. On the way up, I bought a small packet of bite-sized Pecan Sandies. I dropped one and stepped on it. I didn’t mean to. When the girlfriend saw this, she teased me. I thought she was mad. She wasn’t.

This is part of the story too:

The senior thesis woman broke up with her girlfriend. The (now ex) girlfriend stopped by and left a note on my office door. Later that summer she gave me a large lemon that looked like a breast.

It looked more like a breast than that one does.  I loved that lemon because I loved the woman who gave it to me.  I didn’t know that when she gave me the lemon.  I suspected, but I didn’t know.

Later on this becomes part of the story:

The (now ex) girlfriend becomes my girlfriend. Because she knows I can, she often asks as we go to sleep at night, “will you tell me a story?” And I do tell her stories until she falls asleep.

Sometimes, when I say something innocuous (because I talk too much and say too much), she says to me, “that wasn’t a very good story.” She’s right, when she says that. Not all stories can be good, but I should try harder to give her good stories.

So here’s another piece of the story:

My honey starts a new chapter of her story today.

Here’s the last part of the story for today:

When the former graduate student, now sometimes professor, often administrator woke up this morning, she saw her love asleep.  She made up a stupid song that she sang to her love in celebration of 40 years of life.  It was a silly song, that got sort of squeaky at the end.  She thought it was ok, though, because sometimes the story is about breast lemons and squeaky songs.

_________

So, happy birthday, sweeties.  I can’t wait to see how your story moves on from here.

At any rate, I remarked, upon hearing the narration about the Nepalese, that Americans are born to bottom-out Small World boats. My Honey laughed. I like making my Honey laugh.

I liked this Shakespeare thing. It has nothing to do with what we’re born to do. Still. Macbeth would have been way different with sporks.

Is this a spork which I see before me,
Its handle toward my hand?

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

My first computer was a PC. Not a real IBM one, but an Epson with a Hercules paperwhite monitor. It served me fairly well. I upgraded it at some point and it functioned like DOS based PCs did. Well. Then Windows cam along and I lost faith.

In graduate school, I had a class that introduced me to the wonders of that magical place called Cupertino. Hypercard prefigured and guessed at the beginnings of the web. I used the internet then–e-mail and netnews–but hadn’t yet seen a graphical interface. Hypercard changed that. I promptly got myself a Mac. A laptop.

Color and everything! It weighed a ton, but I was delighted to have a system that worked.

Taking a page from my Honey… to keep you going. There are baby animals here!

Anyway, we entered into the bright phase when Apple did. An original bondi iMac was complemented by the famous (from Sex and the City) iBook. We called the iBook “clam.”

Swivelhead came next. I sent him packing this summer when his disc drive went out. That and he wouldn’t play Sims2.

Need another baby animal picture? Honey uses them to help deal with tough stuff. I’m compensating for boring stuff. Not the same thing, really.

Pretty and Swivelhead lived together. Pretty has served us well. Even when Biscuit broke her powercord input, she bravely went to the Apple store and got fixed.

She welcomed Flathead when he came home this summer to replace Swivelhead. She chirped merrily along, all the while communicating with the spaceship (our Airport wireless router).

When Honey told me about Pretty’s problems, I was worried. Pretty was nearing the end of her life, it seemed. Was it her screen? Was it her motherboard? Either way, she isn’t worth fixing. She’s a G4 Mac in an Intel CoreDuo world.

Honey and I discussed, looked online, and talked some about it. She’s very careful, my Honey. I am a rushing-in kind of fool. Here’s one thing we agreed on, though. Apple needed to stop introducing white computers and then making the non-white ones cost more. Flathead was purchased JUST before the new silver and black iMacs came out. Flathead costs $200 less than his silver and black brethern do now. $200. Remember that number.

The new MacBooks are available in white and black.

Here’s the thing, though… The white ones are cheaper.

$200 cheaper.

Oh, sure the black one gets you a better hard drive. But it’s so little better that it’s not worth talking about.

At one point, Honey said exactly what I was feeling, “I don’t want to spend $1000 on something that LOOKS exactly like what we already have.” Look again, gentle reader. See the resemblance? The current MacBook and Pretty are so closely related in looks that they shouldn’t be allowed to marry. They’d produce warped little white plastic babies. What? Oh, ok, fine. More baby animals…

The dolphin isn’t white or deformed or anything. Happy?

Apple knows us. We both REALLY wanted the black one. It was matte black, it was smaller than Pretty. It was faster than Pretty or Flathead. I have a big presentation next week for a major nonprofit in a faraway city. Ok, it’s Denver, so it’s not that far away, but it is a major nonprofit. Dating back to the 19th century major.

Both of our iPods are black. It costs more. We really liked it better. It had a bigger hard drive. It costs more. $200 more. Apple knows us. $300 more? We’d have a white one. $200, we stand in the Apple Store and discuss.

It was hard to justify. We did it, though. We made it work in our brains and now own “Jelly.”

Call us shallow. Go ahead. Here’s the thing about Apple. They’re gotten 100% on the Human Rights Campaign survey of good places for GLBT folks to work for six years. $200. 6 years of good GLBT relations. Black. $200. White.

They know us.

Jelly is a fine looking machine.

And thus endeth the story. Can I get an amen?

Thanks.

I like going places that feel away. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like our house and our space. I like them despite the asshole neighbors who had a couch dumped in front of their house and, rather than calling the city, moved it in front of our house. Like we wouldn’t notice that it had been across the street until last night and now, had, by some miracle, just up and WALKED itself in front of our fence. Sometimes, therefore, I need to get away.

My favorite getaways are fundamental but not hard to achieve. It may be why I like Catalina Island so much. Drive to San Pedro, get on a boat, and you are SO away. But they still have a Vons and my cell phone still works. Hell, you haven’t even left Los Angeles County on Catalina.

Anyway, we go to Carpinteria every year. Early October. Why? Well, why else? The Avocado festival!

I’m sure that some of you now have visions of something grand, indeed. Festival! Avocados! They go every year! There must be magic there.

Eh. It’s pretty much the same every year.

Here’s an overview:

There’s a giant inflatable avocado with sunglasses.

It’s right outside the official California Avocado tent. Inside, there are illustrations of avocado type…

Signs for your own avocado orchards to deter thieves…

My favorite part of the tent is the avocado costume contest. The kids at the Carpinteria Elementary school make quite the effort.

That’s Carmen Miravo and a Golfer Avo, if you couldn’t tell. Both prize winners, I should note.

Outside the tent, there are a couple of blocks of fair. Get a henna tattoo, buy some silver jewelry or those weird psychedelic spinning things.

There are two stages, one with “guac n’ roll” and the other more eclectic. I noted with some (ok, a lot) of dismay that the first band yesterday on the guac n’ roll stage was signing Christian rock. As is befitting a festival based on food, there are lots of avocado choices, many of them tasty. We usually go for tacos with guacamole, though this year I did contemplate a guacamole and tri-tip sandwich. We also get some guacamole and chips, though have yet to try the guacamole made by the high school cheerleaders in the kiddie pool. I’ve yet to try to avocado ice cream.

We wander the fair and look at the t-shirts. One year we bought a poster and one year an avocado themed napkin-holder.

Once we’ve had lunch and picked out a Reed avocado to make guacamole with later in the week, we’re done. (This year we got a Nabal instead. Such rebels!)

Is it fun? Sure. The fun, though, is found in the familiar. We do the same thing, we eat the same food. We wander past the same booths (for the most part). Things change a little. Last year we bought a rug shaped like a surfboard. This year I bought a bracelet made out of old forks.

On the way home this year, we stopped at the outlet mall. Last year, we took the train. So there is a little variety. Just a little. I guess that’s the way I want it.

My Honey was born.

At least we think she was. A few years ago, she tried to file her taxes online and the IRS rejected the filing. When she called to find out why, they told her that her birthday was November 13th, not November 15th. Being the investigative type, she called her mother. “Did you check you birth certificate?” When Honey pushed the issue, her mother said she was “pretty sure” that she had, in fact, been born on the 15th.

Ever since we’ve celebrated Honey’s “social security birthday” and her “real birthday.” Today is the latter.

I wasn’t even in the world when this great day happened. But when good days happen, they happen. And this particular November 15th (maybe the 13th) was a good day, indeed.

So, Happy birthday, sweet Honey of mine. Thanks for being born.