Trip to YTB Home Office in Chilly Illinois

The first pic is proof that I was in a small conference room talking with "Coach" Tomer, the founder of YTB, the parent company for our online travel website www.timetogetoutoftown.com. He is in casual duds, just a "down home" kind of guy. You'd never know he made millions in the insurance business, invested a good deal into the infrastructure to start YTB. The next pic has Mary and Connie pleased as punch to be in the room with me and about 12 others on Ryan Vanderpool's team in the business. We were all very impressed with the integrity of the principals in the company, the soundness of the business model, and seeing the infrastructure and support with our own eyes. I will have a pic of myself with "Coach" and some others, but this is a better memory, no grandstanding, just finding out the facts. We're glad we withstood the chilly weather.

Steve in London

The top pic is the outside of Steve's flat in Acton, a suburb in the western part of London. Then there it is, the school building, then finally Steve's desk space. We did go to the Mouth and Foot Artist show as well. Pretty amazing.

More Elena pix

These are from August and Sept I think. I just got them downloaded. Had to get them in there, too cute.

Trip to Colorado, new Elena pix

Here she is. It may not be a studio setting, but the car seat was the perfect way to have her quiet and looking at the camera. She won't smile for the camera, because she remains so curious about it still. She just STARES at it, like "Hmmmm what is this thing?" Of course I always knew she was brilliant, but now I know there's proof. It's the "long gaze"--apparently infants have been studied in relation to the length of their focused gaze--length of gaze positively correlates with intelligence. That was intuitively seen in my office practice, certainly, infants who looked bright and inquisitive.

So here's the infant appearance genetics folks: Hair color--between Erich's baby towhead and Serena's very dark hair at this age. Eye color--Erich's. Eye shape and size--Serena's. Ears--Serena's. Mouth--Erich's. Overall, she really looks like Erich with less deepset eyes.

More to come from pix that Mom and Dad have taken.

Steve on the way to London

We stopped at Maggione's (sp?) at the Grove in LA, meeting Tom and Sandra. It was a really nice little respite amidst the craziness of packing and restoring computer data. Despite what they all say, I did really TRIP over a nest of wires on the floor flipping the external hard drive with ALL Steve's work from college into oblivion. It was awful, but of course, Lee came to the rescue, stayed up till 3am and got most of the data back. Yikes!!!

Fun Times with Steve before he's GONE!!!! to the UK

Lee and I enjoyed Oktoberfest with him in Lake Arrowhead for a few hours. We had a family dinner on the patio, teasing him about the balmy Southern California weather and greenery. We ate at Maggione's restaurant in LA with his friends Sandra and Tom. He did make it to London just fine, hogging a whole row on the plane to nap. We haven't heard any more yet. We'll keep the blog fans up to date. Keep tuned to this station for further updates on Steve's excellent UK adventure.

Party Time

This is our pic at the beginning of a Beaver Med party we had at our house. It was a great success and we didn't have to pay for it, so that's a big plus. Leonard Corbett catered it, and with his great ideas, it was easy. Lee made a great music collection that just ran without his attention to it...it really made for a wonderful atmosphere. Leonard managed even with the breaker for our oven going out...toaster oven and BBQ to the rescue!!

More pix of BBW (Best Baby in the World)

Finally I got my act together to get these pix onto the blog. This is Elena (sitting with support at less than 5 months, mind you) and then of course, the ever lovely Serena with Elena. Note the binary code T-shirt Serena is wearing. It was a gift from Erich. I forget what it says. I will have more pix soon as I am flying out there October 5. I will get to see Serena lecture!! I doubt I'll be able to take a live pic of that. I think it'd be way over the top into the "proud mom." She has a teaching fellowship this year. We'll see what I can do. Hm...maybe I'll hide a spy camera in a pen a' la James Bond....Q...where are you when I need you????

The Source of all that Ash and Smoke

I found out from friends that this was the really local Redlands fire. It is I think technically "San Bernardino County," but it is about a mile from my house, right where I walk all the time. The top of my street runs into Sunset. This is on Edgemont, which is one street over parallel to Sunset. This view is of San Timoteo Canyon, I believe, which is a relatively common fire area. There is not a huge amount of fuel in comparison to the forested mountains, but still too much for my comfort, thank you very much. The top pic has the leftmost part blackened from the fire--that's not "shadow," that's scorched earth. The next pic has the foreground showing the fuel that burns, the middle with some gray burned area, and some jet black going right up to the green planted area right next to the large home. Pretty scary. The next pic is not burned at all, but just shows the natural scrubby vegetation that is very dry this time of year...and the homes built right next to the tinderbox of the canyon. The last pic looks like a moonscape...burned canyon. Thankfully down the street from us is a fire station!!!

Local Fires

I got a phone call from my cousin Rose in Virginia: "Are you ok?" You too may have heard on the news about the merging of two large fires in southern California--Yucca Valley and San Bernardino National Forest. CNN.com has the story with lots of pix and scientific info on wildfires. Besides earthquakes, that's our local natural disaster. Our last big one was in 2003. At that time at night our binoculars gave us a bird's eye view of the licking flames covering the mountains going from left to right over our whole view. Another year before 1997 we could see the scooper planes on TV and then go outside and see them in the sky. The creepiest time we could actually walk to a part in the canyon behind us where you could see flames with the naked eye. Fire that close to us is very unusual. The fires we have now are unfortunately very common.

Anyway we were pretty unaffected this time so far until I went outside to walk this morning and smelled and saw the smoke. Yikes! The haze you see in the pictures is not fog or smog, that's smoke. The ash is very unusual. We've not seen that before with other fires. It's over EVERYTHING. We will have an annoying cleanup when we're done. I shouldn't complain, in comparison to the folks evacuating or losing their homes.

I've read that the Yucca Valley fires have Joshua Trees burning. Those are very special desert succulents that only grow in a few places including that area, Lancaster where we lived when we were first married, and the Middle East ( speaking of another "hot spot").

In the SB Forest, the well known bark beetle infestation killing trees which become giant matchsticks is the big problem. It costs individual landowners $1000 per tree to get one removed. It's not unusual to spend $20,000 as a single homeowner. Then there's all the public land that's not been cleared of infested trees.

News Flash!!!!!

Elena rolled over today!! Back to front at ONLY four months old, I'll have you know!!! Of course, advanced gross motor skills are no guarantee of advanced intelligence, but don't bother me with that fact right now!! AND she's playing with her special patting toy on her blankie while on her tummy!! Ok, I'll calm down now and go back to work. The countdown is now 14 days till the next Nonna-Elena encounter.

Pictures Don't Lie??

The first shot is Lee's custom made bike the day BEFORE his 50 mile ride on the Santa Ana trail to Huntington Beach. The second one is the really deceiving one. He just had crashed, breaking four, yes, folks, count'em, FOUR ribs. He is not smiling because he is just barely managing on pain meds, of course, the chef extraordinaire undaunted. Since then neither of us is doing very well. He's making a slow but steady recovery.

I do not have any pix to go with my story, thank God. I'm having a renewed siege of migraines. I'm back on Topamax, and I'm very slowly trying to get to a therapeutic dose so I can habituate to the sleepiness. After 12 headaches in June and a full week non stop so far in July it seemed like the right thing to do. I'm due again for Botox, so I'm hoping between the two it will abate. I am really trying to figure out what God is trying to tell me. I know for sure I am thankful for each day, no, each minute of every hour that I don't have a headache.

More Elena Pix

Here she is, such a big girl, going to be four months old on Monday. Next pic is a wonderful shot of her with Erich. "Daddy's little girl" Last one is a classic pensive look that I would expect coming from any progeny of this brainy couple. (Ok, I'm allowed to brag now that I have official grammy status.) We will all get together in 16 days in Ensenada, but who's counting?

This is Steve on graduation day from UCLA, School of Arts and Architecture. His bachelor's is in Design/Media Arts. One of the speakers commented that looking back in history, we commonly characterize civilizations by their art and architecture. There's not much record of doctors, lawyers, etc. Interesting.

La Reyna No Cocina

This is just a cute thing in the casita. Not really true. ("Welcome, the queen doesn't cook.")

Beach Treasures

My friend Mary Abatecola helped me find many of the best beach treasures here. Sea urchins, scallop shells, barnacles, even a cool piece of coral at the top of the picture. Click on the pic to see it bigger.

New Elena Pic

Finally, I begged and threatened to have a withdrawal seizure. Erich sent me a new picture!!!! This is the real smiling live person baby pic. Woo HOO!!!

Mothers' Day 2006

Lee and I went to breakfast with Steve, Serena, Erich, and Elena before we went to the airport to send them back to Colorado. This is a tree at UCLA--Steve, Lee and I walked the lovely campus for awhile afterwards. Steve did finally decide to go to RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). So he'll be leaving in August. It was especially fun to have us all together on Serena's first Mother's Day.

Morning Walk on Sunset Drive

I ran back to get my camera--I couldn't resist! I tried to take some pix of a cool spiderweb but it didn't work out too well. Must play with my camera some more to figure out the macrozoom thingy.

Zoe in Mexico

Zoe's two favorite spots...baking on the warm tile in the courtyard or hangin' at the beach. She even ran in the water that lapped up. Amazing. This from the dog who hates water.

Elena at the beach

Our small shelter didn't quite cut it for shade. Plus Elena got pretty dusted from blowing sand. "Auntie" Laurel was quite coated as well. Then we put up our bigger shelter over that. Nonna Loni enjoyed it quite a bit.

La Reyna del Remote

Chillin' in Baja California Nord. We took her to the beach...gotta find that pic.

Elena in Ensenada

She had her first foreign travel, complete with her own passport. I tried this as a bigger pic to post. We'll see how it comes out. We bathed her in the talavera style painted bathroom sink, but you won't see that pic. Nude pix on the web....uh...no. Don't you love her mohawk hairdo in this shot? We must have forgotten to comb it. Now she looks at us a lot and even smiles and does a cooing conversation if we imitate her.

Mickie at 13 weeks old

This is our new African Grey parrot Mickie enjoying Ensenada. "Mickie" was supposed to be short for Michelangelo, but now it's short for Michelina since....yeah, she's a pretty little girl parrot.

We just got back and I'm really tired, so I will collate the multiple pix of Elena to post. These were easy...I didn't have as many to choose from.