Learning to Like LA

It's no secret that I am a Chicago girl. I love that city. However, I live in Claremont, so it is in my best interest to learn to like Los Angeles.  Since I get a hankering to get out of town once in a while, we decided to spend a day exploring downtown a little more, and the best way would be to go by Metrolink. Last October we had a great little adventure which you can read about here and here and here (or just go to my archive and hit October 2011).

On my list this time was the FIDM museum (costumes from TV shows), the Institute for Figuring, and Grand Park. Since I knew that none of these would take too long, I googled "Hidden LA" and found a site with lots of references to pocket parks and thought we could look at those. I also wanted to eat at Homegirl Cafe again, especially since H had not been the first time I went.

We left Claremont on the 9:02 train. You can see that we were there in plenty of time.

 If you don't have to rush through Union Station, you can enjoy the beautiful architectural details.

Here is one of the fountains in a little garden just outside the Station lobby.

Behind Union Station is the Metropolitan Water District building with this lovely fountain.

If you walk around the building, you can see these two murals.

The Light Between Oceans

On tap for book club next week is the best-seller The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman. This story takes place in early 20th Century Australia with a lighthouse keeper and his wife. After Lizzie has several miscarriages, she hears the cries of a baby, and she and Tom find a boat washed up on shore with a dead man and a live infant. Against Tom's sense of right, Lizzie convinces him to keep the baby without reporting the incident.

I know that we will have lots to discuss at book club, but it will be mostly about the circumstances in the book - what is best for a child raised by foster parents who has a chance to go back to her biological parents. We will also talk about the foibles of the characters. We may talk a little bit about the style of the book, but I have to say that, like many first novels, this one leaves a little to be desired. One thing, the writer occasionally slips into the present tense, but it is totally unclear to me why. The pacing seems a little off. It feels, in some ways, like a musical. You know, the plot advances a little, and then there is a song which seems a little long and dwells on one particular emotion, and finally, the plot gets to move a a little more.

This book seems to fall in the category of fiction, but not literature. That's a pretty big category these days.

Random Friday Photo

As seen at Trader Joe's this week

Fonts and Kindergarten

At the beginning of the school year, I do a unit on farm animals (with songs, poems, movement, instruments, etc) in kindergarten. I make my own visuals since the visuals that come with the curriculum (Gameplan by Delelles and Kriske) are a tad pricey ($340 for just K). I have been looking at the little picture I have of lamb and as I point out the letters to the kids, I keep thinking that I need a new visual since the "a" does not look like the lower case a that schoolchildren are taught to print. We are used to reading both the single-story as well as double-story types of letters, but elementary school promotes the single story variety.

I started browsing the various fonts available in my word processor, and the best one I came up with is Chalkboard for the single-story lower case a. The other two most-used fonts have the double-story a.

Dodger

My librarian friend, Heidi, loaned me an advanced reading copy of Terry Pratchett's newest novel, Dodger. We were having a discussion about wanting 1) a good novel to read (I have plenty of non-fiction on my "to read" list) and 2) a stand-alone novel. Heidi said she was tired of all the books in series.

This book is a crossover book. That means that it is good for YA (young adults) as well as adults. Dodger is a character in Victorian London who is fashioned after Charles Dickens' the Artful Dodger, and one of the main characters of the novel is a writer named Charlie Dickens. Also making an appearance is Fleet Street's fictional demon barber himself - Sweeney Todd.

Dodger is a tosher - someone who scrambles after money and items that fall into the sewers. He rescues a girl who is being beaten up from which the rest of the plot emerges.

I have to say that I enjoyed this book, although it will not receive one of my stars as a most favorite book of the year. While I found the writing clever and the characters charming, at times I found the action dragging and had to remind myself to pick it up again. However, for a light read, I would recommend it. It actually came out last week, so no more need for advanced reading copies.

Full Steam Ahead!

I really appreciate the way that my school year starts by layering in. By that I mean that I start with a week or two of private lessons, then I add general music teaching at Vista by mid-September. The first week of October brings the start of the CUSD Elementary Instrumental Music Program (EIMP), and yesterday I had my first string classes.

This year works a little differently because we are splitting up our orchestra into two groups, depending upon experience, so on Mondays I have three classes instead of two. I managed to survive all three groups, mostly because string students are the very best (I may have said this once or twenty thousand times before), and because we start a little slowly, making sure everyone is in the right place. Also, some students are confused and don't make it to the first day of class, so the numbers are a little lower until everyone gets on board.

So now, for me, the school year is running on all cylinders as of yesterday!

Pantry Moths - Yuck!

Recently I noticed that I had a number of flying moth-like insects flying around, and many seemed to be in my pantry. When Kim came over on Saturday, I mentioned this to her, and she told me how to get rid of them. I looked online and discovered that this is an Indianmeal Moth infestation. 

Yesterday afternoon I took everything out of my pantry and found the food items that were not sealed tightly (see photo of the moth in my lentils here) and threw them out immediately. I put everything else in a tightly sealed container and then I washed down every surface of the pantry with a water vinegar mix.

When talking to other people, they said that this might not be enough, so I went ahead and ordered some traps for these buggers. I know that the life cycle can be long, and I may be in for more of a fight, so I am working on the two-pronged approach and will also consider putting some of the foodstuffs in the freezer, because that is also supposed to work.

There may be eggs and larvae that will appear at some point. I also read that their life cycle is faster in the warm weather. 

So far the number of the moths seems to be down, but I will not remain complacent!

The Circle of Life: Musings

This past week has presented a variety of opportunities for me to reflect on the circle of life, as the world spins on. Somethings are new, somethings pass away, somethings remain the same.

Yesterday the HMC community said our final good-bye to Joe Platt, the founding president of the school. Galileo Hall was filled with the HMC family and for two hours, people got up to speak about how special Joe and Jean have been to us all, in so many ways. Although we miss Joe very much, he lived a good, long life and it seems expected (though sad) that after 90-some years on this planet that his life has come to an end.

Unexpected death of people who should still be vibrant in their lives is much harder to take. On Friday we lost a friend to cancer. We last saw Steve in the middle of July, just over two months ago, and enjoyed spending the evening with him and his wife, Susan and other book club friends. Steve was not feeling up to speed that night, and he found out just 10 days after that dinner that he had colon cancer which had spread to his liver.

I did not find out about Steve's cancer until about 2 weeks ago, and I am especially heart-stricken over his death, not just because he was a friend and close to us in age (and that he leaves behind a wife and two sons in their 20s), but that his doctor had told him that he did not need to get a colonoscopy since there was no incidence of cancer in his family. So, his death may have been prevented, and the message here, folks, is that you need to get this life-saving screening done. Period.

Amid sad times, though, rise rays of joy and hope. On Friday, as Steve was leaving this earth, I had the chance to meet this little baby, 7 weeks old. Daisy is just as cute as she can be, wearing one of the tie-dyed garments we made at her baby shower at the beginning of July. Welcome to the world, baby Daisy!

Waiting for Fall

Because I think it is healthy for me (and anyone) to goof off and do things for fun, and because I was inspired by a these articles (this one on a poetry box and this one on a biking poet), I made this little video yesterday afternoon. We are waiting patiently and not so patiently for the days to start cooling down....

Random Friday Photo

As seen on the 101 just south of Santa Barbara in June.