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L.A. Burns Again

Normally, Southern California doesn't burn like this unless we have Santa Ana winds, but the Station Fire is becoming a monster, and now it's threatening tens of thousands of homes, including some friends' homes. We have almost no winds, other than the winds generated by the fire itself, but it has nearly doubled in the last day or so, to 90,000 acres, and it has already killed a pair of firefighters and badly burned some homeowners. This fire season is off to an ugly start.

I'm wondering if it is safe to take a weekender this year. My last two weekenders with the family - to Stanford in 2008 (Freeway Complex Fire) and to Notre Dame in 2007 (Santiago Fire), saw massive wildfires in Orange County that burned fairly close to my house. And in 2007, by "fairly close" I mean within my right leg's punting range. At least the fuel in the hills near my house are relatively light. I'll be wasting some time worrying about this stuff nonetheless.

Oh, Danny Boy!

I was somewhat intrigued by the fact that heavy rain from Tropical Storm Danny fell on Senator Kennedy's funeral today. Oh, Danny Boy? Coincidence?

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 245)

On Thursday, we made it a cabana day at the pool. A cabana with views of the pools, ocean, mountains and grass, with complimentary waters, Maui style chips, poi chips and anything we want to order. Mai tai. Until that is, I spied a sea turtle and I went to investigate while trying to decide if it was safe or unsafe to bring daughter in. The coast here was rocky, and the rocks were sharp and unstable. That's a bad combination. They scraped my legs and my toes. Then came the big one. I slipped down a big rock with coral, and it tore a nickel-sized slice, from which it removed a chunk of toe about as big as an extra-strength tylenol. I could have used that.

It bled a lot. All over the dirt path up to the pool deck. All over the edge of the pool deck. All over the shower. All over the grass. They brought the HazMat cleanup guys, as if my blood was some sort of dangerous terror weapon. As they were cleaning up, people were asking them if someone died there.

No. Nobody died. The irony is that the cut forced me to lay down in the comfy cabana chair until dinner time, doing nothing but eating and drinking mai tais. That turned out to be better than my plans.

Ten Movies I Recently Watched on DVD (No. 23)

Here are another ten recent pulls from the Netflix queue, with my one-to-five plus rating, and the IMDB users' score.

1. Doubt (7.8) ++++ A very interesting and thought provoking movie.
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (8.1) ++++ I enjoyed this movie, but slightly less than I expected to enjoy it.
3. Bottle Shock (6.9) ++++ Loved the plot. Loved the characters.
4. Underworld: Evolution (6.6) ++++ Another solid piece of work in a solid series.
5. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (6.6) ++++ I'm a fan of movies about lycans.
6. Yes Man (7.0) +++ Amusing.
7. Confessions of a Shopaholic (5.6) +++ Funny at times, but as a lawyer, I couldn't look past all those violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
8. My Best Friend's Girl (5.7) ++ The jerkish behavior was over the top. The love connection was implausible.
9. Bedtime Stories (6.2) ++ To be punny, this movie put me to sleep.
10. Australia (6.9) ++ I found the characters annoying, which made this long movie way too long.

Dragging and Blogging

Since the summer began, it seems like I've been too busy for anything. My clients are demanding, but slow to pay. My plaintiff's cases are time-consuming, and not settling. Stuff around the house is breaking, and getting caught up to take our family vacations sometimes required all-nighters that I am too old to deal with. But I'm almost caught up now. My workload is balanced. I'm behind on almost nothing. My concerts and vacations and reunions are over. I can actually go back to blogging and just playing with the kids again. I'm starting by finishing and posting all the stuff I saved as drafted in July and August. Then whatever comes to mind.

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 244)

This was once a beautiful neighborhood in the village of Kalapana. It was once the site of homes, a fishing village and one of Hawaii's finest black sand beaches. In 1990, from April to December, of lava from Kilauea Volcano buried the the town and this - the Royal Garden Subdivision - beneath as much as under 10 meters of rock. Today, officials have set up a path into this area to give access for visitors to see (from a distance of about a half mile), the current lava flow as it reaches the sea. The path has several wortwhile vendors of food, drink, flashlights, and of course, artwork.

I grabbed a rock from the lava fields and then headed out to the viewing area. The walk across the lava was really difficult with a toddler. It wasn't worth it. Perhaps my first bit of bad luck for taking the lava rock?

Waiting for the Night to Fall

and thus endeth our Depeche Mode concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Until tomorrow night, at least.
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It's No Good

"Don't say you want me. Don't say you need me. Don't say you love me. It's understood. Don't say you're happy out there without me, 'cause it's no good." Enjoying Depeche Mode in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It's actually not "no good." It's good.
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Isn't the song sweet? It's not often that you get a romantic song written from the viewpoint of the stalker.

Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 243)

We couldn't believe our luck last month when a big pain-in-the-butt case settled, leaving me with a chance to book one more vacation before the kids go back to school. We selected Hawaii, and specifically, the Big Island, and even more specifically, the Hilton Waikoloa Village, where my daughters coveted a session with their dolphins and dolphin trainers. We even managed to find a decent flight just a week before the trip. Then, a few days later, Hurricane Felicia grew to a category 4 beast, and it was headed for the Big Island. As we arrived on Sunday night, the forecast called for her to come ashore early this morning, right about at our latitude, albeit on the other side of the island, as a strong tropical storm with 40+ mph winds and 8 inches or more of rain. But she did not. She drifted to the north, raining all over the windward side of Oahu, and leaving us with weather that looked like this: 

I'm feeling so lucky, maybe I can afford to take one of those lava rocks from the volcano tomorrow.

Summer Beach Trip - Tropical Storm Day

The forecast was "Tropical Storm Warning" and flash flood warning, with winds over 40 mph and up to 11 inches of rain. The actual weather was clear skies, no rain, and strong onshore winds. We hit the pool. Better photos to follow some Tuesday or other.
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Summer Beach Trip - A'Bay

This is the view from A'Bay - Anaho'omau Bay, behind the Waikoloa Marriott. Sunset our first night was at 6:55 p.m. About five minutes after sunset, the first bands of rain from Tropical Storm Felicia fka Cat 4 Hurricane Felicia were supposed to start drenching us. They never came.
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Summer Beach Trip - Dolphin Encounter

The Hilton Waikoloa Village is most famous for one reason - its dolphins. They have a dolphin lagoon where guests can sign up for sessions with the dolphins. Two of the players out there are mine. I'll put out some better quality shots later with some of my Tuesday Travel Photos.
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Summer Beach Trip - Sunset

The service on our United Airlines flight to Kona was terrible, notwithstanding the friendliness of the flight crew. They only stock 8 meals to sell to a plane of 180 souls, and by the time they get to the end, they are out of everything good. They also don't start beverage service until 2 hours into the flight. They also sold us our seats without telling us that their available seating sucked. However, it wasn't all bad. We were treated to a very nice sunset while approaching Kona. The cameraphone did an awful job capturing it.
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Summer Beach Trip - SFO

First stop: San Francisco. We had to fly into SFO for a connecting flight to Kona. The layover was supposed to be less than 2 hours, but it ended up being more like three hours. The attitude of the employees working the gate was piss poor, too. But I'm starting a vacation. I'm not going to let them kill my buzz.
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Tuesday Travel Photo (No. 242)

I took this photo while whale-watching with Island Adventure Cruises in Anacortes, Washington, just a few hours after we ended our June 2009 Alaska cruise. We had hoped to take this sort of watch-watching trip while in Victoria the day before, but we ran out of time. So when we got to Seattle, we rented a car for the day, drove up to Anacortes, and started looking for whale-watching boats. Luckily, we found one that brought us to this place.

The little guy here is K-42, the youngest, and yet-unnamed baby of K-pod.