Underwood Farms

We go to my sister’s house in Chatsworth fairly often. It’s about 45 minutes to an hour on the 118 depending on the traffic. More often than not we stop at the Underwood Farms produce stand and buy strawberries and other produce that’s in season. It’s locally grown (as far as I know) and much better quality than the stuff you get at the big chain supermarkets. They also have a small playground and some farm animals in pens to the side. If we have the time we’ll buy a small bag of carrots for a dollar and feed the animals. They have a few pigmy goats, a couple regular sized goats of different breeds, a llama and some chickens.

The pigmy goats have a series of wooden platforms and ramps that they rest on during the day. When they see people coming with carrots they scuttle down the ramps to get their share. Around the corner are more goats and the llama. They know where the carrots come from too, and crowd around the fence. One of the goats (the white one under the red sign) has learned to rattle the fence with his hoof if you don’t pay attention to him. There’s also a big one with floppy ears that peers over the fence to get his carrots – Deane thinks that one’s a bit scary.

Underwood also has a large farm near Moorpark. They hold a variety of events there, the biggest being the Fall Harvest Festival. The festival runs from the end of September to the end of October. We went there last year and had a good time. It’s a low key event, with a lot of farm animals (and small bags of carrots) as well as rides for the kids. One of their biggest attractions is their pumpkins. The Fall Harvest Festival has acres and acres of pumpkins. Huge pumpkins, small pumpkins (I think they’re actually gourds), white pumpkins, round pumpkins, splotchy orange pumpkins – more types of pumpkins than I knew existed. We had already bought some big pumpkins at the store. With all those pumpkins, we felt obligated to buy something so we bought a couple small ones. One started getting moldy last April and the other we just threw out last week – we got our money’s worth from them. The next one starts on the 26th of September and we’ll probably go again this year.

San Diego, Part 2

We decided to go to the Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma the next day. Point Loma is in San Diego, about 30 miles south of Escondido, so we waited until about 9:00 to avoid the rush hour traffic – San Diego traffic has gotten really bad over the last 15 years.

The Cabrillo National Monument is a great park. It’s a peninsula on the north side of San Diego Bay. The park is named after Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who arrived there in 1542 from Mexico. A lighthouse was built in 1855, and although not active, it has been refurbished and a small museum has been added. Point Loma was used by the military during both world wars, but during World War II it was heavily fortified to guard against an attack on the bay by the Japanese. There are a lot of reinforced bunkers all around the point from that period, along with some historical exhibits. The park also has a gift store, offices, a small theater and some exhibits near the parking lot.

Most of the park is protected coastal scrub, but there are a couple trails. We went on the short trail that winds past the exhibits and around the lighthouse.
The lighthouse is open to the public and has the original late 1900’s décor. When we got there it was crowded, so we didn’t go inside (it’s a cramped building). There is a longer trail, about 1.5 miles that descends to the ocean and back. We were going to go out to lunch after the park, and although it’s not a long trail, it’s up and down dusty hills, so we passed on it this time.

We left the park and drove to the Bali Hai restaurant on Shelter Island, not too far away. The Bali Hai is a Tiki themed restaurant that was built in 1953. The restaurant was so popular at the time, that many other businesses and hotels in the area developed a Tiki / Polynesian theme. We ate on the second story next to a window with a great view of the San Diego Bay. The prices are extremely reasonable and the food is high quality. We had drinks with lunch, so we walked around a bit on Shelter Island a bit before driving back to Escondido.

It had been a busy day, and we wanted to get back before the dreaded rush hour traffic started building up. We drove to Escondido, picked up some dinner and then returned to the hotel. We thought about going back to the Wild Animal Park, but we were tired and it was hot and humid, so we decided to call it a day.

The next day we had donuts and coffee at the hotel and went on our way around 9:30. Deane wanted to check some more of the postcards at the antique store, and we stopped by Carlsbad again. Unfortunately, the store was closed, so we left and continued on our way. Traffic wasn’t bad, and we ended up in Torrance near the Mitsuwa Marketplace around 11:15. We decided to stop there for lunch. We had curry and rice, and looked around a bit more to stretch our legs. After that, we got back on the road and drive the rest of the way home.

San Diego, Part 1

This year school’s starting on the 13th of August, so I decided to take Deane to San Diego for her Birthday since I’d be working on the actual date. We hadn’t been on any trips this summer, except for a few to Los Angeles. There is a very inexpensive, but clean and quiet hotel in Escondido we had stayed at in the past, the Motel Mediteran. We don’t spend a lot of time in the motel when we go on trips; just use it to sleep, so it suits us well. I highly recommend it if you’re out that way.

We packed the night before and left Sunday around 10:00 in the morning. The LA traffic wasn’t bad and we made good time. We stopped at the Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance to stretch our legs a bit. It’s a sort of Japanese mini-mall thing – there’s a Japanese grocery store, a good sized food court and about 10 small shops. The food is really good, but we had made sandwiches just in case there was traffic.

We left the Mitsuwa Marketplace and continued down the coast to Carlsbad.
The traffic remained light and we made good time, arriving around 1:30. There’s an area in Carlsbad near the beach that has some interesting shops, so we decided to walk around a bit as the hotel room wouldn’t be open until 3:00. We bought a bag of licorice at an English shop and Deane picked up some old postcards for a quarter each at an antique store.

We left Carlsbad around 2:30 and arrived in Escondido about a half hour later. Rested a bit and then went to the San Diego Animal Park (they’re open until 8:00 in the summer). There’s a food stand with a nice overview of the park in the Heart of Africa area. We walked out there, bought our food, and everything seemed to be going fine… until the bees came… lots of bees… And they didn’t just hover around; they landed on us and in the food (pre-packaged Southwestern Chicken Salad). Not sure what they were after, but they were really annoying. We ate, scuttling around to different areas in hopes of eluding them.

On the way back we fed the ducks in the lake. They apparently had added some catfish to compete with the ducks, and they swarmed the ducks from below. The catfish were amusing to watch, and they kept the ducks from getting too complacent.

Drove back to the hotel, stopped on the way for a Slurpee (it was hot and hadn’t had one for years). We were pretty tired, so we rested a bit and then went to bed.

G-Force at the Arclight

We went to see G-Force today at the Arclight Cinema in Sherman Oaks, in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The Arclight is a swanky movie theater that has assigned seating (you can select your seat beforehand), very clean theaters, and comfortable seats with lots of leg room. An usher usually comes in at the beginning of the movie to announce the movie to check the sound and picture quality.

They also have a gift store and a restaurant (which is unfortunately only open for dinner now). There’s two Arclight cinemas, the one in Sherman Oaks and one in Hollywood – we usually go to the Sherman Oaks one as its closer. The tickets are $11.50, which really isn’t that much more than regular first run movie tickets, and the added comfort is worth it.

Anyway, back to G-Force. The movie was pretty much what I expected it to be - funny, cute, lot of action and color. We went to the early show, but there were still a lot of kids. Didn’t really matter much as the movie was loud and there weren’t a lot of subtle moments that required quiet contemplation. I’d give it a B+ overall – it wasn’t a great movie, but was entertaining and kept me amused for 90 minutes.

Blogging at Starbucks

Bought an Asus netbook a few months ago. Set up this blog a few days ago. The obvious next step was to go to a coffee shop, buy coffee, connect to their wireless, and post on the blog. Techno coolness would be mine. The netbook has a SD card reader, so I could even take a photo of myself writing my blog post and post it with my post. Could I get any more hip than that? I even had a gift certificate for Starbucks, so in addition to being hip and cool, I’d be thrifty!

We went to the local Starbucks (one of them). I ordered a Grande Mocha and Deane ordered a Vanilla Bean Frappe (aka a milkshake). Despite a bit of confusion with a new employee, we successfully got our drinks (along with a rice krispie snack), and sat down, ready to enter the world of coffeehouse blogging.

I Booted up the netbook, connected to the wireless hotspot. An AT&T / Starbucks screen appeared instead of Google. Ok, no problem, clicked home. Same thing. Tried Yahoo.com. No change. Tried a few other sites – nothing but the Starbucks screen.

I got up and asked one of the Starbucks persons (not the new one) about the much touted free wireless. She said it was indeed free, but you need to buy a gift card. This didn’t make much sense, as generally when one buys something it isn’t considered free. We went around a bit, but I wasn’t able to get any more details except that a purchase was required, but it was free.

Giving up, I went back to my slowly cooling Mocha and packed up my netbook. We left, never achieving the legendary coolness of coffeehouse blogging.

ZAP! POW! BAM!

We went to the Skirball Museum (or Skirball Cultural Center to be exact) today to see the ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950 exhibit. It featured many of the early artists and writers from the 1930s and 1940s such as Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, C.C. Beck (creator of the original Captain Marvel), and many more – most of the big names. They had the original comics on exhibit, as well as original scripts and art. It wasn’t a huge exhibit, but was well done.

They also had some amusing superhero related displays – an old coin operated Batmobile, Kryptonite, etc. You couldn’t take photos of the original art, but could take them of the displays, so I got a few of those. It was also a free admission day, and was fairly crowded – had to take some of the pictures fast to get them without a crowd in front of them.

There was also a companion exhibit, Lights, Camera, Action: Comic Book Heroes of Film and Television. This was a smaller exhibit of various comic book associated media and was centered on the 1950’s – 1970’s. It had games, toys and original comic books – Amazing Fantasy #15, Daredevil #1, etc. from the early Marvel era. They had the original Batcycle from the 1966 television show, but they unfortunately didn’t allow photos at all in the exhibit.

Deane and the Batmobile