The Gurly Life

"I'm a dude! Get off me, you perv!"

On Saturday I had lunch plans with Dee.

This is Dee with the jindo she is fostering, Dori. Dori is a boy, and while the name may sound like a girl's name, it's actually a Korean name so it all makes sense.

As I was running about an hour early (when does that ever happen on a weekend?), I grabbed my camera and played around. I went to the beach, but it was about 11 am so the light could not have been flatter.

This is either interesting or utter shit, I can't really tell. I'm leaning towards utter shit, but maybe I'm wrong. It's taken through the orange slats at the Santa Monica Mall parking lot. I could spare you my utter shit, and only post the good ones, but what fun would that be?

Incidentally, the SM Mall parking lot is total genius-slash-big brother. This is what they have on every floor if you can't remember where you parked your car. I took a picture, because if I had told you, you wouldn't have believed me. Of course, I don't remember my car's license plate, so I'm not sure that this would be helpful. Eh hem. I should have tried looking for "Pixie the Prius." Of course, I might be blogging from a mental asylum as a result, but what a blog post, right?

The other cool thing is that they have red/green lights along the ceilings indicating whether each space is available or not. In case you're wondering, red is for not available, green is for available - once you get the hang of it, it's easy. If you're color-blind, I guess you're SOL. Or you do it the old fashioned way and actually look at the spaces as you drive by them to find the available ones.

Someone was flying a spectacular kite on the beach. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture its dragon face, but the wings were really amazing:

I was trying to do something that I had too much light for: I wanted to use a slow shutter speed to capture motion. At first, I tried standing still, and letting the moving subject go by. Blech. It's harder than it looks to get just the right amount of blur. Also, I didn't have my tripod, or the filter to reduce light coming through the lens, so...

Next, I tried a slow shutter speed while following the subject. The aim is to get a (more or less) sharp subject and a blurred background. The idea was good, if unoriginal, but again too much light and no tripod. Here's the best I was able to do, which is hardly worth writing about (and yet, here we are!):

The lesson here is, practice practice practice. Also, I think it would have worked better if I'd been photographing moving subjects directly in front of me.

While crossing the bridge over Pacific Coast Highway, I took this one:

After lunch, Dee, Dori and I went to a cute little park off Wilshire Boulevard, and sat by the pond to watch the ducks.

Well.

You have never seen such duck drama. First of all, there were maybe three girl ducks and about a dozen boy ducks. Good odds for the girls, but you know that spells trouble. There was a lot of chasing around, flapping of wings, splashing of water, generally a great commotion. All was revealed when we noticed that one of the boy ducks was trying to get it on with other boy ducks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, some of my best friends are boy ducks who like to get it on with other boy ducks; the problem here was that the other boy ducks were having none of it and would squawk with dismay when Mr. Horny Pants would hop on their backs. Finally, another boy duck, probably the pond principal, had to intervene to stop the nonsense. I did not capture the action as I was too disturbed by the duck-on-duck violence. No means no, dude.

And so ends episode 235 of On Golden Pond. Please join us next time when Mr. Horny Pants is revealed to actually be his own evil twin.

Potty, for short

I give you ... Potter Van Smokersdaam. Directly from Amsterdam. Solar powered.

The feed bag

Recently I ran into Ivy the Monkey Goddess in the hallway of our office:

She was leaving the office, holding a stick of butter in her hand. Frankly, I was surprised she had enough restraint not to eat that stick of butter as she went. Ivy, you see, eats her own weight in food every day. See that blue bag hanging off her shoulder? That's what she calls her "feed bag." Yup. She fills that up with food every day and brings it to work, and eats her way through the whole thing.

She then has the gall to say that she wouldn't eat any one of us in a heartbeat if trapped somewhere, say, like a very long meeting.

SEE??

That's ok, make fun of me all you want. But here is a photo by a real photographer, OF A FIRE HYDRANT! That's right.

The photographer is Gail Peck, and her images are always colorful, poetic and welcoming. Check her out!

Morro Bay

Almost two weeks later, the final central coast post. If you want to see really good pictures, then you should go to Michelle's blog and check out her posts: Day One: Breathe; Day Two, Hearst Castle; Day Two, San Simeon and the Elephant Seals (NOT about Maliboo Kitty, thankyouverymuch); Day Three, the Mission and the Rock.

If you missed my other posts, you can read them (or just look at the pretty pictures) by clicking: Some Natural Beauty; Our Photo Safari; Elephant Seals (again, I don't mean Maliboo Kitty); Hanging Out With Michelle; and Hearst Castle.

On Sunday morning, our third day, Michelle and I made our way to San Luis Obispo for breakfast. For once, I could easily have gone most of the day without eating (because we had eaten our weight in yummy food Friday and part of Saturday, so much so that we weren't able to have dinner Saturday evening), but Michelle was ravenous, so off we went. You have to understand, usually in the mornings I'm one of those people who has to eat within 30 minutes of getting up, otherwise people start looking like ham and eggs to me, and they risk life and limb.

We had breakfast at a delicious and popular breakfast place in San Luis Obispo, Louisa's Place. Completely delicious and fun and friendly service, though they did misspell "premier" on their web page. Eh hem. No matter, the food was still good. But I emailed them about it. I mean, I emailed them to tell them how much we enjoyed our brunch there, but I added a PS about the typo. I know it's a little OCD, but if there was a typo on my website, I would want to know about it, wouldn't you? Anywayyy...

I didn't take many pictures, except for one of a beautiful parrot in a tree, but if you click through to Michelle's Day Three post (see link above), you can see some very nice pictures of San Luis Obispo. Incidentally, SLO appears to be overly populated by rather gorgeous people. At first I thought maybe I had been buried with my nose in my camera for two days and that I was appreciating people like a starving person might unexpectedly enjoy liver. However, Michelle noticed it too. I don't know how I feel about that. It occurred to me that my odds of finding a boyfriend would probably drop. Meh. Whatevs.

So blahdy blahdy blah, we walk around, we peruse a couple of shops but not too many because you know how I get and Michelle had mercy on me, and then we head back towards Cambria, with an eye towards checking out Morro Bay Rock. Because we had lots of cold and windy weather, I layered with my silk longjohns (what?!?). On the drive to Morro Bay I depantsed so I could take off the longjohns. Thankfully, I wasn't driving at the time. Don't get me wrong, I have depanstsed and repantsed while driving, but it's much easier when I'm the passenger, I find. Way less veering and erratic driving, no honking, screaming of obscenities or giving of the finger (at me, of course, I can't give someone the finger if I'm trying to drive *and* change my pants, now can I? Silly!).

Anywayyy...

At this point, it's far too late to introduce a few photos with a platitude such as "without further ado" or "let's get right to it, folks!" so I will just say that after all that prattle, you should just be grateful that now I will shut up and you get to see some pretty pictures.

Psyche! Instead of pretty pictures, a picture of smoke stacks. I think this is a power plant, sitting right across the way from Morro Bay Rock. It's so obnoxious that it's almost artistic, isn't it?

A sailboat. Hanging out. I love the blueness of the water and the sun's reflection on it.

Sorting the fish.

Flowers and the row boat.

Morro Bay Rock.

Backlit sailboat. Really a tiny sailboat.

A fishing boat. Again, I really like the sun's reflection on the water.

The water here was completely calm, quite the contrast from the crazy waves we photographed down the street from our little rental. That brings me to the end of Michelle's and my photo safari. I got to relive it a few times by writing about it, but now it is time to turn to the next trip. And there is a next trip on the horizon.

Next: my new year's resolution. Which is not the next trip, but is related to the next trip. Sort of.

Hearst Castle

First, I would just like to welcome the Hearst Corporation internet police. You can relax, only good things are in this post. Feel free to comment, we all know you've stopped by. Second, if there is no Hearst Corporation internet police, shame on them. Really. A media empire and no internet police. Pfft.

Hearst Castle took 28 years to build, and the architect was a woman, Julie Morgan. William Randolph Hearst, newspaper and mining magnate, built his little ranch where, after divorcing his wife, he lived with actress Marion Davies. Or maybe this was his vacation home. Whatever. It is big, it is fancy, and it is chock full of art. Hearst would invite famous guests for eclectic weekends, such as Churchill and Charlie Chaplin, but if you were a boring guest you would not be invited back. That's right. We went on a very informative tour with a terrific guide and the only thing that really stuck with me is that the boring people weren't invited back. Wow.

Anyway, I took some pictures, which you can see here. Below are a few I liked.

This was where Hearst met his guests for cocktails before dinner. The guests had the day to themselves, but they were expected to appear for cocktails and dinner. If you didn't, you weren't invited back. In fact, all meals were in the dining room, and there certainly was not room service. I wonder if guests were allowed to wander into the kitchen and grab something.

Neptune's Pool, the outdoor pool. Nice, right?

Reflections off the water. There's a color one too.

You can't tell here, but the little statue dude at the top of the fountain was wearing boots and a hat, but nothing else, so his little willie is hanging out. A curious choice of statue. Right around the time I took this picture I noticed a speck when I looked through the camera. Michelle and I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out where it was, and ultimately concluded that it must be on the viewfinder. As I didn't see it on the photos, I guess it must have been. Told ya it was a tedious story.

I just love this courtyard.

This is the indoor pool. It's spectacular, with blue and gold tiles. One of the things I noticed about both pools is that they are not like modern pools with a deep end and a shallow end and maybe nice steps to ease you in. They're both just deep, and the only way in and out is using the step ladders. It's a little unsettling, I have to admit.

While visiting Hearst Castle I declined to use the port-a-pottie. As a general rule, port-a-potties are potties of last resort for me as I tend to throw up a little in my mouth whenever I use one. I was hoping the toilets might be gold-plated, but it wasn't so. Those were probably reserved for the guests who didn't bore Mr. Hearst.

Hanging out with Michelle

The bestest part of my weekend on the central coast, of course, was hanging out with Michelle.

Michelle and I have been friends for 16 years, since back in the day when we both had aspirations in the entertainment industry. I was working at the time at a below-the-line talent agency, and Michelle had just moved to the US from England to be married to her first husband. She was living in the OC, but was interning with us. Back then, I was one of those LA people who packed extra water, camping supplies and flares in my car whenever I had to cross the Orange Curtain. I'm only slightly kidding.

There are a lot of things I like about Michelle, such as her brains, her determination, her talent, her loyalty and her integrity, just to name a few, but there are some things about her that stand out for me. For one thing, Michelle finds humor is just about any situation - I mean, life is serious enough as it is, right?

I admire her greatly for setting up her photography business. Not just for doing it, because anyone can pick up a camera and "be a photographer." But not everyone does it right - Michelle is constantly working on her craft, learning, and challenging herself.

Michelle is a strong, opinionated person who can and does consider other people's perspectives and in some cases changes her mind and even her ways.That takes real intelligence. So anyway, you get the idea. We're friends, she's awesome, and you wish you were her. She's also beautiful.

Yes, this is the gorgeous Michelle. And before you go all googly about what a great picture I took, I will tell you that it's only because I follow directions. We were walking along a cute little creek near the Mission in San Luis Obispo and Michelle marched out into the fabulous light with the fall colors behind, turned and said, "Take a picture of me here." So I did. I may have mentioned a few times that Michelle is a photographer. You can see her photos on her website, Memories by Michelle, and I recommend you do. If you click on the Blog tab, you can see her posts about this trip, with photos.

Michelle always takes great pictures of me, so I tried to take some decent ones of her.

I really like this one, too, you can see the sultry side of her. She is likely to point out the imperfections in her face, but I think her face is perfect just the way it is.

Michelle has the travel bug. Pretty soon, she will be traipsing around the world taking photographs, husband Joss and daughter Daisy in tow. Daisy is the cutest, smartest little girl, and boy is she high energy. The thing that cracks me up the most about her is that she will run in circles around and around and around for much longer than anyone thinks possible. I don't know about you, but I don't remember having so much energy, even as a kid, that I had to just run and run and run and run. I did wonder where the circles came from, and this weekend I got my answer. This happened on the beach while we were standing around waiting for the light to go down.

Michelle and I make a good team. We inspire each other with our cameras, and the really awesome thing about traveling with a photographer is that she doesn't get annoyed when I take 20 minutes to get a shot. Usually I can't take photographs and be social at the same time, but with Michelle the two things are one. Bliss! We like to play on the internet, so more than once we found ourselves sitting together in the living room with our feet up in nap socks, laptops on our lap, editing photos and Facebooking, and tagging each other in our FB posts. Bliss!

Out photo trips were slow meanders punctuated by breathers, cups of tea, lemonades, and chats. Bliss!

Here we're chilling out at Hearst Castle, Neptune's Pool. It was chilly but the sun was lovely and warm and the little couches were too tempting.

I took a few more pics of Michelle, which you can see here. Mayhap you will prefer different photos of her than the ones I chose.

We stayed in Cambria, in a rental two bedroom cottage, only a hop skip and a jump from Harmony, Pop. 18. Brilliant idea. Very restful. Here's our little cottage, though I didn't take many photos of it. If you go to Michelle's blog post, Day One, you can see some lovely photos of it inside and out.

Here's our quiet little street, followed by some berries and some trees. Just because.

One evening we went into downtown Cambria and Michelle did a wine tasting for me so I could pick up some wine for a friend who had asked. What a trooper she is! During the wine tasting I believe I got hit on by a firefighter from Ventura - at last, you might think, what she's always wanted! Only, well, said firefighter was a woman. Close, but no cigar.

At the wine tasting we also chatted with a woman who said she teaches at a university training terrorists, and I thought, mmh, that seems unlikely. As it turns out, she trains therapists. Glad I asked before I ran out and called the FBI and caused everyone (me) a lot of embarrassment. No one wants to be put on the FBI's Most Annoying list (less notorious that their Most Wanted list, but it's the kiss of death if you're trying to be even a tiny bit cool, which is of course one of my goals in life).

Next up: Hearst Castle. Stay tuned for tedious tales of port-a-potties and imaginary bugs on my lens.

Elephant seals

After the obligatory visit to Hearst Castle, we headed over to Piedras Blancas to check out the elephant seals. It's mating/calving season, apparently, so my friend Alison (or was it her dog Brennan?) suggested we check them out. They were just up the street. In case you're wondering why they're called elephant seals, it's because they're about the size of the average year old elephant and they have this proboscis-y flappy upper lip.

They are blobby, floppy, wobbly, jiggly, googly and blubbery. When we first walked up to the beach with all the seals (the elephant seal main drag, if you will)

we were taken aback by their enormous size, their numbers, and one of the mommies had literally just given birth and we got to watch seagulls descend upon and gobble up the afterbirth. Gag! I will never look at seagulls the same way again. Yes, yes, circle of life and all that shit, but really, we had just eaten lunch for heaven's sake.

Mostly they lie around. The males (about a 1 male to 15 female ratio, it seems) spend their time fighting each other, presumably for the females. They can get more aggressive than this, but this is what I got:

So they fight, one wins and the other goes off somewhere else looking like he had something to do anyway. Then the winner first takes a breather, then he figures he'll get his just desserts, and he'll wobble over to one of the females and try to mount her. She will turn around and bark at him, with the most obvious "Are you kidding me with this?!? I JUST GAVE BIRTH, for Pete's sake!" look on her face you can imagine. He will gallantly give up, and go on the next one of his conquests, who will turn on him yelling, "Seriously? Do you NOT SEE THE BABY? I have a headache anyway." He will try another time or two, after which he will just lie down and rest. It's not at all clear to me what the heck he fought for in the first place.

Our photo safari

As I mentioned in my previous post, Michelle and I went photographin' last weekend. I had not taken pictures, really, since May, so I was quite rusty. Nevertheless, we had fun, and I did get a few decent shots. She got more than I did, because she's an amazing photographer, and maybe there will be a link to some of her photos soon. HINT, HINT.

So, without further ado, here are a few pictures of the ocean. The complete set is here. Here are a few I liked.

This is the beach just down the hill from where we were staying. It was gorgeous, cold, and not crowded. There were just enough people to make pictures of the beach and the water just a little bit more interesting.

The ocean was quite dramatic, which is not good for swimming but good for pictures. I also have a black and white version of this photo. I keep flipping between preferring one over the other, but today I like the color one better, so that's the one I'm posting.

This one I'm posting for Michelle, who likes the light shining through the top of the wave.

This one I like because (a) it's black and white and it somehow works that way and (b) I like the couple with the fishing rods. There's also a color version.

This I really like, in part because you can see the bottom of the wave through the top, and because I feel quite brilliant for taking a photo of a wave from the back (top?), rather than the front. I was walking above it on the pier and realized I had never actually seen a wave from this angle before.

On Sunday afternoon we went back to our beach to play with longer shutter speeds and water. It was an experiment, made more difficult by the setting sun directly in front of us (too much light for long shutter speeds) and by the biting, relentless cold wind that made our hands completely numb and not very nimble. Most of the shots I took that afternoon are pure shit. But that's experimentation, I guess. So, having made a long story even longer, here are the two I like the best from those experiments.

That kid was out there for a long time and didn't stop moving at all except for about a minute while he kneeled. That's when I was able to get this. This was a 1 second exposure at f/38. Unfortunately my lens was fogging up from the humidity and the cold, so there's a weird streak on the right. Michelle would be able to fix it, but I didn't know how, so it is what it is. I think it might have been better if the frame was a bit to the left, so that the edge of the surf was almost at the edge of the frame, but seriously, by this point I could barely move my hands so let's just be grateful that I even got a shot of the water at all.

This is an odd image because it's almost like like sand, surf and sky all together. But there is no sky in this shot. This was a 5 second exposure at f/40 of the surf mostly retreating from the beach. Weird, right?

And finally, what's a trip to the coast without a sunset shot?

NOT white elephant gifts (see previous post)

On the other hand, sometimes gifts that at first glance might appear ripe for white elephant regifting end up giving people (me and my mom) hours of entertainment. To wit:

Once again, Willow strikes again! What's kinda sad about this is that we're almost enjoying it more than the fancy new tv. Almost. It does have a huge advantage over the new tv: it is portable, and can be shown off at inappropriate moments at work and at play.