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Originally uploaded by chud.

Still playing with the flickr settings.

This is where I had lunch on my second day riding through Yellowstone Park. I picked up a sandwich and a Snapple at a restaurant in Red Lodge at the foot of Beartooth highway and stopped here in Yellowstone to eat.

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Originally uploaded by chud.

In honor of the new digicam, I’m monkeying around with the settings on my account over at flickr. This is me testing the “blog this photo,” posting to the Lunchroom from flickr. Woo.

This is a picture I took at Yellowstone a few years back. I think it’s probably the best one I’ve ever taken. I used this as my desktop for my work laptop back when I had a work laptop.

We have a shweet new toy — a Canon SD500 digital camera. I’ve been wanting a new digicam for awhile now and have always coveted the Canons, and then last night Beth and I wandered into an electronic store after having dinner out and she just suggested, out of the blue, “Let’s get one” and zeroed in on the one I liked. Who am I to argue with thinking like that? So expect to see more pix showing up around here.

Here’s one from tonight, of Beth and Sammy in bed.

What’s wrong with this picture is that this is a king size bed, the king ain’t in it, and it’s full already — and Sammy’s on my side. But shooting the picture was fabulous.

I’m a big Craigslist fan.

Uh…

Huh, now that I wrote that, I can’t think of a single thing I’ve bought or sold or rented or done or whatever off Craigslist. But fuck it, I’m still a fan, I think it’s great, if for nothing other than the sheer entertainment value I get from it.

One thing I like to do there is post bogus ads for fun. I wrote about one of them here, when I posted an ad looking for a kitten so I could try a new recipe. And then there’s the desperately pathetic hook-up posts that include pictures of the horny hopeful hook-up’er — those are always fun to write about, too.

Anyway, all this is preamble to set up my latest Craigslist post that I’m rather proud of. It’s my response to a post someone put in the Pets section, asking “does anyone know how early should a shih tzu have pups?” My response?

About 6:30 a.m. Any earlier and you don’t get enough sleep, any later and the pups are slackers.

Damn, but I crack my shit up.

Well, Zoe got to Orlando safe and sound as expected. She reports that she had a lot of fun on the flight there, she made friends with the little girl sitting next to her and wants to have a play-date with her when they’re both back in L.A., she stopped crying just before the plane took off, and now she doesn’t want to come home from Bubbe’s house; she’d rather stay there and play with the cats.

So I made the right call. Go me.

Big drama with Zoe this morning. She’s on American Airlines flight 244 right now, enroute to Orlando, FL where she’s spending a week visiting her bubbe. Getting her on that flight, though, now that’s the story.

First, she left for the airport yesterday morning with Beth. They got up at 4:30 a.m. and headed for LAX in plenty of time for Zoe’s 7:15 a.m. flight. I didn’t go with them because I was teaching a class downtown at 8:00 and I couldn’t do the airport and still get to work in time to set up for the class. So amid much tears of sadness that I wouldn’t be there to say goodbye to her, Zoe went to the airport with Beth but without me. And then when they tried to check in, Beth realized an error had been made “by someone” — Zoe’s flight was for today, not yesterday. So Zoe didn’t go to Florida yesterday after all.

4:30 a.m. this morning, it was me getting up with Zoe, because this time it was Beth who couldn’t accompany her to the aiport because of work. So Zoe and I got to the airport and got her checked in (on the right day this time) and then I walked her down to her gate and we said our goodbyes.

Traveling as an unaccompanied minor, the procedure was this:

1. I went with her to the gate where the flight boards, where we checked her in with the gate agents.
2. We said goodbye, and then a gate agent walked her onto the plane and introduced/turned her over to a flight attendant.
3. Plane takes off, flies to Orlando.
4. At Orlando, the flight attendant walks her off the plane and turns her over to a gate agent, who then checks Bubbe’s ID and turns Zoe over to her.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to happen. We got as far as step two.

So I’m sitting there at the gate, waiting for her flight to push back and wondering how Zoe’s doing and kind of missing her already and wishing we had had a few more minutes of quiet time together before she got on the plane, when a stewardess gets off and start searching the crowd at the gate for … someone. For me.

On board, Zoe was apparently freaking out. Not fully flipping her lid screaming freaking out, but definitely crying and hyperventilating and “I want my daddy” freaking out. So the stewardess comes to me with her cell phone and suggests that maybe she can go back to Zoe with her phone and call mine and maybe I can try to talk her down. So I gave her my cell phone number and she went back on the plane and I waited for a call.

When my phone rang, it was Beth calling from home. Zoe had apparently used the stewardess’ cell to call home instead of me, and now Beth was calling me to tell me that (duh) Zoe was freaking out and wanted off the plane. Then Zoe called and I talked to her for awhile and tried to calm her down and basically told her she had to be a big girl and stay on the plane. We ended the conversation with her agreeing that she was staying on the plane but really not at all happy about it.

So I hung out in the gate area, waiting for the plane to push back. And about 10 minutes later, another stewardess got off and came looking for me. Zoe was still freaking out, really wanted off the plane, and the stewardess wanted to see how I felt about it. They were clearly concerned about Zoe and were just waiting for me to say “Okay” to take her off the flight. And as this is going on, the flight’s captain comes over and suggests that I come on the plane and talk to her and try to calm her down there.

So I went on the plane, where the captain suggested that we bring Zoe up to the cockpit and show it to her and try to calm her down there. So now I’m sitting up in the freaking cockpit of the plane, talking to Zoe and the captain, holding up the entire flight, flight attendants and the rest of the flight crew clustered around the cockpit door, everyone concerned for Zoe and feeling bad for her, a plane full of people watching all this activity going on in the cockpit and wondering what the hell was going on, with an undercurrent of “we gotta get going” adding a little more adrenaline to an already nerve-wracking situation.

Fun.

And me, I couldn’t decide what to do. On the one hand, I knew I had to make her stay on the flight and suck it up and be a big girl and do the right thing. On the other hand, I had the superstitious voice in the back of my head saying “It’s a sign! It’s a sign! It’s a sign! It’s a sign! You’d better take her off, it’s a sign! The plane’s gonna crash, it’s a sign!” And on the third hand I really kinda just didn’t want her to go because I was missing her already even though she was right there in front of me.

And so I did my waffle impression: “You can get off if you really want to. But I think you should stay. No, you’re staying. Unless you really, really want to get off. But you’re going. You really wanted to go and now you’re here so you’re going. Unless you really want to get off. No, you’re going. Unless…”

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, the flight crew is watching me, the passengers are watching me, and Zoe — tears streaming down her face moaning “Daddy, I really don’t want to go, I really want to stay home with you guys!” — is watching me.

Fun.

But… Well, like I said, she’s on flight 244 right now, on her way to Orlando. Scarred for life, probably, but she’s on the plane.

And me? I’m sitting here obsessively tracking her flight on FlyteComm, reloading the page over and over again, watching her make her way across the country. She’s just about over Dallas right now, flying 555 mph at 35,000 feet, with 1:50 left to go in the flight.

I think I’ll stop holding my breath when it lands safely. And I’ll start breathing again when she’s back home 10 days from now.

This entry is primarily a note to myself so that next year I’ll remember these things. (Assuming I remember to pre-read this entry in the pre-Independence Day run-up next year, of course.)

For the second year running, we watched the CBS Radford Studios fireworks show from east end of Moorpark Park at Lauren Canyon Blvd and Moorpark Street. 6:30 p.m. arrival gives us decent (if slightly illegal) parking and plenty of time to block out a picnic perimeter. Fireworks start around 8:45 p.m.

We found ourselves next to Stephanie & Co again this year (Katie’s godmother) and we all agreed that we’ll band together next year and make a community party of it. We’ll need the following items:

1. Hibachi for on-the-spot grilling
2. Chainsaw for the stupid tree at the eastern edge of the viewing angle
3. Lighter fluid — not for the hibachi, but to assist in setting up the perimeter. People won’t stand in front of you if in front of you is in flames.

The view from the grass is fine, but sitting on the sidewalk side of the fence accomplishes two things: A) a slightly better view and 2) keeps late-arriving nippleheads from standing there and blocking everyone else’s view from the grass. Towels or jackets laid out there pre-need “save” it nicely.

Extra personal note to myself: remember to get illegal “dangerous and insane” fireworks ahead of time next year. Why should the Indian family next to us get to have all the explosive fun? FYI: Real sparklers would be a nice touch.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
— from the Declaration of Independence

Sammy is fitting right into the household. She even does email.

I bought two CDs the other day, both based on nostalgia: HighLights: The Very Best Of Yes by Yes, and One Take Radio Sessions by Mark Knopfler.

I bought the Yes album because I realized I had absolutely no Yes in my music collection and I liked a few of their songs in the 70’s, like Roundabout, and Long Distance Runaround, and … uh … Roundabout. And some other ones I couldn’t remember but I knew they were out there. So I bought it because I knew it would have the other old songs I couldn’t think of and I’d like them and it was a greatest hits album so the rest was bound to be good stuff too and besides what dino rock music collection is complete without some Yes?

Well.

I’m here to tell you that Yes sucked. There are exactly two songs on this CD that I like (I’ll bet you can guess which ones) and the rest of them are unlistenable rambling arrangements of crap. Listening to it now, I am completely baffled as to why Yes was ever popular. Musta been some goooood acid going around back then…

As for the Mark Knopfler CD… Eh, not bad. It’s “live” studio versions of songs from last year’s Shangri La album. I don’t love it but I do like it — pretty much the way I feel about most of Knopfler’s stuff. I just love his voice, so if he’s singing I probably like it. My favorite track off this one is Boom, Like That, a song about Ray Kroc (“that’s kroc with a ‘k’ like ‘crocodile’ but not spelled that way, yeah”) starting McDonald’s. Go figure.

So the verdicts are:

Mark Knopfler: Yes.
Yes: No.