Black Socks & Shorts On Clueless Californians

When I was growing up, men and boys wore black socks with trousers.  If you were wearing shorts, you might wear white socks that went up to your mid calf or higher.  If you were wearing sandals, you didn't wear socks.  It was "gauche", in bad taste, looked bad, and - as my mother used to tell me - the darker socks held smell more, and could not be bleached out and sanitized as well as white socks could.    So I went more than 4 decades not seeing any respectable man or boy wear long dark socks anywhere, except during a soccer practice, if the team colors required dark socks to be worn.  Any man who wore dark socks with sandals was an obviously clueless social inept.

Then I moved to California.  I guess, back in Arizona there COULD Have been long dark socks being worn but most Phoenicians wore their barrio shorts so low that they were longer than most girls' capri pants hems, so I never saw them.   But here in California, boys, young men, middle aged men, old men, fat men, thin men, guys of all ages and ethnicities and marital statuses are wearing long black socks with tennis shoes or sandals and short pants.  When did that become socially acceptable, or even a preferred way to wear socks?  I've seen it outside Sports Chalet, in malls, at gas stations, walking down the street, in grocery stores, at COSTCO, and even at the beach.

I will not embrace this silly trend of long dark socks with shorts of any hem, I will not like it Sam-I-am. I will not wear them near to dusk, I will not wear them on a bus, I do not like the looks of it, I think in fact it looks like sh*t.  Just as I have refused to wear shorts that extend far below my knee, or brown-bagged elastic waisted old-man pants, or over-priced Ed Hardy shirts.  I'll leave those to the sheeple.

Just when did this "fashion trend" begin, and who can I credit (or blame) for promoting the acceptability of such poor choices? What "personality" thought it was a good idea, and now so many sheeple want to be just like their icon?  Put some trousers on, a kilt, or wear lederhosen perhaps if you're going to sport dark socks in America. Wear dark socks with sandals, and you're demonstrating you don't understand the joy of wearing sandals.

Best Father's Day So Far

- Wake up whenever I want to, after 8:30am, to the sounds of birds chirping outside the opened windows - it's been in the 60s every night this month, and in the 70s every day.

- Have a nearly all-organic breakfast, with my wonderful wife.  (only the bacon bits, portobello mushrooms,  and the Fage Greek yogurt were not organic)  Scrambled local eggs, sweet onions, bacon bits, shrooms, and a bowl of Fage with local raspberries and blue berries.

- Drive down to Salt Creek beach, getting there before 11am (so that we have a parking spot), and do yoga, side-by-side, mats sharing a sheet to keep the grass off the sheet. Ambient temp 72F, light 5mph on-shore breeze, not a cloud in the sky.

- Walk back up to the car (a nearly 200 foot vertical climb) to exchange yoga mats for beach chairs and water.  Walk back down to the shoreline, just soaking up UV and the gorgeous weather.  Other people's toddlers cutely played in the surf nearby... we didn't have to take care of any of them. =)

- After an hour or so, walk down the shore, and back up to the car, and drive to A's Burgers in Dana Point, to have a delicious, lettuce wrapped double hamburger

- Drive home in the convertible, gather reading materials and adult beverages, apply more sun screen, and head down to the pool.

- Enjoy lounging at the pool, reading many chapters of my book, consuming Cruzan rum laden drinks, soaking in the hot tub, swimming with my wonderful wife.

- Sometime after 5pm, walk back up to the house with my wife, have a delicious dinner together, spend more quality time together.

Of the quarter century of Father's Days I've had, this was the best one ever.

Picking Sides In Syria? Lannisters, Tullys, Baratheons, or Greyjoys?

Bill Maher made an excellent observation last Friday on "Real Time":

"MAHER: You mean al Qaeda? Because we're basically arming al Qaeda. I don't understand this --

ALTER: There's a peace conference. If they don't go into that peace conference with at least some victories on the rebel side, the rebels won't show up. So the president is trying to bolster them enough so they can get to the peace conference.

MAHER: It's like picking sides in Game of Thrones. "

Transcript link here. Syrian deaths over time, here.  BBC's comprehensive map of the violent factions who are often fighting each other, as much as they are fighting Assad, here. CSMonitor's take on the chaos here.

Frankly, I'd go with the Targaryens. It's wise to not bet against those who control dragons.  It just sucks that in Syria, the closest Targaryen equivalent are the fundamentalist Sunnis who want to establish an Islamic state...  =(  The both eat hearts as part of bizarre rituals.  =(

Smashed Blueberry Homerun

Shipyard Brewing Company's Alan Pugsley has hit another homerun with this amazing ale "Smashed Blueberry".   Wow!  I found it in the "Seasonal Craft Beer" section at Total Wine, and thought "the Imperial Porter was great... why not try this one too?"

It was amazing.  It had a smooth taste, full of flavor, and after swallowing, it was like a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory scene - 'the blue berry really tastes like blue berry!'  I tasted blue berries.  I smelled blue berries.  The melodious scent of ripe blue berries filled my sinuses, senses, and total being.  I was surprised to find I was not turning blue and swelling up into a spheroid shape.  "Pleasant" doesn't begin to describe it.  Delicious, and worth the $6 I paid for it.

Alan Pugsley is a master of his craft, and I for one am delighted that he's in Maine making amazing craft beers and ales.  I normally do not like fruity beers or ales, but Smashed Blueberry has opened my mind and outlook to new possibilities.

Grammar & Accuracy Matters: Then?

I was driving along Golden Lantern in Dana Point earlier this month, when I saw this license plate holder in front of me.  "My wife is better then yours".  Well, first of all, that's just stupid.  That Corolla driver has never met Dr Desert Flower, and she is the best wife in the world, so wrong on the premise.  But look more closely, "then yours" indicates the driver doesn't understand the difference between "than" and"then" (it's simple, google it, Corolla guy).  But if I assumed this was intentionally grammatically structured as accurate, and that the driver was implying "First of all, my wife is better, then, your wife may be 2nd best" he's lacking a comma, so that is not accurate either.  Another failure of the American education system.

It is nice to drive around California and see very few "Truth Fish", W, "Rhino Hunter" or anti-Darwinian  placards besmirching my field of vision when I am at a stop light or parking lot (as there always were in GA, SC, and Arizona).  There's alot more "Hope", Obama/Biden, Evolve Fish, Wiccan, Coexist, Surfer, and laid back emblems, stickers, plate holders, and placards.

Absolutely Rotten Mango

Earlier this year, I bought a bottle of Absolute Mango vodka for Dr Desert Flower.  She wanted Citron, and Total Wine was out of Citron that day.  We both love the taste of mangoes, so I thought, "why not?" The Mango Absolute was a mistake.  Our bottle carried a pungent aftertaste reminiscent of what a kitchen garbage can smells like the day after you throw away a bunch of orange peels.  There's a acrid, revolting, intrusive scent and acidic lingering taste that took a great deal of cranberry and stevia to over-power.  It's never a good idea to drink something whose taste you need to "over-power" or "over-whelm".

I won't be making the same mistake again, of buying or drinking Absolute Mango.  If you enjoy the biting taste, stinging scent, and lingering "ewwwww" on your tongue that is similar to rotting orange peels, then this beverage may be for you.

Stevia Delivery Methods

Trader Joe's provides many different ways to deliver real, organic, healthy stevia into your diet.  I've tried each one, and have found that my favorite is the liquid version.

The liquid version uses ethanol as the carrier.  Three or 4 drops from the eye dropper make a cup of tea or coffee as sweet as a heaping teaspoon of sugar, but adds zero calories.  And it is organic, so there are NOT any residual fertilizers or pesticides on the leaves used to make it.  Good stuff.

My next favorite form is the organic stevia extract 1 oz. (28.35 gram) bottle.  It comes with a tiny little 45 mg spoon, that has the same sweetness to it as the 3 or 4 drops in liquid form.  The only minor downside, is that in a low humidity environment (like S.CA or Arizona) the liquid can dry out around the eye-dropper cap can make it harder to open if your fingers are weaker.  Again, it is organic.

The powdered stevia extract in packets is "convenient" for traveling, as there is no mess, no spillage, and it travels well.  Sadly, they use lactose to add bulk to it, since the 45 mgs would be so small, most Americans would feel they're being shorted, so something powdery and sweet is added - which sort of defeats the purpose of using the stevia to avoid sugar intake.

The least favorite stevia delivery method is the GIANT 276 gram "Stevia Extract" (see above on the right).  It is not organic, and it is LOADED with useless lactose.  Sure, it is cheaper than the bottle that is 1/10th its size, but instead of using 45 mg per serving, you're supposed to use a whopping 876 mg!  Almost 20 times more, and most of that is lactose masquerading as stevia.  Bleh!

Of course the first three of these Trader Joe's stevia offerings are better than the Sam's Club and COSTCO distributed stevia packets that contain either sucrose, lactose, phenylketonurics (aka nutrasweet), with just enough stevia content to dupe purchasers into assuming they're really buying something natural and sugar-free.  The 276 gram Trader Joe's cylinder is probably made by the same manufacturers who push their big-box store diluents.

US Craft Beer Map - 2013

I am happy to be in the heart of genuine Craft Beer land, even if it is still < < 5% of total world beer production (it is the best part of the global production).  Coverage at ilovecharts, here.

Peregrine Vs Pelican, Like A Desmosedici RR Vs Lincoln

Earlier this week, I was at the Dana Point Land Conservancy Headlands around 3pm, with my Nikon binoculars, hoping to see some raptors.  On my way down to the cliff side look-out areas, I spotted a juvenile Peregrine Falcon soaring around the north side cliffs, so I thought i might be in luck.  There are no migrating whales to spot this time of year at Dana Point, but there are no shortage of avian species to  see.

One of my friend Nancee's awesome Peregrine images

I spotted a juvenile Peregrine Falcon soaring over "the Hotel" at the north end of the Land Conservancy.  Her brown speckled chest, large beak, signature streamlined aerodynamic shape, and non-flapping wings distinguished her from the crows who struggled to get any altitude, the seagulls who actively avoided her air-space, and the Much Larger pelicans who glided through the air over the cliffs.  I watched her soar, and delighted to see such a majestic aerial display, when she went from almost motionless to beginning to veer in a Southernly direction quite rapidly.  She had spotted something...  but the limited field of vision of my binoculars I could not see what.  Then, she FOLDED her wings, and she Shot Down, plummeting and accelerating rapidly, trying to attain the +260 mph vertical dive speeds for which Peregrines are famous.  It was very cool to watch.  (for more images, see here: link)

Then all of a sudden...  BAM... She STRUCK the tail feathers of a lone soaring pelican who was also headed in a Southernly vector!  The massive pelican, more than 3 times the size of the Peregrine, lost at least one tail feather, hit a stall, pulled up it's wings, turned it's massive head until it's beak was in-line with it's left raised wing, and looked behind it with one eye to see W.T.F. had just happened!?!  It recovered from the stall, and the minor tail injury, and headed on towards the Dana Point harbor.  The Peregrine steadied her dive into a more shallow angle and plunged down below the Southern cliff face and out of site about 200 feet in altitude loss later.

Now, to give you an idea of what this might look like, if you've never seen a Peregrine falcon in a dive attack and harass a pelican, picture an incredibly fast motorcycle....  say a Ducati Desmosedici RR, piloted by a driver who knows that he (or she) is the best, fastest, top-of-the-food-chain predator in the world, capable of speeds, maneuvers, and lethal strikes that involve multiple Gs of deceleration (often used to snap the vertebrae of their targets) diving towards a Lincoln Town Car, and then punching out one of the Lincoln's taillights, or tearing off the leviathan's license plate with a sharp boot kick, not crashing, and heading away at +100 mph unscathed shrieking a "yeah, I own this airspace" parting cry.

I don't know what the pelican did... probably nothing, just had the bad luck to be gliding 100s of feet below a hunting Peregrine on Wednesday... but I am sure that it will actively avoid getting anywhere near a Peregrine again.  And I had heard that the juvenile Peregrines would fly at a pelican or a large sea gull to "practice" their flying skills, but until you see it with your own two eyes, those are just words, and it doesn't really make an impression.  Truly remarkable, beautiful creatures.

Run Away! Flea!

One of our house cats has been acting strangely lately... hanging out in parts of the house she usually doesn't, jumping up on things that she usually doesn't (like the entertainment center), getting under-foot uncharacteristically, sitting and staring on a cool tile floor in the middle of the kitchen or hall... being weird.   So this morning, Dr Desert Flower picked her up to see what's the matter with her, and to DDF's horror, found the cat's entire stomach crawling with fleas!   Pretty disgusting, yep.

Our cats never go outside, are always inside cats, and we've had very few visitors here in California.  But we do live on a corner, and everyone and their brother walks their dog on our block and around our corner, and the previous owners of the house used to have at least one (if not more) dogs...  so if the flea eggs were in the carpet, or on the sidewalk, they were now infesting our 16 year old cat.

Our morning was spent getting flea shampoo, expensive back-of-the-neck-applied Frontline flea medicine (we had a single dose of Oct2012 expired Revolution, that also kills heart worms, but DDF thought buying a new $50 pack of 3 month OTC Frontline was a good idea, and I don't disagree with her on biological issues), flea killer spray, vacuuming, washing blankets & sheets & rugs & comforters on the "sanitize" cycle, bathing cats, calming cats, gently blow drying cats (so they don't get pneumonia), bleach-wiping down all the dining room chair plastic covers where the cats have been sleeping lately, and trying to generally de-flea our home.  Neither DDF nor I have been bit by fleas here in California - when we lived in South Carolina back in the 90s our apartment became flea infested when the neighbor's dog had them and we shared a common entry way - I remember seeing the dern things jump from the carpet to my hairy legs in Greenville (ew!).

Flea (RHCP variety)

The washer is on it's third "sanitize" load now... with one more to go to complete the day (at 2 and a 1/2 hours per cycle).  The Frontline "plus" will continue for the rest of the spring and summer.  The nice Laguna Niguel pet store lady said that "in spring we see alot of people's inside pets getting fleas".  Same thing in South Carolina, where the winters were mild, there was grass and vegetation for the fleas to hide in, and lots of moisture.   In Arizona, it was far too dry, there was almost no grass (only rock) and most people didn't walk there dogs - keeping them penned up in their back yards or homes instead.

So when / if you come to visit us, don't worry.  You won't get fleas.  The Frontline Plus kills the fleas that bite the cats, and prevents the fleas from being able to lay eggs.  Eggs that hatch and try to feed on the cats will then die.  We'll have 95% of the infestation gone by tonight, and the remaining 5% will die out over the next week as the Frontline takes effect.  Then, at the beginning of July, we'll apply a 2nd dose to both cats, and a third at the beginning of August to get us through the summer with a three sigma confidence level of flea mortality.

Mucus & Sputum Are Your Friends

I heard this on San Diego Public Radio today, and was delighted to see how easy it was to look up:  the mucus in human noses and throats (and elsewhere in our bodies) helps to protect us from bacteria by harboring viral phages that prey upon bacteria (bacteriophages).  You can read about it here in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science of the United States of America (link), or here, in the Journal of Immunology (link).

Those pesky scientists...  testing theories...  using scientific method and publishing peer reviewed articles... taking up tax payer funded government grants...  what do they know?  Shouldn't they just be reading their fundamentalist religious texts and trusting everything to the creator in which they should be placing their faith?  =)

I am glad that Jeremy Barr, Rita Auro, Mike Furlan, Katrine Whiteson, Natasha Talago, Lauren Paul, Marcella Erb, Joe Pogliano, Aleksandr Stotland, Roland Wolkowicz, Andrew Cutting, Kelly Doran, Peter Salamon, Merry Youle,  and Forest Rohwer DID test their theories, and used rigorous scientific methods to show that the phages symbiotically help protect the underlying epithelium from bacterial infections.  Considering the massive amounts of soap, Purell, and bleach I've personally used in the last 2 weeks both at MUSC and at my son's home, and the active upper respiratory infection I was sporting throughout my trip that was causing me to cough and blow my nose whenever a nurse was not present, I am happy to hear that all that mucus was laden with viral phages that were actively working to kill off any bacterial invaders who tried to gain entry.

I wonder how much the phages liked the generic guaifenesin (Mucinex) I was taking?  Old old family allergist, 20 years ago, used to say guaifenesin acted like a 'super highway' making mucus long and stringy, more stretchy, and mobile, less "sticky".  He said that initial trials of guaifenesin with women who were trying to get pregnant helped to thin out and elongate the uterus mucus so that sperm could swim more easily up the walls and get to the fallopian tubes and the precious eggs they were seeking (definitely an "off label" use).  Keep that in mind the next time you cough up some sputum...  lol!

Karma Seems To Keep Working

I went down to the headlands at Dana Point this afternoon, to see the raptor chicks who have fledged and who are flying about, following their parents around, learning to hunt and fly and do all the things avian apex predators are supposed to do in nature.  I had the good fortune to notice a wispy plume of rendered white feathers, blowing in the breeze, and upon further observation, saw one of the chicks tearing apart what appeared to be a sea gull, from the webbed pinkish foot that was sticking out, as large as the raptor chick's head as she rendered her lunch with her beak and talons.  A moment later, her mother and one of her sisters came flying past, with a chorus of shrieks and cries.   It was good to see them flying again, after getting back from South Carolina.    I heard another stationary chick's cries, high up on the cliffs, but could not locate her, so I continued all the way to the headlands at high tide.

I looked all around the far end of the headlands, saw no flight or perching activities, and headed back along the rocks at high tide, in a very slow parkour, to keep my binoculars safe in one hand.  About 100 feet from the main point or the tide pools, I spotted a chick high up in an old crow's nest on the cliff face, eating something white and feathery.   I marveled at her through my Nikons, until she literally saw me watching her from several hundred feet away.  She stared at me, and then took her lunch further back in the nest, away from the edge, to dine more privately, out of sight.

That's when I saw the teenagers, with Coors Lite silver bullet cans in their hands, trying to be secretive in the caves at the base of the cliff.  They obviously didn't like it that some old guy with binoculars was looking up, but they were busy trying to scurry with their cooler out of site too.  They just happened to be directly underneath the first of the chick sister's dining cliff... which really annoyed me, that they were drinking, underage, oblivious the beauty of nature around them.  I mean, I did some stupid stuff too when I was in High School, and I would have cut them some slack... but they were littering their empty silver cans all over the most pristine and best preserved tide pools in all of Orange County.  Had they just quietly carried out their empties in a discreet trash container, I would not have texted the park ranger and describe the 5 teens to him.  He would not have had to hike down to the headlands, and that nice ranger would not have then had to make all 5 of the teenagers collect every single piece of trash along the 1/2 mile rocky coast line from the headlands back to the parking lot.

I reflected back on the dumb things I did in High School as I began to compose this posting.  Littering was not one of them.  Making a fool of myself in front of adults and law enforcement occasionally did happen, but not all that often.  In fact, I was so opposed to littering, that once, while in Munster and waiting at a light on Ridge Road, I saw the car ahead of me open it's driver's door and put an entire brown paper bag of garbage on the street.   When the light turned green, I opened my door, picked up the garbage bag, and followed the litterer to the next light at US6 and US41, where I then got out of my car, walked up to their vehicle, and laid the garbage bag on their hood and windshield, telling the surprised driver "Excuse me, you dropped this back there. Don't litter anymore" before getting back into my car, and driving away.

I try to make it a point to not even spit my gum out, and instead throw it in the trash, as it seems that every time I've spit my gum out in the last 40 years, I wind up stepping in someone else's gum a day or two later. When my son and I hiked "off trail" in Arizona, we carried garbage bags with us, and collected discarded trash along the way... both to help the environment and improve the natural beauty, but also to serve as an alibi if a ranger said "hey! why are you off the marked trail?" Invariably, we'd have a large bag of trash in hand by the time we got back to the parking lot.

I do hope my son's leg recovers fully and he is completely ambulatory before he visits us here again in California.  There's so much beauty to see and things to do in this amazing state.

A Week At MUSC

Well, the last week I've been on an unplanned trip to Charleston SC, to attend to my son in the MUSC hospital, after a nasty knee infection took over and got him admitted to the hospital ER & ICU.  He's recovering now, and will be out of the hospital now and back to his home by the weekend, and I'll be on a flight back to California before Memorial Day.  While I've been able to spend ALOT of quality time with my son, I do with it was under better circumstances.

View from the room, looking NW

I've become very familiar with the one-way, non-linear, and confusing roads of the Charleston peninsula, between my hotel, the MUSC campus, and my son's home.  Next time I travel, I need to remember to pack extra underwear and socks, just in case the trip gets unexpectedly extended, as this one did - then I won't have to do laundry every 3 days.

From the 10th floor observation desk looking north towards the Cooper River bridge.

I wanted to share these lovely vistas of Charleston, as most people who have visited the city have not been 100 ft above the city on the 10th floor of the teaching hospital.  Only the Francis Marion Hotel and Sgt. Jasper Apartments (built in the 50s) are taller than the MUSC patient towers.