A glorious birthday

A fire whirl shoots into the sky as flames from the Hog fire

jump highway 3 about 5 miles from Susanville, California

on July 20, 2020

In what was shaping up to be just another day in hood, my birthday suddenly took a turn for the better (and the bizarre).  First, I won a close set in tennis after my work day, 7-5, in the middle of a heat wave the L.A. Times called "climate change kindles extreme weather".  The weather has gotten so f*cked up there's even a new phenomenon called "Firenado"; a fire caused tornado.  For the first time in a long while, my hands became so sweaty it affected my game.  I kept wiping my hand on my shirt for temporary respites.

After tennis, I visited my kids in their backyard for pastries.  Before I took my first bite, I noticed a buncha flies feasting on something on the ground I couldn't identify.  I grabbed a fly swatter, and with my first swat killed 5 flies.  Wowzers - I've found my calling.  From that moment on, the day turned into a glorious massacre, the likes of which I'd never experienced.  By the time I was done, I'd counted 46 casualties (see below).  This wasn't just happy hunting.  I had to prove to myself my eye sight, hand-eye coordination and speed were intact, and with a kill ratio of 95%+ I passed with 'flying' colors.  During the rampage, I remembered the line from Vin Diesel's character Riddick in the movie Pitch Black (the first one), when he slashed a predator alien creature to pieces and said, "did not know who he was f*ckin' with".

My only regret was when I looked up, my kids had left the backyard in disgust.  I stopped and took the picture below before a regiment of ants began marching in.

August 18th, 2020 - the world is a
better place without 'em

A half-ass trip to Santa Barbara in the middle of COVID fire and fury

The Thursday before I picked up Jun for our one-night stay in Santa Barbara, my car died.  I had to have it towed to the Tesla dealership in Costa Mesa to replace the 12V battery.  12V battery??  I thought Teslas had one big bad battery that powered everything, but it turned out there is a 12V battery that performs similar functions as the ones in internal combustion vehicles.  And mine just happened to fail earlier than usual - they're supposed to last up to 4 years.  Anyway, I got my car back the following morning thanks to Tesla's speedy service.

The following day - Friday - I picked up Jun and we headed towards Santa Barbara via the same route (405N to 101N) that I'd traveled once a week for over 3.5 years while I worked in Thousand Oaks.  Except, this time COVID-19 had alleviated bumper to bumper traffic typical of normal driving conditions on the most awful freeway in SoCal:  The 101.

Our Santa Barbara hotel, the Hyatt Place, charged $9.99 for parking per night - not a warm and fuzzy welcome.  I can't remember the last time I was charged a parking fee at a hotel - maybe courtesy of COVID-19?

The following morning, we headed to Mission Santa Barbara, only to find out everything but the gift shop was closed.  So I took a picture of Jun taking a picture of me, and after visiting the gift shop, we drove to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, ordered two tickets online per the parking lot notice posted.  This was an interesting proposition:  Most of the museum's exhibits were indoors and shuttered because of COVID.  The only two attractions were the Butterfly Pavilion, and Dr. Dolphin's shtick on dolphins and whales.  I'm not sure why the fine folks at the museum didn't feel compelled to inform the unsuspecting patrons in advance that COVID had sidelined most exhibits, but had I known, I would've preferred to spend my limited time (and money) elsewhere.  However, since the $30 fee for two is considered tax deductible donation, I'll just think of it charitable support to help the museum through tough times.  

I took this picture of a butterfly with a broken wing.  We saw many such wounded soldiers in the Pavilion, and surprisingly, these missing parts did not seem to affect the butterflies' flight.  We were told by one of the employees broken wings are either from old age, or mishaps from running into things.  Butterflies with broken wings become easier prey as their escape velocity reduces.

And a picture of our exit from the beautiful Butterfly Pavilion.  We left, went downtown, parked near the Sterns Wharf in the Santa Barbara harbor, walked to the end of the wharf and back - later, I found out the top of my head cooked there at some point.  We ate lunch at Helena Avenue Bakery (food was great, but menu limited) - and drove back home.  Along the drive back, we stopped by one of the 'middle of nowhere' beaches with summer homes, and in Thousand Oaks to visit one of my tenants for the first time.  As of late, my tenant and I have become best friends navigating through the maize of feces Home Depot Warranty has laid out for us in our quest to get my LG fridge compressor replaced.  And I thought LG was top of the line..... whatevs.

The Great Escape (from mouth to anus)

In the classic true story WWII movie, "The Great Escape", Steve McQueen's character attempts multiple daring escapes from a German POW camp before he succeeds along with a bunch of his ombres.

Equally impressive is an aquatic beetle named Regimbartia attenuata (Ra), whom once swallowed whole by a frog, escapes through the frog's back end (aka anus) in 4 hours tops.  The record holder Ra clocked in his successful exit at a mere 6 minutes in a Kobe university ecology lab, Japan.

Writing today in the journal Current Biology, Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura describes how the beetle, locked behind the frog’s jaws, turns around and scrambles through its digestive tract. In carefully designed lab experiments, Sugiura found that 93 percent of the beetles he fed to the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus escaped the predator’s “vent”—aka anus—within four hours, “frequently entangled in fecal pellets,” he writes. The quickest run from mouth to anus was just six minutes. The beetles then went about their day as if they hadn’t just spelunked through a digestive system, and even swam effectively.