Big Bear

Our Big Bear stay at the Honeymoon Hideaway did not last long. There were several little things that were suboptimal yet tolerable, until we spent nearly three hours trying to get out of the driveway the next day! We imagined it would be icy in the morning, so fighting all natural instincts to wake up early, we waited for it to warm up before we set off around noon. Darron had tire chains, but the incline of the driveway coupled with the ice proved to be insurmountable and we learned the feeling behind the phrase, "snowed in." Our entire day was shot just trying to leave the cabin.

So we very nicely brought this to the management's attention and requested another option. For our trouble, we were upgraded - for no extra charge - to a grand, new cabin that slept six, had marble countertops and stainless steel appliances, a jet jacuzzi, pool table and darts board, two decks, a fireplace, a heating system and effective insulation, and best of all, a driveway we could drive in and out of!

From then, we could not be stopped except by our own vacationy laziness! As it was midweek and the crowds were gone, we went on a peacefully (mostly) solitary walk around the frozen Big Bear Lake, built a snowman, made yummy dinners (one night Darron made the most perfect s'more ever), went skiing where Darron avoided smashing his head for once and I avoided having shoulder surgery again, read books, watched cable TV (remember, I gave away my TV and Darron only has snowy analog network channels!), explored the neighboring town, and also visited the little local Moonridge Zoo, which takes in injured or orphaned local animals, or sometimes even abandoned exotic pet animals. 

We saw retired San Diego Zoo arctic foxes, owls of many sorts, a black bear who was found as a baby abandoned and starving in a watermelon patch, some bison, bald and golden eagles and hawks who got cataracts and went blind from pesticides or were shot by ranchers, a mountain lion, a squirrel with vertigo that was found injured after he fell out of his tree, a tortise named Speedy, a very nervous African hunting cat called a serval, and these young timber wolves. So mournful and eerie. If you've never heard a wolf howl, hit the "play" button below.



And we adopted a snow leopard named Milo for a year. Snow leopards are an endangered species, very rarely seen in Central Asia, and never below 5000 feet elevation, which is probably why he's in Big Bear. Our little adoption fee goes toward feeding and caring for him, though watching him eat, it probably only buys him two days' worth of food! You can read about all the animals' stories here.

Tom's Niece

Turns out Tom is not the only one in this family with perfect pitch (aside from our more actively musical family members, undoubtedly).  Darron came up with an electronic tuner, and I hit A right on the money! followed by E, D, and G.  Now I just need to dust off that ol' violin and record a few albums to pay for all those lessons that apparently taught me this vastly useful skill...

Cultured

Our LA field trip:

I'm not a huge museum person, as anyone who has been to one with me can attest, but I wanted to see the Getty for its architecture and the views were supposed to be fantabulous!  Turned out to be foggy with visibility of like o.1 mile, but it was kind of cool to be high up on the mountain in a neat place in the wispy, drippy fog.  Made me feel like I was in Star Wars, in a place like Naboo.  Darron wasn't keen on going, but he ended up enjoying the art quite a bit (and I finally learned what Rococo style is), so that made the acculturation all worth the $10 parking fee.

A couple of hours later we headed a few miles away to Beverly Hills.  On our way we found some irony. For lunch, I am so sick of Mexican food that I never eat it if I can help it, but we went to a place that made oh-the-best Mexican food I've had in a long time, if ever!  Today it finally occurred to me why I'm sick of it:  it's because it's ALL the same.  Everywhere you go, it's all the same.  Burritos, enchiladas, fajitas, tamales, flautas - with 50 bajillion Mexican joints to choose from around here, it's all the same!  But this place, they had the most interesting Mexican food ever, and it wasn't some sort of fusion food - their recipes came from their ancestors (or so they say).  Darron ordered horchata too, and although I usually don't like it, this stuff tasted just like liquid rice pudding!  And the corn tortillas, which I also don't generally like, were so soft and fluffy.... mmmm, sooooo good.  It was all good.  My Mexican taste buds were revived in this oasis of yum.  The price was not bad either, compared to the cost of an ordinary lunch elsewhere, for the resurrection of a cultural cuisine.

After our wonderful gastronomical experience, we wandered over to Rodeo Drive for a little window shopping.  I have to say, the famous Rodeo Drive didn't impress me much.  For one of the priciest shopping destinations that the stars all go to, it was only two blocks long, with the same stores you see in major cities everywhere.  There were even a few storefronts with "For Lease" signs and carelessly hung butcher paper in the windows.  It was a very uninspired place, save for the Mikimoto store.  We dropped in and found one of the employees to be nice and chatty, considering we must have looked like hobos compared to their normal clientele.  We learned a few tidbits about pearls, the economy, and "luxury-class" shoppers.  These shoppers have not been immune from the economic downturn because, as the employee put it, "they have money, but they're scared money."  And about pearls: the golden pearl is the most rare and from the Tahitian seas, while the smaller white ones are cultured in Japan.  Earlier at the Getty we learned that when Mark Antony first met Cleopatra at a feast she threw for him and was surprised at its opulence, it's said that she threw a pearl into her wine and drank it to show him that luxurious excess didn't concern her.  Now that's brave money!

The Griffith Observatory was our final stop.  Since its 4-year renovation, it looks great!  If you haven't been there since 2002, it's worth another visit. The new reclining seats in the planetarium and the show itself are nicely redone.  Did you know that the earth "wobbles" on its axis one full turn every 26,000 years?  For this reason, astrology, which is based on readings from 2000 years ago, is off by about a month!  Does this mean I'm actually a Sagittarius?  I should go read my astrology book again and see if that explains the complexities of my character!

Altogether, an acculturating day.

(Disclaimer: future blogs are likely to be much shorter.)

New Year's

I don't do New Year's Resolutions because they rarely last past the 2nd or 3rd, then I feel like a loser, so why inflict pain on myself needlessly?

Darron and I did a bunch of nothing today. It entailed:

• Sleeping in until 11am (early morning today!).
• Eating cereal.
• Taking a shower.
• Checking the news and email.
• Studying the Industral Revolution by way of teaching Darron to use a sewing machine to mend a rip (he said he felt "so domestic" - and he's a fast learner).
• Watching Darron take a nap.
• Eating a sandwich and some soup.
• Checking the movie listings to see if there are any movies out that we haven't seen (there aren't, except some really bad ones).
• Putzing around while Darron went home to clean dishes before I drove over to meet him for dinner.
• Writing this blog.
• Helping Darron brainstorm the notable things that happened to him last year and coming up short.

It's a good thing we have stuff planned for the rest of winter break!  We're going to Big Bear next week to ski and play in the snow for a few days, since it's only three or so hours away.  Tomorrow we're going to the Getty Museum, then grab lunch in Beverly Hills on the way to the Griffith Observatory for a little science and sunset action, then maybe some stars (you know, Venus is really bright and close to the moon right now, and Jupiter was visible very close to the moon a couple weeks ago).  The best part?  The museum and observatory are free, as is celebrity hunting! Aside from the once-again-cheap cost of gas, the only cost will be for lunch... one place I found has lunch entrees for $9-12, so considering we are going to spend the whole day in LA, we're going to make out like bandits!  Sure beats going to The Happiest Place on Earth for a whopping $69 apiece (food not included).

So... hurray for cheap entertainment!  Hopefully a trend-setting day for the rest of the year.