I found an incredible set of post-WWII photos.

One of the perks of working in storage facilities is cleaning out the abandoned units. You would think its the kind of job that belongs on Dirty Jobs, and often it is (one time we had a customer who's doggie hotel went bankrupt and as a result he was able to keep is stuff in storage for 3 years without paying OR accessing it... this included dog food that attracted crickets which attracted spiders which attracted beetles...); but slightly less often there are units that are full of things that just needed a little TLC.

Last month we cleared out the unit of a deceased music teacher. The other side of treasure hunting is the tragedy that usually brings you to such circumstances. I don't know anything about the death of this particular individual. I suspect that his unit was deemed abandoned because the family members were unaware of it and, when they did find out about it, the amount due was so high they opted to let it because our site's property.

Even though I never heard his story and met any family members, I could tell you that he was a saxophonist and an aspiring (or maybe accomplished!) composer. He really liked cheesy laughs and had books and books of awful one-liners and knock knock jokes. This must have made him popular with his high school students because there were cards and plaques from student honoring him. From 1951 to around 1954 he had a small camera with which he took pictures of himself and servicemen stationed in Japan; especially the all Black army band.

One of my co-workers and I decided that the pictures were too cool to toss with rest and, before another guy whisked them away to be presented to potential buyer, I managed to snap some iPhone pictures of the album. I've been begging him to give the pictures to me if the buyer doesn't take them. I really hope I can scan them and get them to the California African American Museum.

I cooked eggnog (the cooking is, apparently, optional).

Re-appropriated glass milk bottles from my two favorite dairies!

At last week's Pasadena Farmers' Market I bought a pallet of eggs from a local guy (not as good as my mother-in-law's friends' eggs, but definitely tastier than any store bought eggs I've tried!). This week, I had not baked enough pies or cookies calling for so many eggs to consume them before our trip out of town to the folks. Another food-oriented dilemma we had was an abundance of milk and half & half in the fridge only days before the journey.

Oh what to do?

MAKE EGGNOG, OBVIOUSLY!

Creative cooking is something we call "Christenson-ing" in our circle of comrades, after our ingeniously creative beer-brewing, recipe-discovering, you-tubing gourmet friends. Instead of planning on discarding our invevibly expiring dairy products, I intended to Christenson some eggnog to take with us on our journey.

I started with this recipe, deemed the "Amazingly Good Eggnog Recipe" which called for cooking the eggs sightly instead of the traditional raw egg yolk ingredient. I made some adjustments having learned a few tricks recently regarding dairy (i.e. light cream can be replaced with half & half and good old fashioned vanilla ice cream can be used for heavy cream) and used mostly half & half instead of milk and cream. Having sampled the awesomeness of this eggnog, I can definitely say that the half & half replacement was successful - particularly for those who add milk to their thick 'n heavy store bought nog like myself - but I can see why the milk is parted into cream portions and milk portions; that is that the two seem to deal with the spices and eggs flavors differently, the milk giving you the smooth start and the cream giving you the lingering sweetness. In any event, here is how I made the recipe which turned out GLORIOUS and absolutely perfect to my taste buds!
(also, I tend to like a little more spice, so you can reduce all the spices by 1/2 a tsp)

(imagine that the palett on the left is FULL of eggs from the Pasadena Farmer's market ;) )

ingredients:
.5 g. of half & half
(or 1 qt milk & 1 qt light
cream)
1.2 c. or sugar
5 whole
cloves
1 tsp of nutmeg
1.5 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp of
vanilla
12 egg COLD
yolks
(*optional: rum)



quick instructions:
1) whisk together the yolks and sugar
2) combine 1 tsp of vanilla, nutmeg, &
half the half&half (or milk) over heat until it boils
3) reduce heat to medium and add the egg yolk mixture slowly
4) stir vigorously for 3 minutes, remove from heat and let cool for 1 hour
5) Finally, add remaining unused ingredients, stir, and refrigerate overnight



extended instructions:
1) Begin by separating the yolks from the egg whites. This is most easily done when the eggs are cold as room temp eggs may have more delicate yolks (you can use the egg whites for whipped topping or meringues later - just
make sure they stay away from ANY moisture).
2) On the lowest setting in a large sauce pan or broad stock pot, combine half of the half & half (or 1 qt of milk) on the stove with the cloves, 1 tsp of vanilla, and the cinnamon for several minutes (5-10 min).
3) Slowly bring to a boil over the course of another 5-10 minutes and let it boil for 5 min. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO SCALD!
4) While you are GRADUALLY heating the milk, combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk thoroughly.
5) Reduce the boiling milk to medium heat and the yolk mixture gradually. Continue to stir it for 3 minutes, keeping it from thickening.
6) Remove from heat and let stand for an hour.
*7) Add the nutmeg, remaining vanilla, the rest of the half & half (or the light cream) stir together.
8) Bottle and let sit overnight. (It can be chilled in freezer and served an hour later, but if you let it sit for at least 6 hours in the fridge, it gets so much more creamy and flavorful!)
9) Serve directly from the refrdigerator!


*1-2 shots of Sailor Jerry's per 12 oz can be added after the chilling stage (1 shot = rummy overtones, 2 shots = grandpa's favorite eggnog) OR
you can add 1-2.5 c of a light rum in the 7th step. I don't like the rum to overwhelm the flavor of the eggnog (which is delicious without it) so I recommend only 1 cup for the whole recipe.

The Pizza Martyr

I cannot help myself but rail against Mama Edda's Gourmet Pizza as the owner recently demanded storage here under some unreasonable terms and offensive language. Perhaps the pizza is good, but this angry, insulting little man sure knew what he was doing when he cursed me and my day. I don't like how much I don't like him. When you're the king of your own dominion, I suppose the rules of reasonable social interaction get screwed a bit.

Edda is his wife, but the national pizza chain is his own.

He stored some old equipment from another store with us; it was brought here from Michigan and partially used to open the new store in Old Town Pasadena. What was not used at the store was left in the unit to be sold to another local pizza restaurant. I can imagine that, not unlike the way he surely handles business and relationships, it was accidentally forgotten when its usefulness was exhausted and, thusly, he became late and owed an extra fee. It was this unfortunate conveyance of information that lead to a series of back-handed insults at my inability to run my store well. Grrrrrr... In any event, he eventually paid, transferred the unit and its contents to a new "sorry sap" who could "waste his time storing his s*** with [me]" and the he unhappily, if purposefully, went on his way - to return on the day when the transfer of s*** was to take place.

During the their exchange and the updating of the contract (which took place in our store), the man who bought the contents saw, for some reason, in this rollie-pollie, ghastly fellow a person whom had achieved pizza greatness; he milked the few minutes they had together in the office for any pearls of pizza wisdom he could glean from Mr. Mama Edda. He truly only had a few moments as Mr. pizza tyrant was late to the transaction and had to waddle off to another equally amiable engagement... Grrrr.... Jim, the new owner of the goods, was the owner of his own very small, local franchise called Sweet Basil Pizza. He asked questions of the man that pertained to how he got started, where the locations were, how much capitol it took to build & start his pizza empire and how the economy was effecting it. Mr. Mama held his composure, addressing the questions like the were simple and bothersome, but Joe was eager to hear - even if he already knew the answers.

When it was only Jim in the office with us, he turned to us beaming at the good fortune of such an interaction. I wanted to correct him in his joy and reveal to him the depravity of the awful person whom he felt sincerely graced by. I had no chance to educate him, though, because he was already rambling about the encouragement for his own pizza restaurant the conversation had given him.

He said to us, "I could pick that brain for hours and hours - he is a successful owner of his own pizza franchise! I want to know how he did it!" To my ignorant position I thought Jim was not different, he had a few stores himself. He explained that he had "only just started to franchise" and was "only opening his 3rd store in Ontario." From Mama Edda's he had bought chairs and a new stone firing (?) oven in hopes of turning his place into a sit down restaurant with "a nice patio and such."

And then, as if one topic naturally led to other, he told us about how only a week before he had been held up in his own house with his family at gun point. In one breath he transitioned from his hope for the future of Sweet Basil to an unknowable violation in his recent history. A guy charged in through the front door, they were just watching TV, and demanded the family's valuables . "The next day I told my manager what happened to my family the night before–"
"You went to work the NEXT day?!" I said.
"Of course, I did. What else was I going to do? That's what I do. Ya have to keep going– that's what I do," he said referring to running the pizza place, "Stuff happens and you gotta keep going even if it's not easy cuz it's what I love. It's what I do, it's what I want to do... I made the dough myself, ya know? I came up with my own recipe and made that dough and made the restaurant. You hafta to take a risk, you hafta put down all that money and worry about it tanking all the time but thats just what I do. I'm not getting rich of it, heh, maybe I'll spend my whole life putting money into that place, but [Sweet Basils]'s what I want. It's my place and it's my restaurant and I blow 'em all outta the water – you just come get a free pie from me tonight, I'll show you – and I'll be there tomorrow if someone holds up my house again tonight."

I can't quite put my finger on what was so humbling and edifying in what we heard from him. After he walked out Matt turned to me and said, "He is the pizza martyr."


Despite Google mapping and calling Jim directly, Sweet Basil was hard to find as it was rather un-remarkable. I think, in spite of myself, I was looking for a Mama-Edda's-all-lit-up-&-clean-cut restaurant. The store, sandwich between some other forgettable store and a 7-11, was made up of basically the giant pizza oven and a counter. No drinks, no tax, a flat screen TV and broken cash drawer where our $5 bill for the salad went and sweet sweet basil in the dough. It was the most magical pizza I've ever had.

The Irony of Dumpster Diving

(sorry for the delay.... several drafts of this disappeared... and then I got shy realizing this is not my best writing... and then I started teaching myself CSS & HTML and forgot to post this two weeks ago... thanks for your comment PC - it reminded me to blog!)



In the "comments" section of the last blog, I addressed Pasadena Cafe briefly on the topic; and, to some extend, PC pointed to one of the predominate frustrations I have with the act of dumpster diving in how it is received socially. I fancy myself a slightly skilled observer (given I must have gleaned something useful from my newly acquired Sociology degree), but I am not separate from the social expectations for behavior that clearly, if unspoken, do exist. One of them being that dumpster diving is unsafe, unsanitary, and an activity of the desperate (Forgive me if I sounded desperate in my last post - but, aside from curiosity, truly I thought of myself as being economic) and the other that it is "better."
I first found myself wondering where the line between desperate and economic really is. I wonder how many of us (particularly those who could in some capacity afford their B.A.) consider economy sub-par, or perhaps equate it with undesirable or at best, less-than-comfortable. I do not mean to insult the wisdom in avoiding eating things left in a bacteria-infested garbage bin; but, along side the easy-to-damn Man, I do intend to bring into question the collective judgment, in which I participated, that deemed this not just a reasonable activity, but an important, healthy, better one.
I understand these Houses choosing to live as Freegans because it is 1) economic, 2) offsets the waste created, 3) is a form of subversive consumerism, & 4) it creates a standard for the House where consumables were truly expropriated (no one could be mad at the person who grocery shopped because they didn't get the right granola bars, nor could someone defend their peanut butter against the rest of the House).


I began this article with the title and thought "The Irony of Dumpster Diving" because in my research to find out legal and safe practices (and during the event itself) some very interesting things came up.
While we were sloothing through the treasury of meat, eggs, and bread, I happened upon a box of Camel Reds (a brand I'm particularly fond if I do get the rare treat of sharing a smoke with someone). In the same fashion I happily retrieved a frozen, sealed package of rack of lamb, I reached for the carton. One of my friends said "oh don't take that! It's been opened, it's not safe!" And the absurdity of the statement hit me, "They can't possibly be any worse for you than they already are!" Together, we laughed at the truth in the statement; earlier in the night one of my compatriots had offered a round of cigarettes to the divers of their own, fresh purchase.
Over the next several days I ogled and feasted on my goodies. I noticed my bank account was not as drained as it generally is at week's end. I could not help but speculate on what I would do with the extra income (for the most part, I put it toward my Legends of the Hidden Temple graduation party). In the relief of dodging anxiety over a tight grocery budget, I immediately thought of the many wonderful ways I could entertain myself with the extra dollars for the month. The correlation between saving and recreation was not lost on me. It dawned on me that if I made smoking a regular, perhaps even just a weekly habit, I would quickly shell out what could be spent on rack of lamb.

What kind of consumer was I really becoming? It's a fallacy to consider my saved income from the dive as "free" or "unspent" money (I think, too, this is an attitude that pervades the self-righteous who look at people of privilege and think "hmm, they could be paying for so many meals if they weren't making car payments on a BMW..."; it's also foolish and untrue). For all intents and purposes, I was just as wealthy/poor as before I decided to feed my family from a dumpster (after all, I am a member of privilege - as we all are, more or less - and that is a difficult thing to exclude from wealth). But the question still remains: what do I do with those extra dollars? The only fair and real answer I could come up with is consume. Cigarettes, a completely superfluous, un-fulfilling and arguably damaging activity, are not outside the logical or moral confines of such subversive consumerism. Instead of existing only in privilege, I found myself walking a line I couldn't quite put my finger on - the better line....

The elitism I was edging my way towards was found roots in a quote from an essay called "Second-Hand Dresses and the Role of the Ragmarket" by Angela McRobbie:

Although there seems to be an evasion of the mainstream with it's mass-produced goods and marked-up prices, the "subversive consumerism" of the ragmarket is in practice highly selective in what is offered and what, in turn, is purchased. There is in this milieu an even more refined economy of taste at work. For every piece rescued and restored, a thousand are cosigned to oblivion. Indeed, it might also be claimed that in the midst of this there is a thinly veiled cultural elitism in the operation...

Forgive a rough landing to this blog - but, ultimately I realized that narrow line I walked was between economic & elitist/subversive & snobby. I was still consuming, even if I wasn't paying for it and my means of consumption were even empowered by dumpster diving - an activity, by the way, that comes at the cost of time and energy that many people more depraved than I simply cannot afford (i.e. I am young, have no children, don't commute to work, only have on job, etc). This is not to say that I "should" fully adapt an impoverished lifestyle - I don't mean to say that dumpster diving isn't truly helpful or the idea subversive economics requires a change of socioeconomic status to justify it. But I do have to reconcile my own privilege with a socially abnormal practice, lest it become a snobby hobby or a creative delusion of self righteousness.

At the end of day it is 1) not more economic - I could simply work more with my free time and afford the food I spent time diving for; 2) makes room for other waste as I am still capable (and do) consume; 3) subversive? yes - but better... not so sure; & 4) may find it's only and better purpose in expropriation - but only if expropriation is the philosophy of all involved and towards all property.

But like I said... this is a rough landing and that last thought is for another day.

What do you want to read next?
	My Small Rant about Community Houses (old and un-posted)
	The Pizza Martyr (a real person we met)
	Peti and Walker (an episode of historical fiction from childhood)
pollcode.com

In the Mean Time

Sorry - I'm trying to set a good pace with the voting & writing, etc - but things have been a little hectic around the Northend-Sheean household with work and not work and interviews and cars breaking down, etc.

Matt's dad flew in from Kenya Tuesday night and came to work on our car WEDNESDAY afternoon! And we've had a number of friends offer the use of their cars in the mean time. What beautiful community we have.

In YOUR mean time (while I write a post on the winning topic) I thought you might enjoy some of my favorite people on the Internet:

MattSheean.com - If you haven't been here yet, you're not my friend.
This is my husband's beta website. You can also see his more recent work on his blog. He just got signed to book that will be at ComicCon, too! But even I can break his NDA so all I know is that there are some pretty good illustrations in it. =D

Micah's Blog - My brother in-law luv's website!
This is another fantastic artist whom I recommend checking out from time to time. Without being a totally biased sister, Micah's pretty fantastic. I'm particularly fond of his accuracy with the guns he's draws... ;-)

MalachiWard.com - Matt's other brain.
By far the most attended and anticipated art shows at our university were ones involving Malachi, go check out his work and you'll understand what I mean. I hope he doesn't mind me tooting his horn, but I'm a big fan. Malachi participates in Illustration Friday, too, so you can count on a weekly blog posting.

That all for "In the Mean Time." By popular vote, "Why THIS Universe Doesn't Have Masked Vigilantes" will be up over the weekend!

Stupid Things We Heard People Say at the Huntington Library

Last week's poll results are in:

And I must honor the voters! Unless I'm the California Supreme Court. Oops! Did I say that? Whatever. Politics. Onto silly people saying stupid things!

Last week I started my new job. As it turns out, I have the first Thursday of the month off! As it also turns out, the Huntington Library is free (thank you Wells Fargo) every first Thursday of the month! We found this out by accident when searching out an opportunity to speak to a supervising security guard about a job opportunity.... and this is where the adventure began.

As we approached the Huntington, we noticed an unusually large crowd before the gates. Above them was a sign that indicated it was "Free Thursday!" This didn't make finding the head security guard easy. After the doors opened and the crowd thinned, we found him and Matt approached, having a conversation that went something like this:

Matt: Good morning, sir. So-and-so told me that you would be the person to talk to about the application I submitted a month ago.

Sir: Yea, that'd be me. We haven't been hiring due to a freeze, but it was just lifted and we have one slot open.

Matt: Oh, well I'd like that slot!

Big Dog: You workin'?

Matt: No, not right now.

Kahuna: Of course you want that slot. I'm workin', you're not.

Matt: ...

Main Man: You got people skills? Because this job's just about people skills. No kung fu, no mace, no nothing. Just common sense.

Matt gave him his name and number and they parted ways. We decided to take advantage of the Free Thursday (a very nice attendant had some extra tickets - apparently even though it's free you have to pre-order tickets) and we meandered in to the cactus garden. We found a secluded little corner next to a giant agave plant to have a quick kiss but were interrupted by an approaching group of 20-something women. We sort of scuttled passed them while they admired the plant and heard one say,

"Oh how cool! This plant a total throw back to the Jurassic period or something."

Now, just to be sure, I stifled my laughter until I checked Urbandictionary.com; I'm pretty sure the young lady was using the 4th definition provided:

4) throw back
	very old fashion damn that mc hammer video is throw back

We giggled about other plants in the cactus garden "sporting their spring time flowers" and "totally rockin' that prehistoric vibe."

Eventually we made it to the made our way to the bonsai garden (which was absolutely amazing!). To get there, you enter a bamboo forest and find yourself among traditional Japanese architecture and landscape. After the bonsai exhibit you immediately find yourself in a zen garden. You can sit and admire the sculpted trees and manipulated rock patterns. We couldn't avoid the man in boat shoes, obviously wearing short for the first time this season, explaining to his wife, who stood very close to the description placard that this was "some kind of meditation garden."

After relaying this story in writing, I realize that it was far funnier to Matt and I who spent the next 20 minutes chuckling about the tendency that type of museum goer has to share their "outside" knowledge before reading the description placard.

The final leg of the trip landed us outside the arboretum. I was simultaneously admiring the magnolia trees while searching for the nearest exit to relieve my aching feet when I noticed a gate seeming to lead to the parking lot, "come on!" I told Matt and traipsed in its direction. Matt lagged behind a bit looking at me quizzically, I reached the gate and said "what is it? let's go, my feet hurt!" He strode without rushing toward me, shyly eye-ing people passing who I had not noticed were looking at me, and said, "I think we should go this way..." I took me a second or two to notice the sign next to me that said "exit"; it pointed the way the stream of people was moving and was obviously placed next to the gate I'd forced open to avert confusion...

So much for my high horse. =)

What would you like to read next?
	On Street Soliciting.
	Das Reihngold: My First Time at the Opera
	Why THIS Universe Doesn't Have Masked Vigilates.

E.D.A.R.

This video features Union Rescue Mission's CEO Andy Bales and a family at URM showing how the E.D.A.R.s work.¹

EDAR stands for Everyone Deserves A Roof - the cross between a shopping cart and single-person tent was inspired by President and founder of EDAR, Peter Samuelson, when he sought to provide the self-described needs the homeless he interviewed on his bicycle route.

Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa are the creators of the current model of the EDAR having won a design competition Samuelson sponsored at Pasadena Art Center College of Design.

EDAR's are given free of charge to homeless individuals who are best able to benefit from their recycling and shelter capabilities. EDAR units also provide a sense of ownership and pride to those largely deprived of both. And as Peter Samuelson asks, "Well into the twenty-first century, if the best our advanced society can do for the hundreds of thousands of homeless human beings... men, women and children... who live among us is the cast-off box our refrigerator came in, what exactly does that say about us?"

Visit www.EDAR.org for more information

The shelters were particularly important to Union Rescue Mission and the other LA missions this winter season with the overwhelming increase in shelter needs. ABC Los Angeles reported last month:

Officials at a winter shelter in Burbank say they have seen a 1,000 percent increase in demand since their doors opened on Dec. 1.

In this video from urm.org, you can see how the regular living quarters at URM were altered to incorporate EDARs and provide more space for families this winter.

(Also... I did a vlog for CP a while back... you can watch me stumble over myself in the URM archive room here, if you like.)

¹Video first reviewed on The Hobo Soul

Sneak Peak at the Rose Parade Floats!

Only but an hour ago my friend and I were enjoying the garlic knots of Mama's Brick Oven Pizza when a strange sight we beheld on the unassuming streets of Fair Oaks, South Pasadena...
In the dark outside the pizzeria, it seemed that the regular pace of flashing headlights and break lights had ceased; instead, something large, looming and a little bit frilly was eeking past our restaurants front doors.
"Are those floats?" our friend Peggy said. Her soon-to-be-husband, Josh, had just been explaining that he would be walking tomorrow, New Year's Day, with the FTD float. "I think it is," said Wendy, rather nonplussed (I think this was her way of staving off hunger... we'd been waiting in a very busy Mama's for our pizza for a while). For a few seconds no one said anything - it simply was not possible! There were no crowds to greet them... no cheering onlookers to block our view... and no sunlight to confirm our bewilderment.
"Should we go outside?" asked Peggy, she stood immediately and than sat back down looking waiting for a fellow diner to give her a cue, "YES!" I cried and we all hoped out of our seats with more energy than we knew our weakening, pizza-lacking frames had left in them.
We bounded out the doors and stopped short, realizing the curb was only two feet from Mama's entry way. This is so surreal! I thought to myself, we simply couldn't have fought the throngs on Colorado for better seats! How serendipitous!
"I'm twittering this!" I told Wendy, "Dang it, you beat me. Should I get my camera?" We all nodded grasping for our own camera phones to commemorate in pixel mediocrity the moment.
For moment, we looked through time portal at coming year; we saw a glimpse of what the street-sleeping celebrants on Colorado would wake to the very first morning of 2009. It sneaked through South Pasadena while the rest of sister cities threw tortillas and shaving cream at the cars daring to travel the floats' future route. But only 3 hours before the crowds would erupt in chaos to bring in the New Year, we saw future!

I did my best with my little LG phone, but here is a sneak peak at some of the floats in the Tournament of Roses:

Tournament of Roses sneaks down Fair Oaks from Danica Northend on Vimeo.

This past Saturday and things.

So, I enjoyed a little premature birthday present opening tonight.
Matt got me the coolest Indiana Jones/Mummy/Steam Punk boots ever. Okay, they're not as crazy sounding as I just made them out to be, but I still think they say "Danica's out for an adventure/some minor heroine-ing!"
I used to envy Meghan's a bit, but now I have my own pretty rad version! The only thing is.... apparently they're made of emu. Is that cool? Or weird? They look cool, that's for sure!

So I promised a vlog for Saturday and it took me a while to get all the pieces together - but here they are:

Item #1 - "Pre-Christmas Party Vlog"
So, I'm a little shy because it is my first Vlog and I dunno why I decided to do it rather early in the morning. As a result, I am blinking quite a bit because I suddenly realized how puffy my eyes were...

Item #2 - "Danica's Party"
This was the video recorded my Wendy at the party. Awesome. We have sealed our friendship with physical interaction. I will say that Skype-ing is pretty dang close tho.

Item #3 - "Matt & Danica's Reception Entrance"
So... this is how deep the nerd-dom runs. Yes, it's in our blood. Apparently, the night before the wedding my mom and two uncles stayed up pretty late making this incredible presentation for Matt and I to enter the reception hall to. Needless to say, Matt married into the right family.



Pre-Christmas Party Vlog from Danica Northend on Vimeo.


Danica's Party from Wendy Bee on Vimeo.


(If this doesn't work, you'll have to click here... sorry!)

Snow in SoCal?

No way!

Raise you're hand if you've lived at sea level your whole life.

Just in case you fall into this category:

Definitions of snow on the Web:

• precipitation falling from clouds in the form of ice crystals
• a layer of snowflakes (white crystals of frozen water) covering the ground
• English writer of novels about moral dilemmas in academe (1905-1980)
• fall as snow; "It was snowing all night"
• coke: street names for cocaine
• bamboozle: conceal one's true motives from especially by elaborately feigning good intentions so as to gain an end; "He bamboozled his professors into thinking that he knew the subject well"
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

And here is the article I'm referring to:

Brrr! Arctic Blast Headed for SoCal

KTLA News

December 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES -- A rare 50 year Arctic blast is on it's way to Southern California according to weather forecasters.

Experts predict the cold weather pattern, which could extend from Alaska to San Diego, will arrive this weekend and send temperatures plummeting.

Freeze warnings are already in effect for the desert areas of Southern California, including the Antelope Valley.

OWSweather.com Meteorologist Kevin Martin predicts a 50 year event.

While Martin is usually conservative on these events, the pattern highly favors it.

"We are in a pre-1950 type pattern, "said Martin. "We know we are due for a winter storm sometime this year.

The type we may be dealing with will be ranked up there with the known years before 1950, which set record low daytime temperatures into the forecast region.

With this, may come low elevation snow."

Forecaster Cameron Venable is seeing very cold temperatures in the Los Angeles areas as well.

Torrance is not usually known for winter weather, thus making this an interesting event for Venable to track.

"Temperatures in Siberia, Russia will be -81 degrees this week, "said Martin. "With those type of temperatures the arctic air mass has to spill somewhere.

Our answer of the exact track will become more clear this week.

All residents in the mountain communities should prepare this week for very cold, winter weather, with snow."

Indications are a second, colder storm could hit near the 18th-22nd time-frame.

The details on that will have to be sorted out.

Christmas Bash!!

Dancing Elves invite you to a Christmas Bash at the Sheean/Northends:
For the record: we will all be performing these dances at the party.
As a bribe: Matt and I will DEFINITELY perform these dances at the party.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Come come come!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Tee hee

A bit of humor from Plentmag.com:



By the way, fellow Pasadenians, did you know that there is a great little farmer's market on Tuesday (ALL DAY Tuesday) at the park at Villa Parke? Here!

View Larger Map

We found it by accident one morning when taking our one year anniversary present Wilson basketball out for some court time at 7:30am! It was complete with a range of florists with exotic collections, several beat up pick-ups delivering vegetables and other organic goodies, and a guy playing classical guitar!

Awesome. You can see US there, too, on Tuesday mornings on the court.

Paperback Dreams

Paperback Dreams is the story of two landmark independent bookstores and their struggle to survive. The film follows Andy Ross, owner of Cody’s Books, and Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler’s Books, over the course of two tumultuous years in the book business.

Paperback Dreams Trailer from abeckstead on Vimeo.

We saw this documentary Wednesday night at Vroman's on Colorado. The showing also included a panel of two other independent bookstore administrators: Book Soup and Skylight.

I'm not going to write too much, but I would like to highlight some of the most interesting themes that came up in the film and during the panel.

Books have suffered in a most interesting way as a result of our modern culture's lust for speed and information. Patrick, the web-presence of Vroman's, answered an audience question regarding the Kindle and what such technology possibly means for physical books and their retailers. What he said, I thought was slightly brilliant. He pointed out that the format for music has undergone probably 15 manifestations since its recording (the iPod being the most successful & the disks being a bad idea from the get-go), but books, he said, have yet to really evolve and probably never will. "I think books are a more perfect and durable technology." While the Kindle might be popular for the world traveller who doesn't want to bring a library for just the plane rides, there is a much more efficient way to access or transmit classical and popular knowledge that already exists. Even audio books comprise hardly a fragment of the market for any given topseller. As Matt put it, "basciallly, all the Kindle is, is cool. That's all it has going for it."

Not only was the night educational, I found a rather powerful metaphor for what my professor and the French call "savage capitalism." I'm sure this was not the intention, of course... but what the film and the panelists had to beg on behalf of the dying industry they represented was for loyalty and patience and a shift in values from their customers. As consumers, we want satisfaction, not opinions; we value more bang-for-our-buck which means abandoning the remotely inconvenient, anything that might consume our precious time (i.e. person to person interaction and physical browsing). But the argument suggest that we might be investing poorly. There is a creativity absent in Amazon.com that is only accessible in a tangible world, it only happens in conversation. One of the audience members pointed out the "curatorial value" independent bookstores offer with their staff picks, intimate familiarity with their selection, and unique customer services.

My favorite point of the night (next to the former owner of Cody's comparing Jeff Bezos to Stalin and Hitler) was when Emily, from Skylight, pointed out one of the most important elements to the success and existence of independent bookstores. She was telling us that we could order the books we wanted from her store on the Internet, but that she also understood the search engines on the website were awful (all panelists agreed to this) and that we can't satisfy the demands of our modern persons' curiosity as it strikes at 3AM, "Search on Amazon, I don't really care, I search on Amazon... search when it's convenient. You can [still] come to the store and pick it up and still participate in this community institution."

Have you ever thought of a bookstore as a "community institution"? Paperback Dreams talks about the "Paperback Revolution" in the 50s (the era of Cody's & Kepler's) when books, and therefore knowledge, became incredibly accessible to the common person for pennies and dollars - bookstores became havens for for free-thinkers and informal informational exchange and discussion, particularly in the 60s. In the cases of Cody's (on Telegraph in Berkley), they even became places of respite for the marginalized and havens for the injured (literally... injured in police marches and such). Emily's expanded on the practical role of this "community institution" as it can be appreciated by consumers on a historical level, "Skylight is 12 years old," she said, "but the a book store (formerly Chatterton's) has been in this place now for some 40 years." Being a "neighborhood fixture" required tenacity from the customers who still visit the store despite the name change and passing of those "some 40 years".

A pertinent point that all the panelists adamantly made was the need for independent booksellers to resist the temptation of serving the whole world (as Powell's showed possible). They even said that their stores are not about trying to expand in order to serve the greater LA area. Being greedy and trying to acquire new markets can lead to forgetting who their community is, and community, the film points out, is how paperback selling began. Rather, they are "the neighborhood's bookstore," a "community institution" that in their steadfastness remembers whose they are.