Entries from October 1, 2006 - October 31, 2006
Variety is the spice of life...
Saturday, October 14, 2006 at 04:43PM I'm working on a whole bunch of different stuff this weekend. Last night I cleaned the filter of my fishtank. I had a few casualties this week, tought to tell if it's due to age, stress, or a dirty tank. More than likely a combination of all. I lost one of my amano shrimp. and one of the silver tip tetras. Also, I seem to be missing a rummy nose tetra, though his body is MIA. The amano shrimp have never been truly happy in the big tank. They've been super freaked out by all the other fish since they have lived most of their lives in a mostly solitary situation. So, the stronger/more confident of the two remains. The silver tip tetras are constantly stressing each other and everyone else in the tank out. I think this poor littly guy just died of fatigue. In a way, i think the fewer of those guys the better, since all they seem to do is bugger each other anyway. The rummy nose is just a mystery. Everyone else seems to be doing fantastically. they are constantly hungry and always digging about for food. the flying foxes are huge, probably about 5-6 inches each. The turquiose rainbow is darkening and continues to grow. The Iranian rainbow is looking a bit skinny and probably needs to eat more. (I'm going to go out for more bloodworms tomorrow.) The clown loaches are thriving. The five cory cats are doing great too!
This evening I'm off to play Don Giovanni with Opera Pasadena. It's nice to be out playing oboe, but the sad part is that my mentor, Bert Lucarelli, is playing a Bach recital tonight in Pacific Palasades and I can't attend. I did get to visit with Bert this afternoon over a cup of coffee which was such a treat. He is such a wonderful person... he's one of the things I miss the most about the east coast. The nice thing is that because I travel to NYC for business a few times a year, I get to see him more than I might otherwise. Check out his CD "Bach by Bert" on Crystal Records, the listing is about half-way down the page. There are also some sound samples you can listen to. It's fantastic!
Los Angeles Commute
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 10:54PM I snapped some shots of the city scape and crazy sunset while sitting in traffic on the way home tonight.
The 10 east to downtown
sunset in the left-side mirror
The 110 north at 6th, LACO mural
Living vacariously...
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 09:13PM
So, I got a huge batch of photos from my mom today that I wanted to share. She went on an exciting trip yesterday to the Topsfield Fair in northern Massachusetts. Last year, at this time, I happened to be home for a visit, so Jesse took us to the fair, but that was before I caught the fiber fever. So I guess I'll have to live vicariously through my mom's photos this year and settle for the ration of fried dough I ate at the LA County Fair on Saturday.
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As usual for most fairs, there were lots of super cute animals (My favorite is the Rasta Sheep with the knarly bangs.) and a shearing demo.
(Please bear with me if the photos and text look disorganized. I'm stuggling with the WYSIWYG formatting. Seems dumb because it's supposed to be the "easy" way to do this sort of thing. I can't figure out how to get my cursor to appear after the photos. I've been working on this journal entry for 2 hours now. and have 4 photos and two paragraphs of text. Aarrruugh! I guess this is what it feels like to learn something new after thirty.)
Cotswold ewe
The crazy thing about her trip to the fair was her amazing "small world" experience. My mom ran into my friend Lisa's in-laws who own alpacas and recently moved to a new farm in Vermont called Champaign Valley alpacas. They were at the Topsfield fair showing their animals and selling some fleeces. the best part is that I got a beautiful creamy alpaca blanket fleece out of the deal from an alpaca named Fabian.
