Triple Threat

This weekend was noteable because I got together with 3 different friends, or sets of friends, and I knew all three of them from the old hometown. I completely wore myself out or would have blogged earlier. Now to post pictures without any traceable pictures of me or the friends. One day I may let up on that, but not today.

Friends 1 at LA Festival of Books
Spent most of the day tromping around UCLA checking out books and authors.


With thousands of other people


Went to a fascinating panel on Controlling the Spin, and how it's moving into Controlling with Spin in these modern times. John Powers (mod), Frank Luntz (creator of the phrase "Death Tax" - genius wordsmithing, terrible for policy), Michael Isikoff, DG (Doug Goodman? of Mother Jones), an Joe Conason. They had a lot of really good stuff to say, then they opened the mics for questions and the 9/11 conspiracy wingnuts came out en force to waste our time. What I'd like to know is why the democrats aren't better at countering the republican spin machine.

Friends 2 at A's 40th Birthday

Somewhat out of the blue, I emailed this set of friends last week asking if they'd like to get together. They responded with an invite for A's 40th birthday party. They've been in LA a couple more years than I. I think we'd both forgotten about the other being here because while we like each other, we tend mostly to see each other at parties. Noteably, their parties, but still. The timing couldn't have been better, and I saw a few other familiar faces.

I think the best gift was the naughty talking toy parrot - "Braak! Polly wants a f*ing cracker". The sound quality was a bit muddy and some quick thinker managed to convince birthday boy's young daughter that what Polly wants is a "firecracker". I'm not sure if they found a substitute for when Polly wants a blow job. At any rate.

They had a lovely home. They said it was kind of accidental, it just came with this playhouse:


Then I got back in my car and realized I'd driven exactly 40 miles from home to get to the 40th party.


Friends 3 Hiking in town
Apparently I have been exercising my word of the day, and searching for local hiking spots with true velleity in order to have missed this little park with a mere 17 MILES of hiking trails. I met up with my local friend and his wife (my boss) and their daughter for a down and up hike of about 90 minutes. Yeah, we kept up with the family of small children ahead of us on the trail. go us...

In addition to the stream, we saw a bird of prey (large falcon or hawk type thing), a 2.5' rattlesnake (someone else had previously gotten it off the path and pointed it out), a couple lizards, and other people out enjoying the late afternoon's less hot weather.

The stream has a nice waterfall. My friends think the water is from lawn runoff, hence the extra algae and dry season volume and its terminus at a water treatment plant. At least it seems to support the wildlife and gives some nice atmosphere to the hike.

And I do think that cave shadow looks like a kangaroo.

So I got food, folks, fitness, and fun with my weekend. Good times.