July 1st, 2006: A GMC Sierra

33◦ 53’ 42” N, 117◦ 52’ 37” W

Just off of the 57 freeway, East on Ball Rd., South on Phoenix Dr., and West to 1321 Auto Center Dr. (Anaheim) is the Hardin Buick Pontiac GMC Dealership, where annually on the weekend of July 4^th, fabulous discounts can be found! (Sounds like a commercial, hah?)

I only know this because my brother told me the last week in June, when I'd called to see what he’d be up to that coming Saturday. It seems it was this same weekend a few years ago that they bought their last vehicle. I think it was a different dealer (Ford?) the last time though. Apparently, allot of dealers offer discounts on this weekend. In fact, the Chrysler dealer left Don and I a phone message that they were offering the public dealer-employee prices. Thanks anyway. Not interested. Or so I hoped. But then, the following Monday, inspired by my brother’s activities (that tale that I’m trying to tell here), Don did admit to being curious about those employee prices, and we did go and look. I was thankful that it served to convince Don, for his own reasons, that my car does not need an upgrade. I’m really attached to Gandolfa (my PT Cruiser) so I wasn’t disappointed that the best the dealer could do was $18,000.00 (and that’s before you ask any questions—like, "do the windows go up and down and the doors open and shut at that price, or would that cost extra?") I’m pretty sure that price would have been with minimal amenities, and probably minus the tires—that part's not even a joke. My biggest “lets keep Gandolfa” point though, was that the couple we’d bought my car from when it was a year old in 2004, had said they’d had the front windows tinted themselves. None of these cars had tinted front windows—just back windows.

OK, back to the plot: I’d called to see if Vince (brother) and Sharon (sister-in-law) could come out and play with us Saturday—maybe go to a movie—go to dinner, some such thing, Vince had said they’d like to if they got out of the dealer’s in time. We decided to just play it by ear. That he’d call when they were done, which probably wouldn’t be until sometime in the afternoon. He was right. Apparently this holiday activity is popular with allot of people because when we talked with Vince around 1:00 pm they were still, after sitting around for five hours, waiting for their turn with a sales person.

Don had been watching the used car market for a few months—considering upgrading from his decades old Camry—perhaps to a truck, so keeping them company while they waited was a welcome way to begin our visit with them.

When we arrived we were ushered to a room where Vince and Sharon were entertaining a nice sales lady, who was in the final stages of explaining the contract for their shiney new $16,900.00 burgundy GMC Sierra---well, plus some $899.00 for tires ('told you it wasn’t a joke).

Soon we were outside helping Vince and Sharon load their old truck into their new—well, no. That wouldn’t work. I mean, they loaded the THINGS from their old truck into the new one. And off we went to Denny’s and a movie, Sharon riding with me in Gandolfa, Don riding with Vince in the Sierra.

Old Truck


New Truck
(If there was a mirror at the bottom, would they see each other?)

For more pictures, click here.

June 17th

The later hours of Fullerton Arboretum day found me in my backyard reaping the aesthetic benefits of the miniature pink rose floribunda bush Don’s Mom planted when in residence. (For those that don’t know me, we purchased our house from her, moving in, in December of 2004.)

Minus Joan’s TLC the bush is looking a wee bit wild since her absence, but I just love it. In fact it looks very much like the miniature floribunda I tried to grow in Newport Beach, that never seemed to get comfortable in our tiny garden. I’d gone searching the nurseries for that one after seeing it in what was then my favorite magazine, Victoria, a Hearst publication first spotted at a newsstand while on my honeymoon. The magazine had beautiful photography of gardens and homes and focused on cottage industries. The recipes were always exotic, and while I never had time to devote to the art of cookery, I did succeed with a couple of these.

So these are just a few images of the rose bush that evening when I discovered a butterfly flitting about in it.

June

33◦ 53’ 08” N. 117◦ 52’ 58” W.

OK, so the Duffy ride around Balboa was a highlight of May. A highlight of June was the morning of Saturday the 17th when I made my way to the Fullerton Arboretum with my trusty Nikon D70S and it’s 70-300 mm Nikon AF Nikkor, while poor Don was toiling away on the mountain top, weed-whacking our slope, so that we wouldn’t get ticketed as a fire hazard.

Wanting to get to the arboretum before the heat of day set in, I arrived at 7:45 a.m..

“Hmmm. ‘Gates are locked. For how long? Should I go find breakfast and come back later? No, later it will be hot. 15 minutes? Oh well. ‘Guess I can wait 15 minutes. Where’s my book? ‘Back in the car.”

"O.K., Here it is, Water Birds of California (Cogswell, 1977)”, (on loan from Chapman’s Leatherby Library) I’ll just sit in the car here under this tree and read.”

After reading a couple of pages on “The Behavior of Water Birds” I was anxious to point my lens at something. Yes, I admit it. I’m a photoholic. In fact when I lived in Santa Barbara in my mid (to late) twenties, as soon as I learned how to use the pesky thing (camera), I couldn’t leave home without it. If I DID, it was certain I’d see something I’d wish I could take a picture of and I’d be down right cranky about having missed the opportunity, “Damn-it! There’s an ADORABLE seal! Damn-it!!!”

I realized I needed to exercise this demon (camera-dependence), once it occurred to me that, while normal people were simply enjoying strikingly colorful sunsets and post-sunset magic hours, I was angry about them if I had no camera, and fussing about them if I did. Even when I had my camera, I couldn’t experience the beauty in a contemplative personal way—I was making work out of it. And if, after a visit to the dark room (for black and white) or the color lab, the photo didn’t look like the scene had or didn’t capture the beauty I’d expected it to, again I was aggravated. While it was clear I needed to practice being a part of the moment rather than an observer/recorder of it, I carried on with my addiction. “Who knows?” I rationalized, “I might be able to use one of these shots for one of my future photography classes.” The truth? Assignments were always too specific for me to ever be so lucky as to have already taken the perfect picture to satisfy them.

Eventually, after I earned my BA in commercial photography, met Don, who is an excellent photo shooting partner (great eye, loves gadgets; photo, what-have-you, loves exploring, loves nature, etc.), and obtained all kinds of sophisticated photo equipment, the habit finally proved too expensive, and for a few years, though I had great cameras at my disposal, I went camera-free.

Then came digital! No more film costs. No more processing costs. I resisted the craze for awhile, too attached to my memories of the fine detail and vivid colors of 64 ASA kodachrome. Then Don bought me a little pocket sized digital camera and I was hooked. Yes, I miss the clarity and color saturation of slides, but instant gratification is pretty good compensation. And yes, once again sunsets are scanned for interesting foregrounds and bracketed for exposure, but I can enjoy one without a camera too.

Oh, did I digress? Sorry.

O.K., well, finally 8:00 a.m. arrived and into the donation box went my dollars as I strode past, enroute to the enchantments of bees on their flowers, birds on their boughs, webs and their prowlers, turtles and doves. (I bet you expected that last line to rhyme—sorry but the Fullerton Arboretum has no cows.)

Eventually I hope to learn the names of all the flora and fauna, but so far, pretty much just the bird photos are labeled in this Yahoo photo album.

FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THIS SET, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Currently Mine: A Duffy

OK, OK, you’re right. The book festival DOES feel like old news now. At this point I’m starting to think that I should save it until just before next year’s. Disappointed? You were really looking forward to those pics of Don and/or I standing in various lines, weren’t you? Yeah, I know. But hey, now you have next April to look forward to!

So, let’s skip forward to Memorial weekend!

As you know, Don and I are frequent flyers. . . I mean Ferriers ({?} No, we don’t shoe horses! We drive our car onto the Balboa Island Ferry and ride it across the channel to the mainland side of Balboa. Well, lately, rather than taking our car across, we’ve been leaving it parked on the island side and riding the Ferry across without the car. After about an hour of Don being seated at one of the two little coffee tables along the boardwalk, with his coffee and his paper, and of me pointing my lens at the birds and seals near the dock, we ride back to our car and head off the island toward our other favorite haunt, the Central branch of Newport Beach Public Library where we visit the “Friends of the Library” used bookstore and get our weekly fix of literature. Who ever the folks are that donate their books on CD, music CD’s and hardbound books, Don and I thank you for letting us clutter our house with your treasures.

But not this day. This day (Sunday May 28^th), being part of our 4 day Memorial weekend vacation, should be special. It should take fun and leisure to new heights. “Catalina?”asks Don. “We’re here in time, we could hop that boat to Catalina.”

“Mmm, look at that long line. Are we up to milling around shops so full of people we couldn’t see the merchandise? Even if we could, and we felt brazen enough to give more dollars away after giving so much to the boat driver, would we have the patience to stand in yet more lines to buy something? On the other hand, is that what we’d do on Catalina? Maybe we’d walk; admire the architecture and landscaping of island residents; investigate nature. Maybe we should go.”

Don, accustomed after our 15.5 years of marriage and 3 years of dating (not in that order), to this split personality argument I carry on with myself at his every suggestion, had stopped listening after “look at that long line” and was many thoughts ahead by now.

Apparently he’d gotten so far as, ‘How about renting a boat to go around the harbor?’ But rather than risk another circumnavigous response from me, he thought to investigate it first.

A little history here: He’d been wanting a boat of his very own, pretty much ever since we sold Lenox, our little 17’ McGregor sail boat with it’s swing keel and it’s drop mast, and the 34^th street Lido mooring it lived in.

Truth be told, as long standing REA members we’d just spent the previous morning at Mother’s Beach (in Long Beach) watching member exclusive kayak demonstrations for wanna-be kayak owners. They want too many dollars for those little plastic tipsy-tubs.

Back to the subject at hand: Unbeknownst to me, Don was investigating the price of this rent-a-boat option while I was in buying our coffees. He returned to our table just as I did, asking how I felt about an $80.00 an hour boat ride around the harbor. As with the Catalina idea, I’m inclined to discourage large scale extravagances that are likely to leave little to show afterward, but a receipt. I confess, I thought it might satisfy Don’s yearning for a boating experience, and spare us the need to actually invest in our very own floater that would require feeding (maintenance and storage) for the rest of it’s natural life (and ours?). Besides, I had my handy-dandy camera and this could be an excellent photo op! OK, now you know MY materialistic thought processes. I can assure you Don’s were not so conniving. Don was probably thinking about how much I’d enjoy the ride, what with it’s potential for close encounters of the second, or perhaps even first, kind;, of fowl and marine life; and how relaxing and altogether fun, breezing around the harbor in a shady electric boat, on a clear day such as this, would be. This I believe because I know Don’s spirit to be naturally generous, always seeking ways to provide fun and contentment. Ok, and yes, it wasn’t JUST altruistic, he does love boats!

So off we went on a two hour Duffy excursion. Yes, the penny pincher in me cringed when Don told me we’d have two hours to play—but I got over it. Every time I spend large sums of money like this I think, but what about retirement? How will we afford it if we spend like this? And then I think, suppose our health fails by then, or our finances take a real dive. What ever happens, I doubt that turning down Don’s offer would have found me saying, “It’s a darned good thing we didn’t take that boat ride around the harbor!” when I’m old(er) and gray(er)!

So I shoved the penny-pincher out of the boat and, after we stopped across the harbor for snacks, busied myself eating them and taking lots of pictures---Oh now see. That’s something I left out. Being so anxious to chat about more recent events, I forgot to tell you that for my birthday (March 7^th if you want to mark that on your calendar) Don bought me a digital Nikon and a few of its accessories. So I was happily shooting away, while Don expertly maneuvered "Currently Mine", that's the name of our quiet little Duffy, through the channels. (Now, in case you came in late here, and are wondering who that was that I shoved out of the boat; I meant it figuratively. It was a dry and comfortable trip—no one got wet.)

I’m not sure how many photos I want to put on this blog. It might be better to do as I did with the Europe photos. The thing about that though, is that we’re stuck with that small size Where as, if I put them directly in the blog they can be clicked on for a larger format.

I know! I’ll do both!

Hey, could you toss us a couple-a brewskies? Anyone know the score? Oh yeah, and could you bring us some more anchovies for these fishing poles? We sorta ate the last ones.

The only way to fish!

Paar-ty! Paar-ty! Paar-ty!

CLICK THIS LINK FOR BALBOA PHOTOS: MAINLAND BOARDWALK AT FERRY LANDING.

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE SEA LION PHOTOS FROM THE DUFFY

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE BIRD PHOTOS TAKEN FROM THE DUFFY

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE BOAT PHOTOS FROM THE DUFFY

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE PHOTOS OF HOMES TAKEN FROM THE DUFFY

O.K., so now you wish YOU could go on a Duffy in the Newport Beach Harbor, right? What's that? You'd like to but you don't think you could drive the boat?

Meet Don Hall, your Duffy Chauffer. (You don't mind if he brings his wife along too do you?)

And here he is again after learning that you'd like him to drive you around the harbor.