Yesterday, I went swimming. In the ocean, which was awesome. The water was warm (and clear for the Pacific), the sun was out. All around good time.
Except something worked itself under my goggles and now both my eyes are swollen, red, itchy and puffy. Right where my goggles touched the skin around the eyes.
I look like an overly emotional racoon.
Of course, I tried some over the counter calamine lotion, and it got worse. Now it’s so bad that it’s to the point of being funny.
Except that I have to work tomorrow, which is awesome (yay, work!), and I’m desperately trying to figure out a way to get at least the puffy to go down instead of getting ribbed non-stop about what I may or may not have done over the weekend.
Still not working, so I’m eating ice cream instead:
That, my friends, is two scoops of heaven from N’ice Cream in Venice. One scoop of salted caramel (better than sex. No, I’m serious), and once scoop of coconut.
It’s made fresh each day and I think I need a 12 step to stop eating it.
I highly recommend checking it out if you’re in the area.
Of course the collective freakout and mass exodus meant empty streets and quiet (oh, how quiet it was. Like a little slice of heaven). The few people left in town proceeded to take photos of the empty freeway, just because it’s so very disconcerting to see it like this. Between empty roads and the silence, it almost felt like living through The Omega Man. Only, you know, without the vampires.
Here in Los Angeles, we love our cars. Really, really love them. We do anything we can to avoid using our feet, our legs, or any form of public transit. Should we need to reach some far (or near) destination, we travel via our network of free highways (“freeways” for those of you not familiar with Southern California automotive nomenclature). They’re clogged with traffic, marred with graffiti, strewn with trash and king-sized potholes, but eventually they get us where we want to go.
It’s a love/hate relationship, and although they make us miserable at times, we just can’t imagine life without them.
Until this coming weekend, when CalTrans will close – that’s close as in completely shut down – a 10 mile section of the 405, one of the busiest stretches of road in the country, if not the world.
To our car-centric culture, this is nothing short of a Biblical-sized catastrophe.
Carmageddon. The Sepulcalypse*. We collectively flap our hands and hyper-ventilate as we contemplate the idea of not being able to drive.
The newsbots have been raising the alarm about this for weeks, and now the city of LA has resorted to the awesome power of faded television stars to try to calm the masses:
Said masses obstinately refuse to be calm and now hysterical panic is sweeping the city.
Many people are planning, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, to leave town.
“Yeah, we’re just going to drive up the coast Friday, get a hotel for the weekend and just chill out.”
“Wait. You’re driving to a hotel where you’re just going to sit around all weekend? Why not just stay home?”
“Stay home? What if we have to drive somewhere?”
And so it goes.
Unfortunately for me, I now live west of the 405, and some surface streets in my neighborhood will be closed, making any sort of vehicular egress on my part impossible.
I won’t be able to make the union meeting (on the other side of town, of course) on Saturday or to the three parties downtown, so I plan to do my commuting to the beach on my bicycle.
And take photos of what will be either hilarious chaos or eerily empty streets.
*The surface street alternative to the 405 is Sepulveda Blvd, which will not be closed, but might as well be, since no one has any illusions about traffic moving at anything faster than a painfully slow crawl.
Not the normal garden variety black ants like I had in the old place – these are teeny tiny little brown ants and boy, are they persistent little fuckers.
They also go after stuff that the old ants never touched, such as the dry cat food.
In order to prevent non-stop nagging and pestering, I leave dry food out for the cat and it works pretty well, except when the food’s covered in those goddamn ants. I’ve tried just about everything, and they keep going after the food, causing me to throw out about two full cups of pretty expensive ant-infested kibble.
Don’t tell me to buy cheap food. The can’t won’t eat it and I’m the one that has to listen to the yowling.
So this weekend, I figured out a way to thwart them.
I bought two bowls, one slightly larger than the other, filled the smaller one with food and the larger one with about a quarter-inch of water.
Note the pink. That’s how we roll around here.
That’ll teach ’em. Last time I checked, ants can’t swim.
At least I hope ants can’t swim. With my luck, these have learned.
Summer in Southern California marks the return of warm-for-here water (currently the ocean temp is 68F), hoards of tourists, wetsuit-less surfers, and our good buddy Triakis semifasciata.
Despite the fearsome moniker, the leopard shark is mostly harmless.
They swim in the shallowest water (right where the waders and small children are), and despite the scientific community’s insistence that they’re afraid of people, they don’t seem to be particularly fearful.
If fact, I suspect they really like feet.
Should you be wading in shallow water at one of the local beaches and feel something fishy brush against your leg, or step on something that’s smooth and wiggly, it’s important not to panic. It’s just a leopard shark, and I promise it won’t do anything other than annoy you.
What you should not do under any circumstances is what I did today when, while visiting a surprisingly crowded beach, I stepped on a fine specimen of Triakis semifasciata.
I screamed “SHARK!!!!!” while jumping about four feet into the air.
Although I have to admit, the resulting chaos was really funny, even if I did make a lifeguard cry.
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