Monthly Archives: September 2006

Dinner with Diane and Laura

food, friends, health

Diane and Laura have a lovely place in Goleta, and they’ve just finished hanging most of their artwork. It looks great. I love all the color, although I don’t know that they’re completely happy with it, yet.

Those two travel a lot, and so our usual Friday night dinner got changed to Tuesday night. Laura’s been losing weight and working out for awhile. She really looks good. Diane has just started her diet and exercise program, but she’s already noticeably changing shape. So, we had a lovely dinner of grilled salmon, rice, and salad. It was a tasty meal and fit comfortably into all of our dietary goals.

Don’t completely admire our restraint. Most of us had glasses of wine, and we finished our meal with a cordial glass of port (wonderful) and a piece of fudge. Moderation!

Day Fire

current events, Santa Barbara

Day FireI haven’t yet talked about the Day Fire that’s burning in the area. As of Tuesday, the fire was up to 85,000 acres, and was only 30% contained. Until this weekend, it was just another brush fire in the SoCal area. But then, the offshore winds picked up, the size of the fire jumped up, and the smoke poured into Santa Barbara. The satellite picture of Southern California, above, shows the location of the fire in the blue circle. We are in the yellow circle. This picture is from Tuesday, since the since the smoke from the picture on Monday (the worst day) completely obscured the coastline and all the other geographic features.
First off, the fire is burning over 30 miles away and is threatening the town of Ojai. We are in no danger, here. Over the weekend and into this week, we have been covered by the smoke and living with a snowstorm of ash. I ran stadiums on Sunday with no repercussions, but a health warning went up later on Sunday and all outdoor activities were curtailed.

As of today (Thursday), the fire size is over 100,000 acres. The winds have changed and we are clear of new smoke. However, the prediction is for the offshore winds to return this weekend, so we may experience similar conditions. Again, it’s bothersome for us, but the real concern is for the folks in Ojai. They are under the threat of evacuations.

Bookmarks

hobbies

BookmarksOne of the things that most folks don’t know about me is that I collect bookmarks. It’s been fairly casual over the years, but I’ve accumulated quite a collection, running the gamut from free, promotional paper bookmarks to silver bookmarks I’ve found in antique stores.

Recently, I’ve decided that it was time to organize this random assortment into an actual collection. I’m documenting the process, as well as making note of other things bookmark related at another one of my blogs, Bookmark Collector.

Improv

hobbies, improv, Santa Barbara

Caught in the ActImprov is one of my major avocations. I started taking classes in 1989, and ultimately took over as instructor of the workshop sometime around 1995. That workshop has now evolved into the Santa Barbara Improv Workshop and continues to conduct a class on Wednesday nights.

I’m the primary instructor at the workshop and also a member of the performing troupe Caught in the Act. That group has been performing since New Years Eve of the Milleneum Celebrations in Santa Barbara (2000). Although many of the members have changed over the years, the same 4 core members are still involved. We now perform just about every other month in Santa Barbara.

Lately, I’ve been blogging about improv. Although the primary focus is the Santa Barbara improv scene, I’ve been adding more and more posts of interest to beginning improvisors.

Malaysia Bound!

Malaysia, travel

Malaysia World
Well, we’ve finally selected the destination of our next trip: Malaysia. I’ve put up an image showing its location in the world, but it’s right in between Austrilia and China.

Currently, the plan is to be travelling during our usual timeline. That means flying out around Halloween and returning a couple of days before Thanksgiving. We haven’t set our flights yet. Hey, it’s us!

MalaysiaHere’s a closer view of Malaysia. The country has two parts. The western part is on the peninsula, south of Thailand and north of Singapore. The eastern part shares the island of Borneo with Indonesia and Brunei. We’re pretty interested in Borneo because it has a lot of wildlife (ex. the orangutan), some interesting sites (ex. the city of Kuching, also known as the ‘Cat City’), and the food sounds fantastic (again, it’s us!).

I’ll keep posting about our plans, and I hope to be posting here during the trip.