Posted on
by

I’m 90% certain that I managed to (barely) spot Mercury below and to the left of Venus from the grocery store parking lot just after sunset. Appropriately enough, the one other time I think I spotted Mercury, it was also from a grocery store parking lot.

It was like trying to spot one slightly brighter pixel on a high-resolution display in the middle of a gradient. Faint enough that if I hadn’t seen it in the same place each time I looked, I would have dismissed it as something in my eye, or part of an after-image. I couldn’t really see much more than the fact that there was something there where Google Sky Map said Mercury should be.

It’s really neat that Jupiter and Venus sort of bracketed the twilight sky!

Posted on
by

A rainstorm hit Los Angeles today and cleared up in some parts of the region during late afternoon. After work I made a beeline for the nearest beach to catch the sunset, which happened to be Dockweiler Beach at the end of Imperial Highway.

The beach was absolutely deserted when I arrived (not counting the gatekeeper who dutifully collected $6 for parking), which made sense — it had been a cold, rainy day in November, and it was almost sunset besides. The sand was all wet, covered with tiny little pockmarks from the rain.

Rain was still falling in Santa Monica to the north and somewhere inland in the South Bay — possibly Torrance or Redondo Beach. Lit from the side, Santa Monica looked like there was a golden haze above the city. Continue reading →

Posted on
by

When I heard that Long Beach Comic Con was rebranding itself as Long Beach Comic and Horror Con this year, I was a little concerned. One of the things I liked most about it the first two years was the heavy emphasis on comics compared to San Diego (which has plenty of comics, but is so big that it’s easy to miss them) or the Wizard conventions (which seem to have refocused around celebrities). As it turns out, the horror didn’t drown out the comics at all. The front of the hall was still mainly comics publishers, with dealers (mostly comics and collectibles) behind them in a U shape, wrapped around the core: a gigantic Artist’s Alley.

Of course, Halloween and horror did make their presence known, starting with the signs for zombie parking, and continuing with programming, guests and costumes. (Jump straight to the photos.)

Continue reading →

Posted on
by

The Food Allergy Walk went well. There was a good turnout, apparently the highest yet for the Los Angeles event, which is in its fourth year. According to the event website, they raised about $43,000 of the $50,000 they had aimed for, but that’s only online donations. They may get closer once cash and checks are counted. Thank you again to everyone who sponsored us! You helped us raise $1040.05 for the cause ($120 of it offline) between the two of us!

The route was one mile each way along the walking path behind the beach up to the Santa Monica Pier and back. It ended up being overcast and chilly, a far cry from the 77 degrees and sunny predicted a few days ago, but at least it worked out well. Afterward we went to Café Crêpe for lunch.

Funny/odd bits:

  • I wore a Flash T-shirt, and Katie put a Flash shirt on J. (We had him in the stroller.) We started off the walk next to a family wearing Superman T-shirts. For the record: we finished first.
  • The turnaround point coincided with the finish line of a 100-mile endurance walk/run, so on the way back we saw several thoroughly exhausted runners plugging away.
  • When we arrived, a huge section of the beach parking lot was cordoned off, with a half-dozen fire trucks (at least one marked Hazmat Response or Hazmat cleanup). One truck had its ladder fully extended in the middle of the lot, and they were pressure-washing something off the pavement from the top of the ladder. We never did find out what it was.
    A hazmat team power-washes the parking lot from a fully-extended fire engine ladder.
  • Not realizing how close the Third Street Promenade was (basically, we would have walked half of the route again), we moved the car afterward to one of several identical parking structures in downtown Santa Monica. This led to a strange moment as we were leaving, when we briefly thought someone had run off with the car…until we noticed that the signs said “structure two” instead of “structure four.” It also explained why the elevator we thought we had used earlier was marked “out of order.” (Hey, it seemed possible it had been closed within the last two hours.)