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Last summer we bought a fuchsia to hang above our balcony. It bloomed for months, then seemed to die over the winter. Living in southern California, the idea of a plant that actually goes dormant in winter is a bit of a foreign concept, but we figured, well, just in case, let’s keep watering it.

It started to grow new leaves in spring, and the first hints of new buds appeared as summer arrived. It finally started blooming in earnest in mid-July, when I took this photo:

Fuchsia flowers (closeup)

Update: I’ve posted a larger version of the photo on Flickr.

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This touring bus has an advertisement for the company’s website, but the placement of the handle for the cargo doors is… unfortunate, as it obscures the top of the “o” in “.com”—changing it into an entirely different word.

Vestal Bus: vestalwatch.cum

And weren’t those who dedicated themselves to the service of Vesta called Vestal virgins? I’m just sayin’…

(Once again, I’m afraid to see what search terms are going to bring people here…)

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This background (which only seems to show up on the solo post page) is a clip from a photo posted as the August 12 Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s my current desktop wallpaper on my Windows box at work. And it’s got about a zillion times as many stars as I usually get to see at night.

Back when I was a teen, I was in Boy Scouts, and we went camping almost once a month. At home, in a suburban housing tract, I could see the major constellations, and I remember once just managing to pick out the fainter stars of Orion’s head, arms and club from my bedroom window. But out in the desert, you could see thousands of stars. In summer, you could see the Milky Way. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it from a city of any size. One summer camp at Lost Valley I went out into one of the meadows with a tripod and my SLR camera to try my hand at amateur astral photography. I got some pictures of Scorpio and Sagittarius, and I really should try to figure out where they ended up.

A few nights ago I stood out on our apartment balcony, looking up at the sky. I could see only a handful of stars, and one of them was Jupiter. Even knowing it was in Scorpio, I could spot maybe one or two stars. Tonight was a bit better, even with the waxing moon. I set out a blanket so I could lie down and let the sides of the balcony block out the lighting from walkways and other apartments, though it couldn’t do much for the moon or the slowly developing cloud layer.

The best view of the stars I’ve had recently was two years ago, on our trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. On the day we visited Kilauea, we drove back across the desolate lava fields of Ka‘u at night, and stopped the car by the side of the road for a few minutes just to look at the sky.

I think it’s time to go camping again. Somewhere out in the desert or mountains. Somewhere without all the haze and light we have here.

Notes on style: I used Trevor Creech’s Per-Post CSS Plugin to assign the background and appropriate foreground colors on this post. I originally tried it with inline styles on a div, which worked, but left the links illegible. Also, I’ve enhanced it using the CSS3 border-radius and box-shadow for browsers that support it. Unfortunately Gecko doesn’t trim the curved corners off the background image, so right now that’s just the Safari 3 beta and Webkit nightlies.

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Bumper sticker spotted on a Corner Bakery delivery van:

Caution: This vehicle makes frequent and delicious stops.

It reminds me of the warnings you see on cardboard coffee cups that say things like, “The beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.” Though my favorite is still one from the late, lamented* Diedrich Coffee that said, “Of course it’s hot!”

*OK, they’re not completely gone—there are still two stores left in Orange County since Starbucks bought them out and either closed or converted the rest. *grumble*

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Today I went with a group from work to ride the Great Park Balloon, a.k.a. that big orange thing that’s been floating over Irvine for the last month.

After about a decade of wrangling, the city of Irvine has started converting the former El Toro Marine Base into, well, a park. It looks like it’s going to take them another decade to actually build the thing, but one of their first attractions is a helium balloon on a tether. Depending on wind conditions, they send it up anywhere from 250 to 400 feet, and visitors can get a 360° view of central Orange County and the park under construction.

Orange Balloon

Unfortunately, conditions weren’t ideal today. It was hazy, so visibility was only about 10 miles or so, and it was windy. In fact, when we arrived, they’d just tied down the balloon. The guy who organized the trip called back to the office to cancel, but those of us who were already there figured we might as well at least walk around and take a look.

As it turned out, they did start sending the balloon up again, though they limited it to 10 people per ride. So those of us who stayed ended up waiting about an hour, but we made it up.

Baloon view north
Looking north toward the Tustin Hills

Balloon view - south
Looking south. The Irvine Spectrum shopping center is just to the left of the taller buildings.

Balloon view east
Looking east toward the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Note the hangars and other former MCAS El Toro buildings in the foreground.

I managed okay up until the point where I decided (foolishly) to look down through the center of the gondola. (It’s shaped like a ring, as you can see from the first photo.) The landing was a bit bumpy, and we suspected that they were probably going to shut things down a few groups after we left.

As nerve-wracking as it was after a few minutes, I’d love to go again on a clear day like this one (second photo) back in February, especially if the wind was low enough that they were willing to send the balloon up to 400 feet.

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The following two “Weird Al” Yankovic songs popped up sequentially on the iPod the other day:

  • “I Love Rocky Road” (based on Joan Jett’s version of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” and all about ice cream.)
  • “Cavity Search” (it’s about going to the dentist—U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” is turned into “Numb me, drill me, floss me, bill me.”)

Sometimes random shuffle makes you wonder whether the software knows more about the songs than what’s in the ID3 tag.

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I’m surprised it took so long, but trackback spammers seem to have finally figured out that they can sail past the simplest check against trackback spam—does the calling page actually link to the page being trackbacked?–by temporarily adding that link.

Or maybe they have for a while, and they’ve only just started getting past my other layers of defense (namely Bad Behavior and other checks by Spam Karma).

*sigh*