Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Awkward Wedding Moments

These are pictures you just wish would get lost.

Oh God! It's Dad and his stupid blog again. Now what the hell?



So, young man. Exactly what kind of job do you have?

Humph. I've seen some goodweddings. This sure ain't one of 'em.

Oh man! Would you get a load of her dress!



Lockwoods and Woods react to Jean's singing.



Ooom.



Douche with Listerine and you'llnever offend!!!



Yes he's cute. And he's all mine.



Why yes, I'd like a gumdrop.


My God! A perfect high "C."



Mommy! Make them all go away.

Why yes. I am related to a dentist. How did you know?




Two dentists flank the perfect smile, dismayed at the potential loss of fees.

What was I thinking? Dad! Get me out of this!

Park Signs

Signs in public parks can reflect issues particular to the community. And they provide insights into the workings of the minds of the officials who put them there.

Take this sign, posted in Alice Keck Park in Santa Barbara. It deals with the environment.




Why do we need this sign? Would you avoid Alice Keck Park if it was missing?

"Gee, Honey. I don't know. Do you think they use pesticides here?"

Immediately across the street we have Alameda Park. This park sure as hell isn't pesticide-free. Earl here, running the world's largest lawn mower, don't have no truck with them eco-freaks. Got cinch bugs? Sod webworms? Hose 'em down with Diazanon. We'll pick up the dead robins later.




If you think Alice Keck Park is pesticide-free, you don't understand the word, "overspray."

So why the misleading and useless sign? Well, Santa Barbara is a tree-hugger hotspot, a center of the Sierra Club wing of the Democratic Party. Any politician who wants to advance in city government is gonna make sure his constituency knows he's on the side of the ladybugs.

(Now, before you get the wrong impression, you should know that I think we should never cut another old-growth tree, all dams should be demolished and all motor vehicles should be banned from National and State Parks. So get off my ass.)

—§—

The environment isn't an issue in Houston. But liability is.




Yep. Everybody's freaking out about one health risk or another. Here we have an expensive baked-enamel-on-steel sign informing the public that they found a rabid bat.

What a surprise! Let's see now. Rabies is endemic to the wild animal population. Bats are wild animals that have wide foraging ranges. Ergo, some bats are rabid.

We need a sign to tell us that?

We are asked to leave the area if we see bats. Eek! A bat! Run away! Run away!

If one of us comes into contact with a bat, we're instructed to call the City of Houston Health Department,to get assistance from the government, I suppose. Think about that.

The Houston Parks and Recreation Department erected this sign so that teenagers, while smoking cigarettes and enjoying sex without the inconvenience of condoms, will be vigilant about the miniscule threat to their health from rabid animals. They put up the sign because their lawyers told them to.

The only thing worse than a kid getting rabies is getting sued by the kid's parents for failing to warn him.

The other community issue in Houston is the intelligence level of George Bush-admiring Texans. Ya gotta tell 'em everything. For example, it's not uncommon to see signs that say, "Don't bring your gun into this restaurant."

Here's another HP&R gem, specially placed to inform the mouth-breathers:




"Whut's thet over there, Buford?"

"Wull, hail, them's wildflars, RayAnn. Cain't you see thet sign?"

I like the two exclamation points. Underscores the excitement, don't it?

The Eagle Has Landed!

It was one of the great moments of my life.

And surely it was The Great Occasion of Sam's and Kip's lives.




The park was beautiful. The guests were beautiful. The wedding party was particularly beautiful. The bride and groom were almost too beautiful to look at.

The ceremony was moving. I didn't get to see the procession because it started, by design, while I wasdriving Samantha to the foot of the aisle in a convertible. I somehow managed to remember to walk around to the passenger side and open the door for her. Then I walked her up the aisle, feeling the joyful grin that was splitting my face.

The ceremony was written by Samantha's friend Karen, who officiated. Kip and Sam didn't know what Karen was going to say until she said it. The result was a ceremony that transcended that Hallmark moment that so often passes for weddings these days.

Karen talked about a marriage as part of a community, of the indispensability of support from friends and family, about the reality of marriage, even in times of trouble. She made them promise to stick it out when things got rough. She reminded them that their vows were being witnessed, the unspoken predicate being that they would be accountable not only to each other, but to everyone else present at the wedding as well.

Whew!

It was way more than five minutes in front of a preacher. When it was over, it was clear that Karen had torqued down the head bolts, that this marriage was off to a solid start.

—§—

The flower girls nearly stole the show. 




Part of the ceremony involved acknowledging Cassie as part of their union. Samantha gave her a heart pin as a symbol of their love. As Karen talked about bringing Cassie into our family, my granddaughter Kiely spontaneously put her arms around her, a total aawww moment.

Kip was the first to cry, standing there in front of everyone with Sam. This put him at the absolute top of my list of truly fine men.

—§—

In the photo below, Jean is directing her husband, a task for which she is well-practiced, thank God.




Jean's dress was perfect; elegant, but not overdressing the mothers of the bride and groom. I am wearing a tuxedo for the first time since I was a Junior in High School.

—§—

Besides walking my daughter down the aisle, I got to make the first toast to the new couple and to have the second dance with Mrs. Lockwood.




I know this is the dream of a lifetime for Kip and especially for Sam.

It was for her father, too. 

A Note from Mr. Science

[The morning of Sam and Kip's wedding, and I have a little downtime, so I thought I'd squeeze in another couple of posts.]

I found this object in the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. What is it?




I've never seen a sundial like this one—a very clever design that surely must have been known in Isaac Newton's time and probably much earlier. But it's not the kind of thing we science students got to study in the 20th Century. It's all new to me.

The dial itself is about 15" in diameter. It's made of brass. The gnomon (the fishtail shaped hook) can be rotated, moving the two arrows that point to the time.




To tell the time, you rotate the gnomon until the shadow falls on the figure eight-shaped curve engraved on the curved plate—the one that has the names of months alongside. You make the notch in the shadow line up with the section of the curve that corresponds to the current month, in this case, October.




This alignment causes the arrows to point to the correct position on the time dial. Here I have aligned the notch to fall precisely on the winter side of the curve.




Note that there are two arrows, one for Daylight Saving Time, revealing that despite its patina, this is a modern sundial.

The figure eight shape is called an analemma and is a curve generated by the tilt of the earth's axis and the fact that its orbit is elliptical, not circular. Here's the analemma for London, England.




By incorporating the analemma into a precisely crafted and sufficiently large sundial, it's possible to read the correct time to better than one second on any sunny day of the year.

An analemma is not just some abstract mathematical curve. It's an actual pattern made by the sun in the sky, and it has been photographed by opening the shutter on a fixed camera at the same time of day once a week or so for an entire year.




This pattern was known to the ancients, but to this modern-day semiconductor engineer, it was a mystery until today.

A century ago, kids were taught stuff that gets skipped over today. Can you multiply two large numbers by casting out nines? Can you extract a cube root by hand?

I can't.

Homeless In Santa Barbara

Like Santa Monica or Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara enjoys a warm, sunny climate and a progressive-minded body politic. Which as a matter of course, attracts a substantial population of homeless people. As long as you're gonna not have a home, why not not have it in an upscale community?

This couple is dining alfresco. A breakfast picnic. Nothing like a cup of coffee under the morning sky. Or a cup of whatever it was they found in those trash cans. Life is good.

Wedding Anytime Now

This is the last day before festivities start, so I may not post for awhile.

The families of the bride and groom—at least four families, ('cause we're Californians)—will meet tomorrow morning for breakfast. Then we'll do the ritual last-minute frantic running around, doing all those things left undone, that ought not to be left undone. Rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner will be tomorrow night.

Saturday morning will be spent practicing mild hysteria. That afternoon, we'll hold a minor 20-minute ceremony followed by five hours consuming vast amounts of mind-altering fluids and a couple of soft drinks.

As the official FOB, I won't be taking any photographs. It would be unseemly. But at gatherings like this, you can't keep Jean away from a camera, so we'll have all the embarrassing moments to share on Monday.

Wish us all luck.

Street Trees

Santa Barbara streets are lined with beautiful old trees.

They are one of the city's defining characteristics, and they create a pleasant ambience. Seems like every other street has its tall trees.




Ancient roots crawl over curbs, making Santa Barbara look much older than it is.




While the huge old Magnolia below is not a street tree, the city owns the park it's in. Makes Jean look like a Hobbit.




Trees like this don't happen by accident. They are the result of decades of careful pruning. The tree pictured below is one that has been recently pruned—and, I might add, by experts.




All this work is performed by a full-time crew that wanders up and down the streets, year after year, shaping and thinning. They have all the cool gear: a chipper, a big truck for the chips, razor-sharp chain saws and a humongous cherry picker. I'm guessing this one reaches 40'-50', and it can be positioned rapidly and delicately. What a tool!




A city needs money to create this kind of beauty. With the average homeowner kicking in $5,000-$10,000 in property taxes, Santa Barbara can afford it.

Arlington Theater

This here is the Arlington Theater, a Santa Barbara landmark.

Mission revival in style, the building fulfills a function never imagined by mission-building padres.




The theater shows movies and presents live shows.




Look at that ticket window. Arches beckon within.




I'd like to post a photo of the interior, but we didn't go inside. I recall from a previous visit, the remarkable ceiling inside. Around the periphery, silhouettes of the Santa Barbara skyline are backlit. The ceiling itself is indigo, with pinpoint lights set into it in the exact pattern of the night sky. You can make out all the familiar constellations.

Only a few of the old '20s theaters remain, but fortunately, they're being saved and restored.

Little known fact: The Arlington also serves as Santa Barbara's missile defense system.




OK. I made that up.

Actually, this is a sculpture of a hypodermic syringe.

Marriage License

Heretofore, this impending wedding has been little more than the subject of rumor. Now, however, things are getting serious. The government is getting involved.

Kip is taking the written test.




Here, Sam is displaying the Marriage Instruction Manual. Being her father's daughter, she of course won't read it.




The Department of homeland Security requires the swearing of an oath that the parties are not members of a mosque, do not know the whereabouts of Osama Bin Ladin, and in fact don't even like Moslems.




Aawww. Aren't they cute. Sam is checking to see if Kip's heart is actually beating, not wanting inadvertently to marry a non-living person.

Mexican Deli

OH HONEST TO GOD!

I bet their food is "beanerlicious."