Who says we don't have seasons in So Cal?

Last night was the ICU Christmas Party. I was out late, ate a great dinner, drank wine, and danced. After I was home snug in bed it rained the rest of the night. I was off today, slept in, and woke to a cold, damp, grey day. I did not feel like getting out to run. By noon, the sun came out. I enjoyed my run. OK, my jog. I don't go fast enough to call it running. The air was crisp, cold, and clear. I looked around my neighborhood and wondered why people think we don't have seasons here in So Cal.




















When I got home from my run, still thinking about the seasons we "don't" have in So Cal, I thought, "Well, I'll probably never wake up to snow right out my front door."

However, if I drive 10 minutes.............

I hopped in my car and decided to take a little drive.











Four minutes from my front door, I see the sign, "Entering National Forest."





Around the bend, I see that
Mt Baldy is straight ahead, Upland, right.
I pull over into a turn out to look at the lovely fall scenery.

Check out these little red flowers dressed for the season.









Fog hides the mountain ahead.











Pine trees and fall foliage contrast with the granite rocks.



Wow! What's that? Almost missed it! A little snow left on the ground!



I continued on my way. Ten minutes from my front door I am in another world. Mt. Baldy. Pine trees. Snow on the ground. OK. I'm getting into the Christmas spirit. Ten minutes later, home again! That was a nice mini-vacation!

Night of the living dead

It all started innocently enough....I received the beautiful gift above in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Intrigued, I opened it up to find....................
A poem! (See above.) It was actually an invitation. To the Pollard's haunt. However, there was one caveat... It clearly stated that "no living soul shall enter......."

Oh, well. Must have been a mistake!




Well, I had been feeling under the weather the past week. In fact, just in time for the Pollard's haunt, I died from the H1Ni flu! You can see me here post mortem hanging out with the other poor dead souls who decided to visit the Pollards haunt for All Hallowed Eve: Madame Curie, Janis Joplin, the Devil herself, and an angel.
It didn't take long for the She Devil to have a little talk with Dick Tracy.
What DID SHE SAY to him? Dick Tracy tries to get away, but unfortunately for him, the car had a few parts missing.
A famous golfer hung out with this cute young hippie.
A BIG leaf, Scarlett O'Hara, and a Zombie hung out with the She Devil. She really got around! She made sure we had a hot time!



Jesus showed up too. Here He hangs out with a monk, Father Time, and Madame Curie. NOOOOOOOOOOOO, it can't be!!!! Father Time is taller than the monk!





The hostess with the mostessssst!
(We didn't leave until about 2am! Fortunately, time stands still when you are no longer among the living!)

CERN

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research,

is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It is headquartered in Geneva.

So, what's the big deal? Have you seen the movie, Angels and Demons? Part of it was filmed at CERN. But of course, as in all movies, a tiny bit of truth was overblown into a fictional dramatization and declared "based on the truth." In reality, there are 6 major experiments being conducted there. They are basically looking for the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle."

Most of you are probably aware that Joseph is a grad student at UCLA, studying particle physics. According to Joseph, this is where the most exciting research is being done in physics right now. So he is in Geneva, visiting CERN for the first time. He will return to UCLA July 3, spend two months studying for comps, and then return to CERN for about 4 years to work on his PhD. (I miss him already.)

The "God Particle" is so nicknamed as they are trying to simulate the Big Bang and hoping to detect the theoretical "particle or set of particles, that might give others mass..." (In other words, as I understand it, this would be the particle that turns energy into matter.)

"To look for the particle, researchers must smash other particles together at very high speeds. If the energy from that collision is high enough, it is converted into smaller bits of matter -- particles -- one of which could be a Higgs boson. The Higgs will only last for a small fraction of a second, and then decay into other particles. So in order to tell whether the Higgs appeared in the collision, researchers look for evidence of what it would have decayed into." (This is quoted from the CERN website.)

What follows is one of many images that Joseph's team is working on. Aren't you glad that it's Joseph that has to interpret this and not us?

I am not sure how it all fits together, but this is a link to an earlier brochure from CERN, for those who are interested in learning more about it: http://cdsmedia.cern.ch/img/CERN-Brochure-2008-002-Eng.pdf

PS. Interesting factoid. The WWW started at CERN 20 years ago.

(Also from the CERN website:
"Geneva, 13 March 2009. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee returned to the birthplace of his invention today, 20 years after submitting his paper ‘Information Management: A Proposal’ to his boss Mike Sendall. By writing the words ‘Vague, but exciting’ on the document’s cover, and giving Berners-Lee the go-ahead to continue, Sendall was signing into existence the information revolution of our times: the World Wide Web. In September of the following year, Berners-Lee took delivery of a computer called a NeXT cube, and by December the Web was up and running, albeit between just a couple of computers at CERN¹.")

Grandma's Brag Book

WARNING!
PUT THE COMPUTER DOWN NOW!

Go get a nice hot cup of coffee before viewing this blog. You will need it!
This is Grandma's Brag Book!

This is Cayleigh, the birthday girl after eating at her favorite restaurant, Macaroni Grill! MMMMM! That was good!

Another shot of the birthday girl by a nearby pond. Isn't she beautiful? The pond is pretty too.


































My darling daughter, Christie, and her darling daughter, Cayleigh, the birthday girl. My darling daughter did the honorable thing. She squeezed herself into the tiny space in the back seat between the two car seats and let me have the front seat. Besides, she is so tiny now, it is easy for her to fit!Here is the artist at work on her pottery. She started with a blank white tile. Scary! Unless you are the creative type. Which she obviously is. I can hardly wait to see the fired product.

My "darling" grandchildren at a nearby park in Richmond Hill.

Happy Ninth Birthday, Cayleigh! I can't believe you have grown so quickly! Cayleigh just finished third grade. She received her report card that day, and BRAG....She received STRAIGHT As!

Another shot of my "darling" granddaughter. Isn't she cute?
She never wears her baseball cap this way.
Grandma made her do it!

This is my little M&M. He is such a character! Smart as a whip. And oh, such a boy. So competitive. He tries to beat dad! Race me, Dad! Cayleigh too. He's a real charmer.

We went to Macaroni Grill for Cayleigh's birthday dinner. (They had arrived home from Paris midnight of the night before. A big party was out of the question.) Anyway, we played hangman while waiting for dinner. Aiden, who just finished first grade, guessed my word, "macaroni," with only 2 letters, the "m" and the "a."

So I had to think of a harder word for him. Can you guess the 14 letter word above? BRAG: Aiden did. And this is after being up 24 hours, getting to bed at midnight the night before, then rising at 5am! Poor Mom!! (The answer is at the bottom.)

Here are my little darlings!
(My! Grandma is showing her age!)

Here is a shot of their wonderful parents! I am in awe at what great parents they are. I wish I had done so well with mine. Aiden is a handful. He hardly needs any sleep since he was an infant, he is very smart, very strong-willed, and has "melt downs" if not well handled. They are both so patient and talk to him so kindly, giving him choices and following through so well that he has learned to control his "melt downs."

I fully expected several "melt downs" the day after he had been up 24 hours flying home from Paris and then getting only 5 hours of sleep. Two melt downs started but were averted. He never had a one while I was there. Anybody need parenting lessons? Talk to these two superparents! BRAG, BRAG, BRAG!

Have to watch out for snakes and alligators at this playground.
But it is so pretty there.

This is my big birthday girl on the bridge in the house. Isn't she looking grown up lately?

Little man!
He will be 7 in August.

We got to visit Dad in his big corner office.

These are my beautiful grandchildren the morning after being up for 24 hours. Aren't they beautiful?

Did I brag enough? This is my first Grandma's Brag Book. The goal is to brag so much I make you sick. But, gee, who can have that reaction with these darlings?
(P.S. The word was "TRANSPORTATION.")

My Morning Walk in Claremont

I got a late start on my morning walk in Claremont. Joseph and I have a habit of walking, jogging, or running together 50 miles apart several mornings a week. We call each other in the morning to motivate each other to get out the door. Then we set out walking and talking on our cell phones. Sometimes we walk the whole route. Other days we walk for 5 minutes chatting to warm up, then hang up and run. When we finish running we call each other to check in. It has been wonderful motivation for me to get my exercise.

We were both up late last night and didn't get out the door until 8:30 this morning. Interestingly, it was cold, dark, gray and raining softly in Claremont while it was sunny with one small cloud in the sky in LA according to Joseph. Didn't know the weather could be so different only 50(?) miles apart!

I was on my last leg of the walk this morning going downhill on Mills Avenue. This is a big 4 lane highway leading up to Mount Baldy. I saw a coyote trot out in front of me, crossing Mills and heading down the sidewalk in front of me.
Now we see coyotes running down the street from time to time, but isn't this a little late in the day to be out, Mr. Coyote? And you are a little too close for comfort! (Last month my neighbor's dog was eaten by a coyote in his own backyard. No wonder my cat doesn't want to go outside anymore! My neighbor saw a coyote up on the brick wall between my backyard and hers 2 weeks ago.)

I glanced across the street at the house on the corner that the coyote had crossed over from. I saw another coyote on the sidewalk in front of the house trotting over to join his buddy in front of me. Except that he was BEHIND ME! Then a third coyote joined the second one BEHIND ME!

OK Now! This is really not cool! I've got one coyote in front of me and two coyotes behind me! I seem to be in the middle of the pack!


Fortunately, they didn't seem to be interested in me as prey. I saw the first one trot down a side street so I stayed on the safe big boulevard. Buddies number 2 and 3 followed #1. If I didn't get my cardio in with the walk, the coyotes helped me get it in anyway!


I went home and opened up my hometown paper, the Claremont Courier. It is printed twice a week and covers local news only. The day before my boss (who has heard my coyote encounters while walking before) told me she heard on the news that there was a bear in Claremont. Yes, there was the story with the picture below. A brown bear rests atop a tree in a backyard on Martin Way near Mills Avenue after wandering through north Claremont on Wednesday afternoon. The bear was eventually captured in Upland and released in Mt. Baldy.

Bear takes grand tour of Claremont
Claremont police spent much of Wednesday chasing a young brown bear roaming throughout the northern part of the city. “Apparently, it pretty much walked east along Base Line Road until it went into more residential areas,” Claremont Police Lieutenant James Hughes said.

According to the story, and to a coworker who lives in the area, the bear was first seen just south of the Towne Avenue exit off the 210 Freeway. The very exit you take when you come to visit me.

A street or two from where Christie and Noel used to live. Wonder if they encounter any bears in Georgia? No, just alligators! OK, I guess bears aren't so bad. They see deer in their backyard too.


This is a little close for comfort.
OK, I live off Baseline and Mills Avenue.


My beautiful picture of a hawk about to attack with talons forward and wings spread, just disappeared when I started typing. Where is the undo button? Oh well, you will just have to use your imagination.

Yes, that was the next article in the Courier...

Aggressive hawks pester Claremont residents

Swooping down from the trees above in a stealthy and silent attack, a hawk protecting its nest can pack a painful and powerful punch.

Apparently, it's nesting season and people are being hit in the back of the head with open talons just from walking by a tree with a nest!

So now I have to watch out for coyotes, bears, and scan up in the trees for hawks when I go out for my morning walk.

It sure is an adventure living in the city!