July 10, 2004

• ZOO TRIP (Los Angeles Zoo at Griffith Park)

   ZOO TRIP  (Los Angeles Zoo at Griffith Park)

  Now it's past 6:00 p.m. and I'm back from the zoo. Walked till the artificial hip started to hurt, and then got in the car and went to Traveltown. That was about 7 hours at both places. I took 296 photos, and about a half hour of video. Mostly photos, though, as it was a hot day, and all the animals were asleep. Good thing a lot of them sleep on their feet, so at least I got some pictures. The cats (like all cats, including my own) were back in the shade asleep. The rhino and elephant had their a**es in my face, but at least the rhino turned around. Here is a photo of the Rhino shot from a ways back, thorough the leaves of a tree.

  

  I also shot some footage at Travel town, where they display real trains. There are about 10  steam engines, and twenty or thirty cars, including passenger cars, which are sometimes open to the public, but one of the "docents" told me that there weren't enought volunteers so he was the only one (giving tours), and he was back at the caboose. There are 100 of the selected photos in my (VERY) latest Webshots folder, "Los Angeles Zoo and Traveltown". I think it's currently the bottom left hand folder. It's so new, having just taken this photography today, that I haven't yet captioned the photos. Suffice it to say eveything in the folder was taken this afternoon at the Zoo, and/or at Traveltown, which is a place I used to go to in Griffith Park when I was a child. It hasn't changed much in forty years. There are now 11 (count em, 11) separate folders on my Webshots site. Below is a photo taken today which isn't online except for here right now. It is of one of the "tunnels" at the end of the 110 Freeway where it turns into the Pasadena Freeway. You make a left (a real sharp left, for a freewasy, this was one of the first sections in California back in the 40's.) on the 5 to get to the Zoo.

  

  This was a real familiar site to me in the late fifties and sixties. We lived in Highland Park which is up the Pasadena Freeway (the very first freeway in California, by the way) about eight miles. Of course we went through these tunnels on the way in to L.A. and back home.

  A Little Later: "Mike the TV doesn't work" department: Cancerboy loves his TV. Well, actually it's my first bigscreen, a rather "top of the line" model 60" Mitsubishi bigscreen, which wouldn't fit in the "media room" so I put an HDTV in here. He uses the living room with the first bigscreen, which is hooked up to the DirecTV. (And the Tivo.) Since he's been home full time (about four months) since the operation and the chemo started, I rarely get a chance "alone" with my first TV. Since Joel is always using it, when something is "wrong" (he forgot to put batteries in the remote, or didn't hit the right selector button on the receiver, or unplugged the system, etc.) he yells at me in the media room: "Mike the TV doesn't work again." Then I have to go out and "fix it". Since about 30 percent of my job at work is "testing" control panels, which are sometimes constructed incorrectly and don't "work", I get to do this at home now as well as at work. It is a bit of a pain, but what are ya gonna do? I got the "Mike the TV doesn't work again" before I left this morning. (I "fixed the problem" by wiggling the coax cable a bit, since it's loose. Joel had the same "problem" as soon as I got back from the zoo and took off my shoes to rest my aching dogs. "Mike, the". "Yeah, I know. The TV doesn't work. It's the damn coax cable." I wiggled it. "It's got sound, but no picture" Joel tells me. I keep stripping and inserting, but "no picture." I told Joel to go down to the Radio Shack and get a stripper and crimper since I don't have a coax stripper in the took kit at home. He went, and I stopped what I was doing to "help him". Still no picture. "Well, sorry Joel, but I should have told you to get the connectors too." (He should have known, too, but like the guys at work, I never "expect' that anybody knows anything, I always "assume" it must be my fault I didn't "tell" them. Anyway, off he goes to the Radio Shack, comes back, and I connect the coax to the back of the Tivo machine. "Still no picture." Now Joel of course has had a few beers, since it is early evening, and he is all full of advice. Maybe it's the satellite. Maybe it's the other end of the cable. "No, Joel. Can't be the satellite. When I used to have to go out and hit it with a broom, that was because we lost the "signal". We still have the signal, because we have sound. It isn't the other end of the cable, because this is the one that busted." I still hadn't crimped the thing. I was starting to get angry, and I'm tired, and I finally said "I can't "fix" it this time. Sorry." Then I hit the selector button, which wasn't reading DSS like it should. I "selected" DSS on the receiver. And the picture showed up.

  Slowly I turned, step by step. I had the crimper in my hand. I made to take a swing at Joel. I tell ya, the comedy that ensues when you have way too many pieces of electronic equipment in the employ of Cancerboy, who can "break" anything just by looking at it. "When did you push the selector button, Joel. That was what was wrong.". Now the reason why we had sound, was because a couple of weeks ago the "sound" on the receiver suddenly went out, so to "fix" that I took the receiver from the media room that was hooked up to my puter, and used it to channel the sound. The old receiver is still handling the picture through the super VHS cable which the old receiver doesn't have. Get it. I'm starting to get confused. It's been "one of those days". The power for the block should probably be going out any minute now, or Xanga will turn off their server and I'll lose this post. Love it when that happens.

  That's all , folks.

  • 9:35 pm
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