Touch a Truck in Long Beach

As part of a LONG weekend, we walked down the beach path (for an hour directly into the sun) to an event at a big parking lot. Inside the lot was a wide ranging collection of trucks and truck-like vehicles.

The draw was for families to bring their children (overwhelmingly toddler aged) to climb in and on and around the trucks, a Touch a Truck event held annually for a few years now.

Cass loves trucks, and the event was free with a donation of non-perishable food-stuffs for an AIDS shelter. The trip was a no-brainer.

They announced while we were there that the estimate on visitors would be eclipsing 10,000.

In a sun-blasted parking lot.

As it worked, two parents, or two adults, were mostly a necessity. One of us would wait in line as the other would run around with the Boy as he checked tires and tried to cut the line for other trucks, only to be corralled and brought to the spot where the other had been waiting, and hopefully quickly getting inside some humongous man-made contraption.

This was the first truck, an older dude's personal vehicle, and there was no line.

Check out how freaking big this thing is:

One of the crane trucks had a helmet, which lead to an adorable picture:

One older married couple brought a super modded Porsche. It had fiberglass outrigging that turned it into a boat:

The nice couple took pictures of families with their phones, which was helpful.

I'm saving this next picture in my imagination for when Cass is old enough to actually drive along a beach, or, more accurately, drive me along a beach:

Weird Design Similarities

I wasn't sure how to post this, but, here we go.

Cass has been doing a great job destroying most everything, and one thing recently was the dust jacket to my copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

As I was heading to the garbage to show him where things end up that he tears into pieces, I noticed that the look of the Styrofoam container that held the remnants of the pizza from the previous evening's dinner out was eerily familiar:

This picture is of lower quality that I realized, but...

...so what?

Is this where we are? Showcasing pieces of garbage?

St. Paddy's Day Random Thoughts

Last year during the Cinco de Mayo time in early May I remember hearing lots of angry discussion from folks with Mexican heritage about cultural misappropriation.

I searched for similar bouts of anger from the Irish set over the drunken shenanigans associated with St. Paddy's.

I found an essay written by an Irishman about how, to paraphrase, We Americans tend to look backwards and revere where we're from, while in contemporary Ireland they pretty much focus on the future, and the current. He mentioned that if, maybe, you were born in Mumbai and emigrated to Ireland when you were five years old and no, at thirty, you speak with an Irish accent, you would be considered Irish.

He even added that, pretty much, if you live anywhere and speak with an Irish accent naturally, you'd be considered Irish.

That gave me some perspective on the Irish self-identity.

And then I heard interviews with the writer of the new book Say Nothing, Pat Keefe. He mentioned that one of the linchpins of the as yet lasting peace between the loyalists and the IRA was that only a focus on the future, and not the past and its atrocities committed on both sides during the Troubles, has lead to a moden society that has never dealt with the past in any meaningful way.

It makes sense that an Irish essayist would espouse the mantra of looking forward rather than backwards when it comes to self-identity.

Of course, its refreshing to focus on the future, on the Forward, but we can't deliberately forget whatever heritage we cling to.

It's one of our fundamental characteristics.

Happy St. Patrick's 2019

I missed Pi Day posting earlier this week. Bummer. Here are me and Corrie sporting our shirts gifted to us by my mom:

Cass tried wearing his Pi Day shirt all week, except for the day itself, 3/14.

Oh well.

Things have been busy, as usual, and today finds us having gone to the beach already and have since started the salted been dinner (coming up to boil right now). March 17th gives me a reason to wear my bowler all day.

A coworker/buddy of mine had his 40th birthday party last weekend, and he rented a double-decker red party bus and told everyone to wear flannel and dress like a grunge-fan from the 90s.

It was nice to not have to make any decisions and be on the peripheral of someone else's party.

Here's a group shot of us:

And here's the beach earlier today, so bright and warm and blue:

So far in the Southland in 2019, the weather has been wetter than all of 2018 and colder than any time in recorded LA history, and that's not hyperbole: February 2019 has been the first calendar month since they began keeping records in the 1860s in LA that a month did not hit 70 degrees.

LA folks hear that and go WTF? while everyone else hears that and shouts EFF YOU!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Awwwww, it's 9 am and I'm not drunk yet!"
----Homer Simpson