No Backup?

A blank CD ROM that "should" have had a recent backup of my nearly lost website.

For the second time this year, I nearly lost my blog. The first time was due to a hard drive failure in a RAID that went horribly wrong, and this evening, it was due to human error when a database was copied the wrong way. Panic ensued as the last backup was August 29th (the disk above is blank and, as an afterthought, is less than helpful), but then Caroline remembered that we made a copy of my site on a notebook to take to Santa Barbara for showing family, this brought me up to September 14th. With the help of Google Cache, Yahoo Cache, and a program called Cache View for looking at the cache on a local hard drive, we have been able to pull nearly everything back together. One story is missing; I had to rewrite descriptions for five photos of the day.

So, my site may take a few more days until everything is massaged back into place, you can bet that backups become more frequent and thorough.

Aunt Eleanor

My Great-Aunt Eleanor Burke sitting in the sun in Peoria, Arizona

Aunt Eleanor is out on the balcony, taking some sun in Peoria, Arizona. Lately, I have been visiting three to five days a week, helping out with food preparation, cleaning dishes, general housekeeping, laundry, taking her to the doctor, or whatever else she might need to make her 93rd year just a little easier.

Aunt Eleanor was born in 1912. During that year, Woodrow Wilson was elected the 28th President of the United States. In contrast, George W. Bush is the 43rd. The Titanic sinks. New Mexico and Arizona become our 47th and 48th states. Robert F. Scott reaches the South Pole. The Life Savers candy and Dixie Cup are invented. The Warner Brothers begin producing films. First Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Washington D.C. Wilbur Wright, the aviation pioneer dies. The first foreign film is shown in the U.S. – “Queen Elizabeth” in New York City. Tarzan of the Apes is published. 1st person to parachute from an airplane occurs. The newspaper Pravda starts publishing. Alaska, not yet a state, is organized as a territory.

Little Farm in Gilbert

A sampling of the fruits, vegetables, and herbs from our subscription to the Little Farm in Gilbert, Arizona where Community Supported Agriculture is hard at work

This bowl of fruit, vegetables, and herbs is a sampling of our first delivery of an expected total of thirty-one from the Little Farm in Gilbert. The Little Farm in Gilbert is a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture operation that, through word of mouth, attracts subscribers who pay $16 a week to receive varying selections of fresh foods depending on what is coming in from October 26 through June 7, 2006. Today’s bag included two ears of corn, six Japanese eggplants, three peppers, six pears, a bunch of carrots, approximately a pound each of lettuce and spinach, and a healthy portion of sweetly aromatic basil.

For the next 30 deliveries, we can look forward to locally grown pesticide-free fresh radishes, turnips, Chinese cabbage, garlic, turnips, kohlrabi, onions, lemons, pak choi, parsley, cauliflower, snow peas, beets, escarole, fennel, asparagus, chard, broccoli, arugula, sorrel, cucumbers, squash, and sage in addition to the items in today’s shipment. Tomatoes and beans have been scratched from the list because the crop didn’t make it – a risk of pesticide-free farming. No matter, though; the rest looks great, and wow, how nice it is to buy veggies that actually have a smell to them.

Cool Weather

Hot Air Balloons back in the sky indicate cooler temperatures for Phoenix - YAY!

Only after temperatures come down from the brutality of this desert’s 100-plus degree days do the Hot Air Balloons return to the skies. This was one of a few balloons seen in the morning sky, the first I have spotted since the waning days of spring. For the next six months, we will see many more balloons traverse our blue skies, as the wind permits, of course.

Korean BBQ

Korean BBQ of Pork Bulgogi from Restaurant Takamatsu in Phoenix, Arizona

Restaurant Takamatsu, by way of Phoenix New Times Best of Winner for Korean Food 2005, was the choice for dinner tonight. I had the Pork Bulgogi, and for only $12.95, it was a great deal. Pictured here, you can see that the spicy pork on a sizzling dish of onions comes with eight side dishes including kimchee, tofu, bean sprouts, potato salad (that’s a new one for me in a Korean BBQ), a spinach-like green prepared in sesame oil, and a few others sides, miso soup (this is a Japanese / Korean restaurant), sticky rice, even a dessert – an ice-cold cup of Shikye (sweet rice water). Restaurant Takamatsu is at 4214 W Dunlap Avenue in Phoenix, AZ. Hodori in Mesa, though is still my favorite for Korean BBQ.

Turtle at Huntington Beach

Artesia, California

Attention: This post was modified from its original single photograph and a minimal amount of text and updated in November 2022 to represent better what we did over the course of this foggy day.

Another gray day, but who cares? We are out doing stuff in other places, gathering other impressions that can only add to the body of experiences. As I shared in yesterday’s post, this is where we stayed in Artesia, a.k.a. Little India, the Ramona Inn Suites; not the greatest place, but certainly not the most expensive. There’s the added benefit of finding Indian restaurants that serve breakfast.

Huntington Beach, California

I guess we’re kind of like land surfers; bad weather’s not gonna stop us from getting out there.

Caroline Wise with turtle at Huntington Beach, California

The surfers must have crowded this guy out of the ocean because at the edge of the surf, he came crawling out of his natural environs. Getting him back into the ocean wasn’t easy; in the shallow water the waves just washed him back up on the beach, so we had to ‘as gently as possible’ toss him out there. It worked; he was gone.

Update: Attentive reader Brandon brought to our attention that this little sea creature is, in fact, a “Red Slider” – a freshwater turtle. Now that we have done the equivalent of tossing it into outer space, we can only imagine that something in the deep welcomed this tasty exotic morsel as an imported snack.

Owens-Illinois Glass Factory in Vernon, California

I don’t know what brought Caroline and me to Owens-Illinois in Vernon, California, but here we are at the bottle-making factory I worked at for a couple of years, back in 1981 to 1983. It was a hellish place, and in retrospect, most of the people who worked in such conditions were reflecting the dungeon they toiled in. In case I’ve missed sharing it before, my father got me the job here, and it is where he worked the majority of his adult life.

Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California

I have some deep nostalgia for the Cinerama Dome because when I went to Hollywood to see a movie on the Cinescope screen in 70mm, I really felt I was going to the movies.

Tower Records in Hollywood California

And more nostalgia! Before I could drive, my father and I would come out here to Sunset Boulevard and Horn Avenue for him to look for records. At that time, I hadn’t yet bought my first record, which would happen around 1972 or ’73 when I was still 9 or 10 years old; it was a 7″ 45rpm single of the Rolling Stones’ Jumpin’ Jack Flash, although Child of the Moon turned out to my favorite on that record. On Caroline’s first stop in the United States, I took her to the enormous Tower Records in West Covina, where I grew up, and subsequently, when we came over from Frankfurt, Germany, with four friends in tow to get married, our first stop after double-chili cheeseburgers from Tommy’s was right here at this Tower Records. Sadly, a year after our visit in 2005, they filed bankruptcy, and Tower Records would be no more.

Billboard in Los Angeles, California

The same can’t be said for Scientology. That’s it; we needed to point the car east and speed off into the desert; our weekend was over.