Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Where's the Fire?

The fire is everywhere. Check out the satellite image: all those little red blobs are fire areas. I don't have to repeat the number. If you've been reading/watching the news, you know almost a million people have been evacuated; thousands of houses lost, hundreds of thousands of acres burned.

The funny thing is I haven't seen a lick of flame. Most people who live in the city proper haven't, either. But we can see the smoke. It looks like we've bee having cloudy days with a general overcast. Only the clouds are a light brown-yellow and they are 100% smoke. If the fires weren't blazing, the skies would be clear blue.

Also, it's kicked back up into the 90s and triple digits all week. Supposedly the high will move to the east and an onshore breeze will bring cooler, more humid days; the Santa Ana winds will die down and the fires will be put out. Until then, the thick clouds and the astringent smell of smoke will continue to linger over the southern part of the state.

Monday, October 22, 2007

From my iPhone

This is totally weird. I can get on the blog on my computer at work. I can even make this entry from my iPhone, but I can't get on via my home computer. Wazzup?

Fun With the Octogenarian

On Saturday, Oct. 13, the family got together and celebrated the impending 80th birthday of our matriach, Paula Blanchard McDougal (pictured in her reclining throne). It has taken me this long to actually get onto this damn blog site so I can upload the pictures, etc.

The soiree was held at the Spyglass Inn, Shell Beach, on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean, in the very same room where a similar bash was held for Mom's just-slightly-older-sister, Kit (not to be confused with my sister Kittie). The whole clan was there for a family dinner, with friends and associates of Mom's arriving later for hors d'oeuvres, champagne and a really smashing cake.

I took the 7:30 a.m. train up to Grover Beach from Union Station on Friday, which meant getting up at 5:15 to make the Gold Line connection. I had loaded a couple movies onto my iPhone, so I wasn't totally bored. Just north of Santa Barbara, I took some pictures through the dirty train windows (the best of which is shown here) of the trek up the coast.

I arrived in Grover Beach around 12:45, just in time to interrupt lunch for my sister Kittie and brother Steve (with his family, wife Pam and daughters Amanda and Emily) who were scheduled to retrieve me from the train station. Family members gathered (Kittie's husband Dave, brother Jim with his wife Carla and offspring Chance joining in) at the moms' house in Arroyo Grande that afternoon. I finally checked in to my motel around 5 p.m., returning to the moms' for delivery pizza and more conversation. I can't remember who dropped me off at the motel, but I hit the sack Friday at around 11:30.

Saturday I got a ride back to the moms' around 10 a.m. from Dave and Kittie. Steve (my Steve, not my brother Steve) was driving up that morning and showed up around 11:30. While brothers Steve and Jim and families went off to explore Morro Bay, Kittie and David worked feverishly on the party preparations while my Steve and I went to take in the wonders of Pismo Beach (pictured).

While eating lunch, I got a call on my cell from Evan (with camera here), creator of the DVD mentioned earlier in this blog. He was FREAKING OUT. Evan is one cool and collected dude, so it was obvious something wasn't right. He was in Santa Barbara (halfway between L.A. and Pismo Beach) and had forgotten the DVDs on his desk at home. He wanted to know if I had some of the original scans still on my flashstick drive (I carry it on my keychain) but I had dumped them off to make room for the Europe photos. He said he had his computer with him and could put together a quickie slideshow if we could retrieve some pictures.

"You've got two choices," I said. "You can turn around and drive back down to L.A. and get here late, or you can accept this, release it into the universe and come up and have a good time." He chose the latter, (the wiser choice) and we all had a great time even without the DVD which I only mentioned once that evening and is lovely I'm sure but I haven't gotten a copy and that's the last I'm going to mention it here.

We all returned in the late afternoon to the moms'. Steve (my brother) and his crew were bunking there, so they were set. Steve and I were housed at the motel and Jim and company had a short-term house rental, so we had to make an exit in order to prepare for the dinner.

We got to the Spyglass Inn just before sunset. Dinner was really nice, because we ordered off the menu, not some preset choice. This picture is a view out the windows of the party room just after dinner and just before the guests arrived for the party. During dinner, nonfamily folks in on the plan went to the moms' place and brought their two reclining chairs to the party room. Mom's was bedecked with a fan of peacock plumes and she was given a bouquet, tiara and sceptre in order to lord it over the party (see photo at top of entry). She did an excellent job.

There were several speeches (including one by yours truly, which I'm not so sure was very good), and then, as the liquor kicked in, the tone deaf began singing with the karaoke machine. Also with abandon; that's about the time I split with Steve...my Steve, not brother Steve...and the evening was pretty much over.

Sunday, we got up and went over to the moms'. They had asked us to get bagels on the way, but all the places where there had been supermarkets before were now something else (I was working with a 10-year-old mental map of the area), and the one bagel store had a drive-thru line around the building and all the parking spaces were taken. We decided to go next door to Dolly's Donuts and get a DeLuxe Assortment dozen and brought those over instead.

We got there to find that Kittie and David were coming over with eclairs, so no one was at a loss for refined sugar nor saturated fats.

All of Steve's crew (brother Steve, that is) except Amanda had left at 6 a.m. to fly back to Wisconsin. Steve (my Steve) and I headed back to L.A. at noon, giving my nephew CJ (or Christopher or Chris) a ride down as far as Union Station, where he caught the Amtrak back to Anaheim, where he's at college studying game coding.

It was a memorable party. A joy. A good time was had by all and if you've made it this far in this entry, you probably don't have a very exciting life. GO DO SOMETHING FUN!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Announcement

Well, it was finally announced, so I can tell the world. I have been chosen/have agreed to become the lead designer (in fact, the only designer) on the new Premier Edition of The Hollywood Reporter which will launch on Friday, Nov. 2. I don't have an official title yet (I am holding out for Grand Graphic Poohbah, Premier Edition), but I'm sure it will be something lovely. The promotion also has a nice raise with it; not enough to buy a new car or anything, but enough to make a real difference.

So this year has been sort of a transitional one, it's turning out, what with Steve getting a new position and me getting this promotion at the Reporter. It's got me feeling good about things.

This weekend is my mom's 80th birthday party, which should be one hell of a shindig. The extended family is gathering from around the country, cousin-in-law Evan has put together a retrospective DVD (from birth announcement to retirement) on the old gal, and sister Kittie has arranged for a karaoke machine for after everyone gets sauced and decides they can sing. Knowing Mom, she will be long gone by that time.

So for those of you reading this who are planning on attending: SEE YA THERE!

And below: a really funny video from FunnyOrDie.com:

Monday, October 8, 2007

Sucky Weekend

No photos for this entry, as there's nothing pleasant to show. Just a sucky weekend to relate.

Saturday was going to be a kickback day. Nothing to do but have one of the tires fixed on Steve's car, do the weekly banking and head home to watch a Netflix DVD.

At Sears, we found out the tire needed to be replaced because the tread was too worn (it really was) on three of the four tires. So Steve decided to get a new set. Then he thought he'd have them do the lube and oil change (it's due and we're going up to Mom's 80th birthday part this weekend in Pismo Beach) instead of trying to work it into the upcoming work week.

There was a package of services that included the lube and oil and some other stuff that was going to be part of the 30,000-mile maintenance service (coming up soon). It was cheaper in the package, so he decided to have that done, too. Three hours and $700 later ($760, if you count the money I spent shopping while waiting for the car to be finished), the car runs great.

We'd just gotten a menu book from a food-delivery service in town and were keen to try it out. Since we got home in the late afternoon, we decided to order in instead of cooking.

Never, ever, EVER order food -- on the phone, online or in person -- at a place called Teri & Yaki's. The Teri part is short for terrible, and the Yaki part is what you'll be doing for the next day once you ingest this greasy, ptomaine-infested byproduct of the fast-food culture.

Steve woke up Sunday sick as a dog. To make a long story short, I got to do a month's worth of laundry while Steve alternately slept or "prayed to the porcelaine goddess." We wrapped up the evening by watching "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" on DVD. Such a peppy, fun movie to show to the food-poisoned.

Well, I must sign off. I have to call Bangladesh and reset my password for the Nielsen network. Used to do it all on my own, but we are improving our network and centralizing services, so we now spend A LOT more time on the phone with all of our new outsourcing buddies.

More later.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Is He On the List?

I pixelated this photo on purpose because it was a really lousy picture to start with. I'll show you a much better one in a later post.

As you can see from the last, brief entry, I invited Steve to add to the blog and, after much difficulty and some gruff words at his computer and Google, he posted before bed.

Even though he calls it "our" blog, please note it's still titled "McDoings." (Isn't that a clever name? Sounds like it came from a Lilian Vernon copywriter: It's McDorable.)

Once Steve gets the kinks worked out (I'm a little ahead of him in the posting department), there will be two of us to split the reporting duties. I promise not to bitch about him here if he doesn't bitch about me. Deal? We also have to start signing our posts now. Like This:
Mark

Monday, October 1, 2007

Finally got in

This is my first post on Mark and my blog, so it will be short.
Told you so.

Tweaking Again

I've been tweaking the blog a little, learning a little more about the refinements.

Here's a photo of me from about three years ago. It's the one I used while I was doing dating services on the Internet. I don't look too different, just a bit thinner. (Steve and I went on a diet when we got back from Europe in April; I've lost about 20 pounds and he's lost about 15, so we're both looking better.)

I've added a link to my Web Site, old and decrepit though it is. I'm teaching myself Flash and intend to revise and update the site sometime in the near future, to make it much more of a designer's site and not so crude. (Well, it was designed in 1998, and I wrote all the code myself, so it had to be rather rudimentary.)

Another addition to this blog is a link to my JigZone puzzle page, where a lot of the snapshots from Europe have been turned into cyberjigsaw puzzles. Click on it, waste some time and have some fun.

You know, at some point I'm actually going to let people know this blog exists, and then I'll really be responsible for keeping it up! Until then, I tweak.