[sic]

It’s amazing how 10 pounds of rice and 10 pounds of beans can fill up a backpack.

I’ve had these foodstuffs for several weeks, but the Burrito Project I’ve been involved with went dormant after I bought them.

With intentions expressed toward getting the Hollywood Burrito Project going again next week, I hauled these a couple miles over to the young lady whose kitchen will be used to make the burritos.

I’ll be out of town for next week’s run but hopefully I’ll be able to help out the following week.

The 78th Annual Blessing of the Animals is taking place at Olvera Street this Saturday beginning at noon, with the procession commencing at 2 p.m.

Susan and I have made this a spring tradition since 2004, bringing our Russian tortoise Buster who serves as house ambassador for our four cats and two dogs.

I snapped this photo of a true dee-oh-double-guh blessee from the event in 2005.

It’s 52 degrees and calm outside right now at 3:50 a.m. It seems not as socked in as yesterday, but it’s early yet — literally. I’m up this morning this time not because of an tresspassing critters, but instead to get my ass on down to the 14th running of the bicycles known as the Acura L.A. Bike Tour, and ensure a spot near the front of the pack of some 15,000 or so others.

I just realized that with the L.A. Marathon I completed in 1994, and all the bike tours (and three orther marathons) since, this marks my 15th consecutive year of getting up the first Sunday in March.

It’s my least favorite part of the fun to come.

My daughter invited me to a concert she was involved in last night. That’s her sixth in from the left in the pink scarf — centerstage, as it should be.

Despite a cold she sang beautifully. I’m so proud of her.

Tomorrow should be a fun day of discovery. After learning of the Second Annual L.A. Archives Bazaar at the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino on Saturday, I pitched the idea to Susan earlier of taking all that history in and going multi-modal in getting there — by bus, train and bike.  And I figured since we’d be in the area we can pedal over to nearby L.A. County Arboretum (a place I’ve never been) and take that in as well for a spell.

So we’re going to embark upon our journey via the No. 704 bus that goes down Sunset Boulevard to Union Station. Then we’re going to get on the Gold Line and train it all the way out to its San Gabriel Valley terminus at the Sierra Madre Villa Station, and then bike to both venues, first the Arboretum and then the Huntington.

After we’re done we’re going to head back up to the Gold Line’s Allen Avenue depot (nine-mile surface street route charted here) to get ourselves back downtown , perhaps stopping at Olvera Street’s La Golondrina for margaritas and munchables before either biking the rest of the way home or boarding the No. 4 back along Sunset to Silver Lake.

If anyone reading might be going to the Huntington, hopefully we’ll see you there. Or if by some strange reason you’re in the area and interested in joining us, we’ll probably be heading out eeeeeearly, like around 9 a.m. If that doesn’t discourage you, drop me an email and let’s plan on meeting up at the Union Station Gold Line tracks accordingly.

 
click to quadrupilate

Yeah, we had kick-ass seats for a kick-ass Pink Martini concert tonight at the Hollywood Bowl.

It ain’t often but occasionally there’s a perk to being a contributionalist with the Metroblogging empire, and last night rose up the opportunity from Blogging.la Captain David Markland to take my wife to a couple of terrace seats at the Hollywood Bowl to see the famed venue recreated as the legenndary Cocoanut Grove nightclub with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under the baton of conductor Thomas Wilkins and headlined by Pink Martini, featuring Carol Channing, Henri Salvador and the MarchForth Marching Band. All that and a fireworks finale, too!

As such I was faced with the decision between this unique event and my beloved Midnight Ridazz and I’m pretty sure I made the right call given how excited Susan was at the prospect of picknicking so up-close and personal to all the action. And she adores Pink Martini.

So while I mourn missing my monthly midnighter, I’m also gonna drive to work today so that when I get home this afternoon I’m in a more presentable condition (i.e. not in need of another shower) and we can get on our way to the show that much quicker.

See! I can put the bike down and step away from it. Sometimes.

Something about it being the beginning of September makes today’s first day at my new job feel like the start of a new school year.

So as I’m looking forward to it, here’s a trip back in time via mine and Susan’s Flickr photosets of our visit to the awesome Heritage Square Museum for the Great Los Angeles Ice Cream Party event where we saw the inimitable Stephen Box, what may or may not have been Militant Angeleno (or a sensational holographic replication) and LAist’s Zach Behrens out there among the heat and throng.

First the good news: I’m reeeeeeally pleased with how todays clouds timelapse came out. And that means only more good news: that my attempt to capture the rich cumulo-nimbus display from our Silver Lake rooftop melted neither the computer nor the camera — amazingly, because it was mighty dang hot up there.

But I won’t waste anymore time other than to say go look at what I done caught, or check out the embedded YouTube version below. Purty cool, eh?

Hey there. It’s your friendly neighborhood mad scientist/engineer/documentationalist/timelapsologist again, coming to you live from the tippity top of roof of our Silver Lake abode, where I got the bug to install my laptop and digicam in an attempt to capture what hopefully will be the building of another day’s “thunderhat” above and beyond the Verdugo Mountains centered out there in the distance as seen below:

As you can see there’s nothing much happening but a lotta blue sky right now but I’m hopeful that as the hours march so will the cumulo-nimbussessess way out over the Antelope Valley as they have rather spectacularly the last few days. If the clouds come back and it all works out (meaning that the heat/direct sunlight doesn’t melt the camera, the tripod, the cabling, and the laptop — which it very well might, despite the rudimentary shading I erected) I should be able to post a timelapse movie compiled from images made every 30 seconds that will be a treat to watch as it slowly unfolds. Fingers crossed!

UPDATE (12:36 p.m.): I must’ve been reading my friend Frazgo’s mind because upon our return from grocery shopping I immediately went up top with an umbrella and rigged up some of the very shade he recommended in the comment that I just found when I came back down to upload pics of the set-up still fully functional, perhaps made a little more so by the extra sunscreen (after the jump):

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