[sic]

So, in addition to thoroughly cleaning my desk and the bathroom off the library (leftovers from yesterday’s scrubathon), charging up every battery and packing the camera bag, I also managed to complete a rich and textured list of errands in this order:

• Orange 20 Bike Shop - To pick up the rebuilt wheel from The Phoenix that’s been done for like two weeks.
• Library - To drop off Gore Vidal’s “Burr” due back today.
• Collar & Leash - For a pair of big chew bones for them dawgies while we’re away.
• Baller Hardware - New toilet seat to replace the broken one on throne in the bathroom off the library.
• Bank - For some money (and I did a good deed by turning in an ATM card that was left in the slot of the machine I used).
• Ralphs - For dry dog and cat food and some squashesses for the tortoise nd Diet Peach Tea Snapples for my baby and Diet Pepsi Limes for me.
• Sav-On (I’m not ready to call them CVS yet) -  For a couple DV tape cassettes
• Tony’s Barbershop - For a little off the sides and top and tapered in the back
• Drycleaners - To pick up my tux shirt they pressed
• Mailbox - To drop my Verizon payment

N0w I’ve got about 2.5 hours to pack before I load up the truck with bicycles and cyclists and we motor on down to Long Beach for what I have no doubt will be a mind-blowing bike ride through the port of Long Beach.

I’m not sure what time it was yesterday. The sun had dropped behind the Micheltorena Ridge to the west but it wasn’t anywhere near dark yet. I was in the office when I heard Susan say “Oh no!” before I heard what she was saying “Oh no!” about.

Then the screaming outside amped up and I looked out the library window to find two women on the sidewalk across the street struggling with their dogs who had engaged. One I recognized. She and her two dogs live in the recently repainted craftsman to the north across the street. The other woman I hadn’t seen before and she was growing increasingly panicked and proportionally loud because she was trying to pull her big crop-earred pitbull off the neighbor’s dog and the pitbull, as they are well known for doing, was holding on tight.

I’m genetically predisposed to involving myself in these situations so through the living room and out the frontdoor I go, barefoot down the front steps, with Susan telling me to be careful while keeping Ranger and Shadow from coming with me. I start across the street but at a measured pace because first I don’t want to stub my toes (which I’m really good at doing and there are few things I hate doing to myself more than stubbing a toe), second I don’t want to burst upon everyone and freak the women or their animals any further, and third I don’t want to jump in the middle of a dog fight that I can’t break-up.

By the time I hit the curb and look around the parked car they’re behind, the woman with the pitbull is on the ground in the middle of the two dogs and screaming as if she’s the one being attacked.

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Couldn’t resist posting this. On our way up to the reservoir meadow event yesterday we passed under a bottle brush tree on Silver Lake Boulevard and this wonderful hummingbird obliged me taking forever to get my camera and long lens together by keeping busy until I could capture it (click to enlarge):

To: thetree@nextdoor.com
From: wildbell@gmail.com
Subject: Inquiring neighbors wanna know…

What gives, eh? It’s spring. Not fall. Not winter. SPRING. Please make a note of it, and stop with the excessive shedding, will ya!? The gardeners cleaned up after you Friday of last week and look (below and clickable) at what I had to sweep up today eight days later. It’s waaaaay too late for this to be happening, and certainly not this much. Thanks.

UPDATE (03.12 - 07:14 a.m.): A couple commenters to my original Blogging.la post on this matter have opted to be patronizing or antagonistic in their responses, either intimating that I’m a hypocrite or casting dispersions about my age. One is a fellow Midnight Ridazz supporter who knows me from my participation in those mass biking events. The other I have no idea who he or she might be. But both have embraced that strange misguided belief that it’s somehow legal to disturb the peace up until 11 p.m. I challenged my Midnight Ridazz compatriot to show me that law and in the meantime I’ve gone and found what I’ll refer to as the Los Angeles Noise Ordinance, specifically the section that deals with the type and source of Saturday night’s and Sunday morning’s disturbances: 

SEC. 112.01. RADIOS, TELEVISION SETS, AND SIMILAR DEVICES.
(Amended by Ord. No. 156,363, Eff. 3/29/82)

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person within any zone of the City to use or operate any radio, musical instrument, phonograph, television receiver, or other machine or device for the producing, reproducing or amplification of the human voice, music, or any other sound, in such a manner, as to disturb the peace, quiet, and comfort of neighbor occupants or any reasonable person residing or working in the area.

(b) Any noise level caused by such use or operation which is audible to the human ear at a distance in excess of 150 feet from the property line of the noise source, within any residential zone of the City or within 500 feet thereof, shall be a violation of the provisions of this section.

(c) Any noise level caused by such use or operation which exceeds the ambient noise level on the premises of any other occupied property, or if a condominium, apartment house, duplex, or attached business, within any adjoining unit, by more than five (5) decibels shall be a violation of the provisions of this section.

The brief backstory is that a couple months agos, this guy whose property’s backyard abutts ours was out there one early weekend morning talking on his cell phone loud enough that in our kitchen we could clearly hear his side of the conversation through the closed doors and windows. This went on for several minutes until I went outside and tried to get his attention. Eventually he saw me standing there and in so many slightly exasperated but polite words I indicated he was being pretty noisy and could he dial it down a couple clicks. He basically did. Yay.

A couple days after that while I was in the backyard doing some backyard stuff and now it was his turn to get my attention and we ended up having a really nice conversation. He was apologetic for disturbing me and I told him it was no problem and he made it clear he knew how I felt about excessive noise. I did the same, telling him how I didn’t hesitate to narc on the party house a couple doors to the north last summer when there music got way out of hand.

After dark a few days later I’m just exiting the garage after parking my truck and he and his wife are passing by while walking their dog. So we talk for a few minutes. Again, very cordial and friendly. They’re nice folks. Sure, he did pointedly crack wise in introducing me to her about me being “the guy that told him to shut the hell up,” but I laughed it off (knowing he hadn’t) and later had further discussion about noisy neighbors that made it seem we were in agreement about them: they suck. Susan arrived home while we were chatting and so I introduced her and we spoke for a few more minutes about the neighborhood until we said our goodbyes and they went on their way. End of backstory.

Then last night (as ranted about on Blogging.la), a fledgling rock band of some sort but not the good sort started rehearsing from out of nowhere in this very guy’s garage, playing at full volume and emitting soundwaves that were far too strong for the rickity woodframe outbuilding and had no trouble at all traveling across our backyard and permeating our woodframe home. The same guy who’s wife told me she makes it a point to not let her tenants party to hearty on the premises. With me wondering what the hell, this went on for more than an hour, ending around 9 p.m., and bringing about a wonderous silence that may or may not have been hastened by the several rocks I chucked at the structure while they were giving an extra-special mangling Zep’s “Stairway To Heaven.”

Fast forward to this morning and no sooner had Susan and I returned from a lovely Sunset Boulevard stroll up to a lovely breakfast at Matisse when the band gets going at full blast again. I’m able to beatdown the urge to launch another volley of stones and instead manage to scale the broken block wall so that I’m up on the level of their backyard. I think about vaulting the sagging chainlink fence but decide trespassing would not be good, so I start yelling trying to get someone’s attention. Anyone? It doesn’t work. So coming down off the wall I tell Susan I’m going for a walk around the block and find out what the hell is going on directly.

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As seen next to Echo Park Lake during our walk this morning:

There’s something about carving a peace symbol into a living thing that just doesn’t work for me.

Susan and I took a wonderful four-mile stroll today along Sunset across Echo Park to Douglas Street up into Angelino Heights and then back down around Echo Park Lake and up the the Brite Spot diner for breakfast before coming back home.

But now it’s time to get down to the business of grocery shopping and laundry and vacuuming and dusting and maybe a haircut and some prayers for the showers that are forecast won’t interfere with our Presidents Day whale-watching excursion tomorrow morning with Cybele.

More photos of the Our Lady of Guadalupe mural (in the Echo Park parking lot south of Sunset between Logan and Echo Park Avenue) and other stuff is here.

There’s some sort of sporting event that happens today. I may have to check it out and see what all the fuss is all about. But in the meantime, with Los Angeles basking in 80-plus degree temps and under crispity clear skies, I hauled myself the camera and the tripod up on the roof to gets me some panorama today:

[largest size is over here on Flickr]

P.S. Go Bears!

Let’s just put it this way: I’ll be going to the store for some tomato juice later. That’s right, Susan and I got ambushed by a skunk this morning with me getting the worst of the juicing. We were nailed barely a quarter mile into our second consecutive four-mile morning walk. Trust me on this it could’ve been a lot worse, which I’ll explain below.

Here’s how it went down. Susan and I hit the streets around 5:20 a.m. this morning. We headed north to Sunset then over to Parkman then down to Silver Lake Boulevard. Walking up the west side of the street with Susan to my right we past several properties until to my left was a short retaining wall, atop which were crudely installed some plywood boarding to keep the property’s sloping hillside from migrating.

At about the midway point across the front of that lot from out of nowhere all of a sudden a surprising spritz of something swept over my face from the left side. It hit my cheek, my nose, went in my eyes and on my lips. The succession of my rapidfire thoughts that followed were “I don’t hear any sprinklers” followed by “that’s not a sprinkler that’s rain” followed by “rain doesn’t feel oily like that!” followed by “rain doesn’t burn like that!!” followed by “rain doesn’t smell like that either!!!”

Right about that last thought was when I heard something scrambling across the dirt and weeds about arm’s length from me and at elbow height and so it was at this point that I decided it was high time to alert Susan — who was still assessing the spray that got past me and struck her — to the situation. I believe I said “Skunk! Holy shit!! We’ve been skunked!” And I said it loudly. Then I ran into the street totally like a girly man. Like a shameless stinky gesticulating little girly man.

A few seconds later I managed to regain most of my composure and return to Susan’s side where I pointed out to her our rapidly retreating black-and-white attacker with tail up but only at half-staff heading south away from us. This was followed by a few moments of Susan and I wiping and smelling ourselves to determine the extent of the damage.

Potential denial-phase aside, there just wasn’t all that much in the way of stank. Definitely present was that familiar bouquet of burned rubber with notes of rancid onions, but it was surprisingly subdued. And while never actually having come into direct contact with the projectile anal secretions of a skunk before, I do remember when our dog Shadow did back many years ago. She got hit badly and despite countless baths I swear I could smell remnants on her even after a year later. Plus I’ve certainly had to endure the noxious clouds let loosed on many an occasion by the nocturnal emissions of the skunks around our house… sometimes it’s bad enough to wake us up.

Thus is why I say it could’ve been a helluva lot worse. Given the skunk’s three-foot distance and strategic high-ground position, if Pepe (or Penelope) Le Pew had wanted to unload upon us it most certainly could have brought the rain, baby.

At best we suffered an abbreviated warning stream shot across the bow. Or maybe that’s giving the skunk too much credit and it wasn’t a warning at all. Maybe we just benefited from encountering a skunk that had sprayed recently and hadn’t yet had a chance to replinish its depleted supply of stank. Perhaps we surprised it out of its sleep and it decided to go to guns right away. Whatever the reasons and background all I know is that I’m having a much easier time dealing with the smell than I am with the fact that I had skunk ass juice in my eyes and on my lips.

But anyway, given that after the conclusion of a preliminary olfactory investigation we weren’t terrifically odious Susan and I opted to continue the march, paying particularly close attention to dog walkers and joggers who’d pass us and enter our wakes to see if they’d let out a deep sniff and a “phew!” None did. At least none that we could audibly discern.

Upon arriving home, whoo boy did the dogs take immediate note of the additional aroma and all the compromised clothing promptly went into the washing machine for the first of repeated cycles in they hope they can be salvaged. I’ve washed my face several times, too. With hydrogen peroxide. Like Lady Macbeth trying to get the blood off her hands, baby.