My son’s on spring break this week. Today he spent the day with a friend volunteering at the local Boys and Girls Club. “I was watching kids for seven-and-a-half hours!” he says. I say, “I’ve been watching a kid for 15 years.” “Yeah, well, I’m a lot easier.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Irvine
Honor Roll
My son made the honor roll his first semester in high school. I’m very proud of him. He’s in a competitive (translation: high percentage of Asian kids) high school and he’s taking honors classes, where every kid thinks they should get an A but there aren’t enough A’s to go around. An email went out to parents listing the Honor Roll kids. There are a lot of kids on the Honor Roll at this school. They should send out a list of the kids who didn’t make the Honor Roll. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would teach the kids a good lesson: Work hard or be humiliated. Another idea: Only kids taking honors classes would be eligible for the Honor Roll. All other kids would be eligible for the “Honor” (insert finger-quotes here) Roll. Read more →
Early Shift at Starbucks
I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store. Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment. I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . . Read more →
Father-Son Greeting Cards
This is screamingly funny in an unfunny way . . . An Irvine man has started up a greeting card company specializing in father-to-son cards: Founder, Steve Cunningham, a father of four could not find masculine cards written with the right message for his boys. During his travels, or when away for long periods, he often wanted to send a card conveying “I’m thinking of you” or perhaps express an uplifting word of encouragement, motivation, or proud of you. After endless searches on-line and in countless retail outlets, Steve begged the question… why is so little attention paid to men, particularly fathers who play an invaluable roll in the development of their children? OK, first of all, Steve is an idiot. He’s got a less-than-rudimentary command of the English language, but like many incompetent people, is unaware of his own incompetence, and thus doesn’t hire a copy editor to clean… Read more →
Community Leaders
I’ve got here an email from the Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF), soliciting online donations at the IPSF website. Also on the website is a page listing the names of the IPSF board members, along with their corporate affiliation. Seven of the board members have no corporate affiliation and instead are given the tagline of “Community Leader.” Question: What in the world is a Community Leader?! How does one acquire such a designation, other than not having a real job? Couldn’t we just identify them as Volunteers or Parents or Parent Volunteers, instead of making them out to be some sort of tribal chieftains? Based on the one Community Leader that I actually know personally, I’d say a more appropriate label would be Community Nuisance or Gadfly. Read more →
Pastagina
Theres a new restaurant opening up in our local shopping center: Pastagina. What is that — pasta for women? Even the logo is highly suggestive . . . Read more →
Halloween 2007
My son put on a cap, a pair of sunglasses, hung a clock around his neck, and went trick-or-treating with his friends as Flavor Flav. I can’t imagine anyone in Irvine is going to be able to figure that one out. Postscript “One woman asked me, ‘Are you supposed to be Flavor Flav?’” he says. “What was her ethnicity?” I ask him. “White.” OK, I stand corrected. Read more →
Crime and Punishment
As you can see on this perimeter map of the Santiago Fire, the active fire line is now far enough east that my wife and I can clean the ashes and soot off our patio this morning without worrying about having a new load of ashes and soot dumped on it the next day. (We live in the small notch northeast of the now-decommissioned El Toro MCAS.) I say to her, “They should find the guys who set the fire and make them clean up this mess.” “Kill them!” she suggests. “Couldn’t we make them clean up the mess and then kill them?” Read more →
No Serenade, No Fire Brigade, Just Pyromania
Air quality and visibility were much worse today than yesterday. I don’t know if the winds shifted or if it just takes a day or so for all the ashes and soot to fall back to earth. Proving that there’s a positive side to everything, the Santa Ana winds that have fanned these fires around Southern California also knocked down half the trees in our community, which will now have to be removed and replaced, so if you’re in the landscaping service business, this is a good time for you. “Honey! Call Farmers and get a quote on homeowners insurance – stat!” My wife is in the insurance business. She’s received several calls over the past few days from people wanting to buy a homeowners policy. Ordinarily, she’d be happy to sell them one . . . the problem is that the houses are in zip codes that… Read more →
Ashes to Ashes
As a result of the fires, particularly the one that burned across the northern border of Irvine, everything in the neighborhood is coated with either a thick layer of soot or a thin film of soot, depending on whether the object in question is outdoors or indoors. Read more →
Fire Update
As of this afternoon, the fires had shifted and were no longer considered a significant threat to Irvine homes. Here’s a map of the areas affected so far. The fire started — or I should say “was started,” since it’s now believed to be an arson fire — in the area bounded by the top of the map, the 261 to the west, the 241 to the east, and Portola Parkway to the south. Firefighters were able to stop the fire from crossing Portola, but it continued to burn east and is now bearing down on Foothill Ranch, the residential area in the lower right corner of the map . . . Read more →
Setting the World on Fire
Wildfires are burning all over Southern California, including one here in Irvine: What they’re saying on the TV news is that firefighters are planning to make a stand at Portola Parkway and stop the fire there, which is good news because we live south of Portola. About 100 feet south, but it’s better than nothing. Here are some blurry photos from our patio: Read more →
School Choice
Another gem from the freshman football mailing list . . . Of the four high schools here in Irvine, only one — Irvine High — has a stadium on campus. There’s a movement afoot, led by local attorney and parent Emmett Raitt, to build a second stadium. Here’s an excerpt from Emmett’s email suggesting that parents write to the school board about this matter: The reasons a second stadium are needed include the elimination of Thursday night games, which lowers student attendance at games; it will ease the overcrowding of the Irvine Stadium facility (and particularly the snack bar, a personal favorite of mine); and it will allow all schools to use District facilities for their graduations, which they do not now do. Hmmm . . . I can’t see how increasing student attendance is going to ease overcrowding, nor do I think the fact that some local fatso thinks… Read more →
This Week in Sports Parents Must Die
My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed): Fellow Freshman parents, Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo: If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name… Read more →
Follow Your Heart
Man died doing what he loved most — Orange County Register He loved being hit by trucks? Read more →
Beating the Heat
We’re moving to a new residence next week. The man moving his family into our current home has already transferred the utilities to his name, even though he’s not moving in until Sept. 4. This means I’ll be running the air conditioner the entire Labor Day weekend and he’ll be picking up the tab. Thank you, sir! Read more →
Life in the OC Photos
Originally uploaded by debaird. I’ve walked by this store dozens of times at the Irvine Spectrum and it never occurred to me that an extreme closeup of the sign would make an interesting photo. I guess that’s why some of us are photographers and some of us are sitting around saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” More like this: The photo is from a Flickr set called .:life in “the oc”:. Read more →
Safety First
According to the 2006 FBI Annual Uniform Crime Report, Irvine, CA — where I live — is the safest city in the country. Read more →
How Ancient Rituals Die Out
My son had an Irvine honor band concert last night. Along with the junior high group that he’s in, there were groups from the elementary and high schools. I was looking through the program to see if any of his junior high friends had brothers or sisters in the other groups. That turned out to be an impossible mission. To explain why, I’m going to plop my finger down at a random spot in the program and read off a list of the kids’ last names. OK, here we go — Kim, Lin, Chang, Kim, Chang, Kim, Yang, Choi, Chiang, Chen, Tang, Huang, Lee, Tran, Lin, Lee, Yang, Lin, Yi, Oh, Krolewski (Krolewski! “He’s a white boy,” my son explains.) Kim, Song, Chen, Yang, Lin, Kim, Thomas, Tran, Chung, Chan, Lee . . . When I was in school, it was a first-day ritual for the teachers to read through… Read more →
Some People Should Be Allowed to Work at Their Own Pace
Speaking of motivation, today’s Orange County Register has a story about a guy who really knows — or knew — how to light a fire under his employees. According to the story, Woo Sung Park, a landscaping supervisor, told day laborer Ernesto Avalos that he, Avalos, was not pulling his weight on the job. The pep talk so energized Mr. Avalos that he beat Mr. Park to death with a shovel and a pickax. This happened right here in Irvine! Tragically, one of my rich neighbors is now two men short on his beautification project . . . Read more →