It’s a warm early summer day here in Southern California. As I come back to the office from lunch, a colleague is setting up one of those windshield screens to keep the sun from shining into her car all afternoon.
Toughen up, sweetie. I like my steering wheel to be blazing hot when I return to my vehicle. The pain reminds me I’m alive.
AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
Jonny Copp, a well-known mountain climber and adventurer who grew up in Fullerton, has been found dead on the side of Mount Edgar, China, the apparent victim of an avalanche, according to a variety of websites, including his own.
Three words that come to mind when I hear someone introduced as an “adventurer”: Die, die, die . . .
Nick Adenhart pitched six scoreless innings for the Angels last night but took a no-decision as the bullpen came in and blew the lead.
A few hours later, Adenhart was killed in a car smash in Fullerton by some drunken idiot who ran a red light.
He was 22 years old . . .
P.S. My son says Adenhart’s dad had flown out from Baltimore and saw his son pitch a great game, that Adenhart was “buzzing” in the locker room after the game, despite the loss, so maybe it wasn’t a bad day. Except for the dying part.
P.P.S. The Angels postponed their game the following night, April 9. The local Angels TV station instead replayed the April 8 game — the Adenhart game. It was sad watching him walk off the field, not knowing it was the last time . . .
(The New Yorker) #Temperatures soared into the 80s in Orange County this weekend. Thank god I stockpiled enough rum, Coke and ice to ride it out . . .
The house two doors down from us is for sale. The house across the street is empty and for sale.
The woman behind us and the woman next door, who was recently laid off, have asked my wife if she knows anything about loan modification . . .
Man arrested may be linked to Viagra theft
Physicist who invented the Taser gun dies
Come to find out, the guy who invented the Taser lived right here in Orange County, in Mission Viejo!
I’m shocked!
IRVINE – A group of solemn people sat around tables at a fast-food Chinese restaurant off Jeffrey Road on Wednesday night after a man was shot and killed while sitting in a white Lexus parked behind the eatery.
At least he died in a nice car. It’s Irvine, Jake!
This happened a stone’s throw from my house. Well, more than a stone’s throw but let’s say a hard 5-iron with a good bounce off Trabuco Road.
I’ve been to that Chinese restaurant many times. (It’s a dine-in restaurant, not a fast-food place, despite what the Register says.)
Don’t worry about me though. Irvine is still the safest city in the country.
That guy must have gotten himself mixed up in some kind of trouble . . .
It’s chilly tonight in Orange County — temperatures in the low 40s — but the dog still needs to go out for a walk so I ask my son to please take care of it.
“It’s kinda cold,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I reply. “He’s got fur.”
“I don’t have fur.”
“You should have thought of that when you asked for a dog.”
My wife tells me the Gary’s Island store in Newport Beach is going out of business.
I hope it’s not true.
It’s a great store, but I suppose in a down economy, high-end Hawaiian shirts are even more of a luxury item than usual . . .
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
I use charts like this one to track open project tickets, color-coded by priority.
At a meeting last week, I pointed out that the number of open tickets on this particular project had peaked out at 70 and was now dropping faster than the value of my house, at which one of the attendees laughed more enthusiastically than I thought was necessary.
“Why is that funny?” I asked. I mean, it was supposed to be a little funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny.
“I’ve been there,” she said.
Last year, Dick’s Sporting Goods bought Chick’s Sporting Goods. According to the Orange County Register, the four Chick’s locations in Orange County, including the one in Tustin that I shop at, will all be replaced by Dick’s by the second half of 2009.
I’m not happy about this. Oh, I know there are people who like Dick’s, and there are people who are 50-50 on the matter and can go either way, but there are also a lot of people like me who really prefer Chick’s.
In fact, I’ve been doing Chick’s for so long that I don’t see how I’m ever going to get used to Dick’s.
They’re having a labor dispute over at the Magic Kingdom — complete with costumed protestors — which resulted in Peter Pan, Snow White, Cinderella, Tinkerbell and others being handcuffed, frisked and stuffed into the paddy wagon yesterday . . .
You’ll never guess who I saw at the Juice It Up in Aliso Viejo: Sugar Ray Leonard, the famous boxer! He was in line in front of me with a couple of his kids.
I wasn’t sure it was him at first, so I discreetly asked the college-age girl at the register, “Was that somebody famous?”
“Who?” she asked.
“The guy in front of me. That was Sugar Ray Leonard, right?”
The name meant nothing to her, but another gentleman in the shop assured me that it was really him.
Interesting fact: Leonard’s wife, who was waiting outside the shop, is not very attractive. You might think that the great Sugar Ray Leonard’s wife would be much hotter than, say, my wife, but such is not the case. Not even close.
Is it possible that Roberto Duran had just caught a glimpse of Mrs. Leonard ringside when he uttered his famous no más?
A new set of California Academic Performance Index (API) scores are out . . .
In Irvine, where I live, education is king, and the school district posted a very nice score: 888 out of 1000.
Breaking it down demographically, the Asian kids led the way with a 933. African-American and Hispanic kids were both more than 100 points below the average, but there are so few of them in the district that they don’t affect the overall score very much.
Even the special ed kids scored a respectable 705, higher than the 668 scored by the neighboring Santa Ana district, where education takes a back seat to gang-related slayings.
Irvine: Our special ed kids are smarter than your honor students.
A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.
“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up the Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”
“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”
“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”
