“No, I don’t think the 118 is affected by the fire. It’s looks like it’s down more in the Box Canyon area. Take the 210 to the 405 South to the 101 North, don’t take the 101 through Pasadena.”
-In fact, the 118 (Ronald Reagan Freeway), which is the main route into my city, is actually closed. The fire started in the pass that connects Simi Valley to LA. This sort of things happens all too often in the desert that is Southern California. Today was very warm, and extremely windy, perfect fire spreading conditions. Fortunately, this most recent outbreak was nothing like the Apocalypse of two years ago.
A friend of mine, who lives closer to the fires than I do, just called to cancel his attendance at a gathering this evening. His reasoning, “As paradoxical as it sounds, I’m going to stay home to see if they evacuate us.” Can’t argue with that.
Summer has left the building. In America, the seasons start on the 21st of the month. For example, the 21st of September is the offical first day of Fall. In this part of the world, they decided to use the first day of the month. I find, and have always found, this to be a much more intuitive system. December is without a doubt a winter month, but according to the American calendar, it’s still Fall. Perhaps in Los Angeles, September can still be a pretty hot month, and maybe I understand why it’s included in Summer, thereby necessitating that June fall in Spring. That makes sense … in Los Angeles.
At the end of August, leaves here had already started turning yellow, and the temperatures were steadily in the 60s during the day. Now, however, the ground has a thin layer of leaves, and the daytime high for this week and last is in the 50s. This past Sunday I decided to wander about my neighborhood, taking pictures before the leaves are all gone.
Here’s a tree who’s being overcome from the inside. Underneath walks a very typical babushka:
The buildings here are extremely standardized, and this picture shows the road between two 5-level Khrushev built apartments. You can see leaves already lying on the dirt road:
I found a very popular soccer field. There were about 60 spectators watching, mostly young High School or Jr. High kids:
I go home on Saturday, and I expect it to be a sort of time machine back to Summer. I’ll be gone for three weeks, and I’ll return around the same time as this picture was taken in last year’s attempt to chronicle Fall. It’s hard to believe that a full rotation of seasons has gone by.
Since Russia is a controlled society, I can’t get into the university without a student card. I really don’t understand this concept. You’d think that the biggest problem is that too many students skip classes, not that strange people wander in from off the streets to listen to lectures. And it’s not just because I go to the main university in town, they’re all like this.
Last Thursday was the first day of classes, and I had saved my student card all summer long. I was very proud of myself for accomplishing, what is for me, this Herculian task. I lose everything. I bring my card with me and show the security guard, who kindly lets me pass. During a break, I mosey down to the foreign student office to check in and make sure that everything is ok. All’s well, and I leave.
The next day, I’m walking out the door when I realize that I don’t have my student card. Since I’m already late, I decide that it has to be somewhere in the apartment, and I’ll find it that night when I return. When I get to the faculty, I decide that I really don’t want to tell the guard that it’s the second day, and I’ve already lost my student card. Instead, I affect my strongest, yet at the same time still understandable, english accent and tell the guard that I have no student card and need to go to the “foureine stoodenz ouffees.” He just shakes his head and presses the button that allows me to pass.
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Without a doubt the best quote I’ve come across in a while. This article discusses the poor quality of movies this summer, in which a documentary entitled “March of the Penguins,” turned out to be a surprise hit:
“In an ideal world, people would say ‘OK, we have to think more creatively, we have to think outside the box and come up with new and different things … but I’m afraid what’s going to happen is, we’re all going to sit in a room and say ‘We need more penguin movies.’”
