Chavez Ravine

The Red Sox are in town this weekend for three exhibition games against the Dodgers, so we took Tessie to see the 2007 World Champions. She's been to two other baseball games already (and one in utero), but this was her first time seeing the team in whose honor she was named.

I certainly hope they'll do better next time: the Dodgers beat them, 3-1.

Even though the Red Sox have already begun their regular season with two games in Tokyo, these three games in L.A. are exhibition games, so it's a good thing this one didn't count. Nor will tomorrow's game, a throwback extravaganza to be held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of 115,000 fans.

We decided to skip that one because, like so many other things in Los Angeles, the traffic and parking hassles are likely to more than cancel out any enjoyment of the actual event.

So we went tonight to Dodger Stadium, in Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown Los Angeles. A much sparser crowd of only 34,404 was in attendance, making the experience more pleasurable and giving Tessie plenty of room to roam and make new friends.

We left after the seventh inning stretch, which is normally something we would never do, but the game was late and we wanted to get Tessie home before it got too far past her bed time. Besides, the Red Sox left the game long before we did - all of the starters had been replaced by the seventh inning by what one of the Dodger announcers called the "Witness Protection Lineup."

Since it wasn't the same team, we broke with tradition and left before the final out. We actually even arrived home before the final out, which we saw on TV.

Tessie didn't get to see the Sox win, but she did make it to the seventh inning stretch:

The Long-Awaited San Diego Video

At last, I've finally got the promised video from our trip to San Diego earlier this month. This was all shot at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park, as we explored our way through the exhibits.

Reorganizing

Tessie seems to think that "alphabetically by artist" is a silly way to organize a CD collection. She is encouraging us to try someting new.

Easter Sunday in the Park

So how did we spend our Easter Sunday? Well, we spent a fair chunk of it driving around trying to figure out where we want to live.

Yes, the house hunt is still in progress. We've looked at an astounding number of homes, both with our agent and at open houses. We came close to making an offer on a house, but our excursion today convinced us to wait. In addition to the potential for a major housing market correction, we decided that we'd prefer to live in a neighborhood where the residents would be glad to see a police car drive slowly by.

We conducted an informal survey of a number of neighborhoods where we might find an affordable house, and ruled out several. We invented a formula for evaluating neighborhoods:

D = H/(B + J)

where D = desirability (the higher, the better)
H = total number of houses,
B = number of houses with bars on their windows or doors,
and J = number of junked cars parked on the property.

We drove through quite a few areas where D was less than one, which makes for a pretty dicey-looking neighborhood.

Tessie napped through most of the excursion, and was so well-behaved while awake that we decided to spend the rest of the day having fun.

Following lunch, a trip to the park, where Tessie got to ride the swings,

solo on the slide,
drive a fire truck with Mommy,
stop for a refreshing drink,
and, lastly, visit the big splooshy fountain at the mall.

Happy Easter!

Tessie, with help from her day care staff, made us an Easter card and dyed a pair of eggs. There is photographic evidence of Tessie's egg-dying, but our scanner is on the blink, so we can't share it here. We take it on faith that she created the egg decorations on the card, but believe that composing the verse inside is slightly beyond her current abilities.

You're probably curious now as to what it says. Sorry; here goes:

I'm a Little Chick

(Sung to "I'm a Little Teapot")

I'm a little chick inside an egg

I'm always sleeping - snoring away

Soon you'll hear a pecking, pecking sound

The egg will crack and I'll be found!

The card concludes with "Have an 'egg-stra' special Easter," in the belief that children are never too young for bad puns.

These items were sent home to us along with a staggering amount of Chinese-made junk, sugary foods and festive plastic detritus that other parents felt the need to distribute amongst the families of their offspring's cohort in celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the annual return of the Easter Bunny and/or their impending Economic Stimulus Payments.

Balboa Park

After a bit of delay, I can now wrap up our San Diego adventures...

We planned to spend our last day in San Diego at Balboa Park, the site of the 1914-1917 Panama-California Exhibition. The park is actually much older than that, but the exhibition, which was meant to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, is what turned it into a cultural attraction. So giving away the canal wasn't a total loss.

We wanted to have breakfast downtown before hitting the park, but the waffle place nearest the hotel was packed, so we just hit the road assuming we'd find something in the park. We arrived before 10 am, when most park attractions open, and just walked around for a while, getting reacquainted with the place, before settling in for breakfast at the cafe in the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center.

The museum opened soon enough, and we entered "Listen Here! Making Sense of Sound," an exhibit on sound perception and aural phenomena. Tessie is an expert on sound, especially making it, so she delighted in playing with all the noisy exhibits, and I particularly enjoyed the electronic drums. Then it was off to "Kid City," a special playroom for kids six and under which was meant to simulate an urban environment with lots of areas to explore. The main areas were a grocery store and a factory, and at one point the children at play divided themselves perfectly by gender with all the girls in the grocery and all the boys at the factory. Tessie avoided the plastic broccoli there just as emphatically as she does at home, and then we got her to break down the gender barriers and play in the factory for a while.

We continued touring the museum until Tessie conked out in her stroller, then we went outside into the beautiful San Diego sunshine. Balboa Park is pretty well spread out, so we walked for a bit, saw the botanical gardens in the Lath House, had a hot dog by the Spreckels Organ, and then wandered into the "International Cottages," which we had never visited before. The cottages are left over from a 1935 exhibition, and on Sundays they open to the public with docents, music and dancing, and, best of all, food from a variety of countries. We had Czech & Slovak cookies, Norwegian seafood pate, and Polish pastries, which were all delicious, all made by volunteers simply out of pride in their national cuisines, and all available for modest (~$1) donations.

Once Tessie woke up again, we took her to the miniature railroad for a ride. (This is not to be confused with the Model Railroad Museum, which we have visited many times, but skipped on this trip.) After waiting for the train to complete several circuits while Tessie downed a package of graham crackers, Hannah and Tessie boarded the train for a short ride. Short, but not uneventful, as live rabbits and stuffed African animals were sighted. That guy in front looks thrilled, doesn't he?

Our last stop in the park was at the carousel, where Tessie got her second lifetime carousel ride. She really does seem to enjoy them. From there we got back in the car for the drive home, but we stopped for dinner at the Stone Brewery in Escondido. We arrived too late to take the tour, but we did have dinner in their on-site restaurant. The food was good, if pricey, but it wasn't exceptional. The part of the restaurant that made the greatest impression was the architecture: stone was used everywhere. I had to keep reminding myself that the name of the brewery was, in fact, Stone; that was the only way to justify what would otherwise have been a completely oppressive environment.

Back in the car, we passed this guy on the way home.

I have some video from this trip to edit; I hope to post it soon.

Midway

With Hannah again occupied by her conference, Tessie and I set out from the hotel to visit one of San Diego's newest attractions: the USS Midway Museum.

The Midway has been converted from an aircraft carrier into a museum and is now permanently moored at the Navy Pier, close by the hotel. We walked past the Seaport Village mall and through the "National Salute to Bob Hope and the Military" sculpture garden, which features a giant statue based on the famous World War II photograph by Alfred Eisenstadt. It looks, well, creepy in color and in larger than life size. You be the judge:


From there it's a short walk to the museum entry. After paying admission, visitors enter the museum on the hangar deck, which is one level below the fight deck. More so than the 4-acre-plus flight deck, the hangar deck is what really gives a strong impression of how big the ship really is. The hangar deck is essentially a big room, designed for the storage and maintenance of up to 40 aircraft, and there are no pillars or other supports in a space that could accommodate nearly three football fields end-to-end. The Midway was the first ship built too large to fit through the Panama canal, and she was the biggest ship afloat for ten years. At some point, it hits you: this thing moves. Or rather, moved. Her sailing days are over and the hangar deck is given over to a variety of display aircraft and exhibits.

Tessie is of course too young to appreciate the ship's history, but she sure likes pushing buttons and flipping switches:

From the hangar deck, it was easy to get up to the flight deck; there is an elevator that allowed me to bring Tessie's stroller topside. We also explored two decks below the hangar deck and saw mess halls and wardrooms, the officers' quarters, the ship's Post Office, and many other aspects of the "City at Sea." The only areas we couldn't visit were in the island, the superstructure that rises up from the flight deck; Tessie didn't meet the minimum height requirement, so we missed seeing Flight Control and the Captain's Quarters. Other than that, I was impressed by how easily I could maneuver Tessie's stroller through the ship, and I was also happy to find an oversize family restroom on the hangar deck.

Up on the flight deck, Tessie and her wingman lined up for takeoff on catapults 1 & 2:

Tie-downs every three feet? Good idea! Hannah's conference ended right about the time we were ready to go, so we met in the Seaport Village and headed off to the Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego's historic/tourist district. We had a tasty lunch at the Rock Bottom Brewery and then walked around the district window shopping. We finished the evening back at Seaport Village, where Tessie had her first ever carousel ride:
After dinner at the hotel we got ourselves to bed and rested for a day at Balboa Park.

To be continued...

Road Trip!

So with Tessie's Mom off at a conference in San Diego, the little one and I were left to our own devices for an evening before heading off on the open road for a weekend excursion.

We spent the evening packing our necessities: fresh clothes and a toothbrush for yours truly, and pretty much everything else in the house that wasn't nailed down for Tessie. (Toddlers require a lot of infrastructure. Road trips with toddlers require the logistical expertise of Halliburton, which I, your correspondent, lack. Oh well.)

So, to where did we escape on our sojourn? I mentioned that Hannah was in San Diego, right? Where else would we go? After one night of single parenting, I was very ready to reunite the family.

We hit the road a little after one p.m., and I hoped to make it to San Diego by four. No such luck; traffic has become significantly worse since the last time I drove down that way.

Regardless of our slow progress, Tessie sensed that our destination would mean seeing "mama" again, and so that was all she talked about. Which means she just kept saying "mama" over and over again all the way down.

That's not entirely true; she did have a nap during the drive, and she would interrupt her "mama" chant whenever she saw a large truck. This would cause her to shout "bus!" which meant she wanted me to sing "Wheels on the Bus"; this happened a few times until she realized that I can't sing.

Eventually, we did make it all the way to the hotel, the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina, in time to catch Hannah between a conference session and a schmoozy dinner. There was a joyful reunion after their roughly 32 hours apart, but then Hannah had to leave for dinner, and Tessie and I were, again, left to our own devices.

Fortunately, Hannah had spotted a Joe's Crab Shack from our hotel room balcony, and it was to there that Tessie and I made our way, requesting a table for one and a half when we arrived.

Tessie was an excellent dinner companion, if a bit messy. There are many reasons we like to take Tessie to Joe's. Among them are the loud atmosphere (she really can't be disruptive), the fact that everyone there is eating with their hands (not just Tessie), that the table setting includes a roll of paper towels (with more available on request), and that there's a large bucket in a hole in the center of the table. It's meant for crab shells, but everything goes in the bucket: dropped food, napkins, disposable bibs, more dropped food, spat-out food - everything. Very useful and convenient. Tessie surprised me by a) really liking the clam strips I got as an appetizer, and b) not caring at all for crabmeat, which she had enjoyed on previous visits.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and I gave Tessie a bath. This was the first time I'd done so; normally, it's Hannah's job because I'm not so good at kneeling tubside for twenty minutes and then being able to walk afterward. The Mariott's bathroom layout made it a bit easier than it would have been at home, and I must say I enjoyed watching Tessie splash and play.

After bath it was bedtime; the Marriott was good enough to provide a playpen for Tessie, and she quickly fell asleep. Which was good, because she needed the rest for the next day

To be continued...