Uh, Smokey, this looks like trouble...

The forest fires in LA became a fixture in our lives while we were out there. The city is such a mess of concrete that it seems like it's be impossible to incinerate it, but the forest surrounding the city is desert delicate. So much so that Mack's dad once got pulled over for throwing his cigarette out the window while he was driving.

One of the biggest fires last year, the one where a bunch of celebrities lost their homes, threatened to take out the Getty Villa and lots of them have come dangerously close to the incredible Griffith Observatory, the incomparable Hollywood Bowl and the famed Hollywood sign. During that one, we went to get in our car and saw these chunks of dust swirling around, thinking what could this be? Then we realized the fire was making it rain ash in our neck of the woods, so much so that a layer had landed on our car and had to be dusted off.

I found this footage of the fire they're dealing with now, and whoa. It is unbelievable.


This is not going to be good for the housing crisis...

I think it's called association...

I'm learning about electrons and reduction and oxidation and covalent bonds and polarity. Which is to say that I'm learning funny little shortcuts like "the story of the lion"... wherein if you Lose Electrons there's Oxidation (LEO) and if you Gain Electrons there's Reduction (GER).

Those funny little shortcuts made me remember these photos of white tigers that I stumbled across recently on the book of magical things known as the Internet, and if this whole thing isn't the universe's way of telling me to go on safari, I don't know what is.

a National Geographic photo of the day of a diving tiger

a retarded tiger... I never really thought about a retarded tiger before

Summer Times

Since summer is winding down and my life hiatus of the last 6 months is coming to an end, well, it's making me need a vacation.

Or at least a look back at one of the best yet.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Nitsirk spelled backwards is Kristin

Kristin is one of my favorite people in the entire world. Not only does she know how to make world-class gravy, but she is also never without snacks and is always, always, always up for some fun. Plus, she is adorable in a blinged-out, over-sized Escalade with her seat totally erect.

Well, Miss Nitsirk stopped in from Vegas last weekend for Granny's birthday and Ryan's birthday, and to celebrate her special appearance, the birthdays and Will's acceptance to UNLV (shout out Will!), I followed her to Marikka's, where I ran into some old(er than Ryan) pals. You may have heard of them before... Brett, Jon & Amy.

At one point cameras came out like crazy so I joined in to capture the debauchery brought to you by Washington Apples. The next day was a struggle, but that night was a total blast.
* Sorry to anyone I may have pinched or whose nipples I may have tweaked.

Things I Learned at School Today

This education stuff is fascinating. Even though 85% of the people at my school are morons.

Today in my developmental psych class we watched a video (watching a video on the first day of actual class... is that a copout?) about conception and sex and birth. It was a typical school video in its sterility, but I couldn't believe how they'd captured the clips that make up the film. They filmed an ejaculation from INSIDE the body, so you could see all the man spunk shoot at the woman's cervix. Then they zoomed in ridiculously close to the fallopian tube lining and on sperm with gimpy necks. It was incredible.

The big takeaway for me was that sperm have it rough. They are like little soldiers put in impossible situations, and yet somehow, babies are born all the time. For instance, when the sperm is in the man's body, it's dangling in a sack in his hot crotch trying not to cook to death. Then, when he leaves the hot sack, he and millions of his buddies have to swim up the littlest, most cramped tube and out the shaft of the penis before they even get to the vagina. Once they hit the battleground, the vagina tries to kill them with acid. If they survive that, cells in the vagina start eating them alive. If they make it past the vagina, the cervix squirts out this sedcutive little river to make it easier for them to swim through, sort of like a little temptress who's luring them deeper into a trap. Most of them get disoriented and just ram against the wall and die. Those who make it through, they have to swim UPSTREAM through the fallopian tubes. There are little cilia in the fallopian tubes that actually create a current that makes their mission even more impossible. And then, even after they swim all that way and if they don't die before they make it to the ovary, then they might realize, oh crap, this is the wrong freaking ovary! There's no egg here!

So millions of sperm set out to find the egg and usually only about 50 make it. Which means, as Mack pointed out, we start out the best of the best and it's all downhill from there.

Also, do you know why the U.S. isn't on the metric system? Would it suprise you to know that Thomas Jefferson tried to adopt the metric system back when he was president? Would it suprise you even more to know that his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, tried to acclimate people to the metric system by switching our money from shillings and pounds to dollars and cents? Would you be floored that I now know that's why Hamilton is on the $10 bill? And since they redid the money recently, Hamilton is looking like one sexy metric system supporter.

Analyze This, Duex

Last night, while Mack was sleeping soundly under the breeze of the ceiling fan, Jen drove us off a narrow road and we almost plummeted to our deaths.

It started out as a fun little excursion, a little girlfriend road trip with Jen behind the wheel, me in the backseat, and some strange person I don't remember in the passenger seat. We were heading out to a little park at the end of a narrow road and were pretty excited to spend the day relaxing.

But this road was no ordinary narrow road. Unless your narrow roads are ordinarily suspended over enormous bodies of water and lacking anything remotely resembling a guard rail.

Despite the danger lurking at every... place... we calmly chatted about life. Easy breezy. And then, as we rounded a gentle curve, Jen misjudged her tires and the front right one slipped off the edge of the road.

The car tilted forward and we looked at each other and let out as sigh. Not a scream as you might expect, or a holy fuck we're going to die, but a sigh. Like, a "here we go again" sigh.

Because I am apparently an expert at cars plummeting into bodies of water, I advised my carmates to go ahead and open their doors so that when we landed in the water, we could easily escape the sinking vehicle. I also decided that, since I was again soooo good at this type of scenario, I'd go ahead and grab my satchel, which was carrying my laptop and my iPhone, even though all the survival guides tell you to forget about your purse. Those things clearly don't consider a person's devotion to Apple products.

We hit the water and all of us safely escaped the vehicle in those few seconds it takes for the car to fill up and start sinking. I started swimming to the bridge support, hoping that if I could just get my electronics out of the water quickly, maybe they could recover. But when I looked behind me, I saw Jen was still hanging onto the car door. Like it was a floaty.

Again with the "here we go again" sigh.

Since my electronics were in all likelihood already ruined, I swam over to her just as the car started to pull her under, grabbed her arm, and brought her to the surface. Together we swam toward the bridge support, but before we reached it we were magically transported to the roadway. I started unpacking my wet electronics and asking other drivers if anyone had a blow dryer.

So, "here we go again" sigh, what does this one mean?

For a review of the last one, which is freakishly similar, click here.

So that crisis I was having...

Tomorrow I'm going back to school. Not for graphic design or professional organizing or photography or any of those other creative things I was thinking about doing with my life. Nope. Because that would require self-motivation, and at this point, I need some major structure.

Instead, I'm going to nursing school.

Those words still feel as weird to me as "husband" did when I first got married.

I'm taking psychology and chemistry and anatomy and the labs that go with them. I bought notebooks and textbooks. I've forked over almost $2000, so I am literally invested. I have everything I need except the confidence.

I know I'm smart, but really, I haven't learned with the intensity of education since my senior year in high school. College wasn't that tough for me, probably because I never took a single math or science course, but high school was freaking intense. I was learning physics and calculus and Spanish and Shakespeare and history and anatomy... in a single day.

Now I can barely keep up with the Kardashians. Or what day it is.

Tomorrow will be my first test.

Kitty Fever

Dear Jennifer,

Please give me Milo again. I'm in desperate need of some fluffy kitty sized love and can't guarantee I won't be going to the humane society tomorrow.

I neeeeeed one of these.
Love,
Amber

Shark Attack

I am terrified of sharks. But... I also love them.

This past week was Shark Week on Discovery and oh my god where have I been for the last however many years this awesomeness has been on TV?!! I watched early 1900's reenactments of the New Jersey killings that inspired Jaws, where a shark headed more than a mile into a river off the Atlantic, and lost myself in shows called Deadly Waters, Sharkbite Summer and Great White Appetite.

Apparently I wasn't the only one overly excited about this lineup.


Dude, when you've got journalists being freed in North Korea or an attempted solution to the auto industry crisis up against Shark Week... tough call, right?

I would have eaten the apple. And loved it. And passed its deliciousness along.

I have the National Geographic Picture of the Day as one of the feeds on my Google Homepage. Yes, I did just vomit a whole lot of technological info all over the place.

I've added little coves in Scotland and fabric dying medinas in Morocco to my Must See Travel List thanks to this daily look at the world, and it even inspired me to embark on a color-based monthly photography project last winter.

Today this stunning little snake leaf guy showed up on my screen and for whatever reason, I felt it was magically delicious.
In other words, this is awesome and you should enjoy it. Every day.

Dr. Sexypants

Today, Mack had his white coat ceremony, which officially means he's no longer just accepted to med school but that he's officially in med school. He also got a pin and took an oath, both of which made me laugh because he is so not a lapel pin wearer and oaths make his head explode.
This journey to med school started years ago, with him taking a history class online at WKU with a teacher named Ms. Plummer who was a teacher freak. The class was the required history class, 108 or 109, and it should have been a cake walk... but not with Ms. Plummer. Mack watched so many hours of online lectures that I started to worry he was having an internet affair with someone majorly dorky.

That class led to an online science class where he had to watch animated roly polies walk from one petri dish to another. And then count them. Very complicated stuff.

When we moved to LA, Mack jumped right into school again, this time going full time. Unfortunately, he didn't have a high school diploma, so during his first week, he had to take his GED to keep his spot. Yes, his GED. It was a proud moment for both of us.
Each quarter he would get special permission to take more than 24 credit hours, none of which were easy hours to earn. His schedule was full of chemistry, physics, biology... classes I avoided in college. Then, after his first year, he started studying for his MCAT, an effort that required him to teach himself organic chemistry. Through it all, he kept his focus and maintained a life/school/judo balance that was admirable... aside from the fact that he never did the dishes or made dinner.

Once the MCAT hurdle was cleared, the next step was the applications process. This cost thousands of dollars and almost cost Mack his ego. Singing your praises while simultaneously expressing humility takes a certain finesse, and Mack, who has a lot of brass on him (heard that on Burn Notice recently and really wanted to use it), just wasn't good at essay writing. We emailed draft after draft of his personal statement back and forth, him providing the facts while I added the humanity. Then, once that was finished, it was time for individual school essays... and secondary application essays... and shopping for a pin stripe suit that would make him look doctorly and CIA-grade sexy at the same time... and calls with lawyers to get records sealed... and court hearings... and interviews that involved coffee (and everyone knows what the coffee can do to you).
Basically, this med school pursuit process took FOREVER. So, tonight we will drink champagne and high five to celebrate this surreal accomplishment while we get a good look at each other that will hopefully tide us over for the next four years.

Congratulations Mack. I am so proud of you.

If a tree falls downtown during a thunderstorm and traps a girl, why don't I hear it?

During the storm that turned High Street into an urban river today, I propped open the front door and watched the cars raft past my house. The lightning took that as an invitation to come into the living room, so I ended up holding my computer in my arms and my phone in my hand and looking out the door from the hallway. Basically, I looked tough.
While the rain tore through town, the newsroom people and meteorologists on TV tried to relay that it was freaking serious but there was no cause for alarm. Also that rush hour in Stamping Ground was really going to blow and that a girl was trapped in her car after a tree fell on it while she was driving down East High Street.

What? I'd been staring at East High Street for the last 30 minutes and I'd missed that?!
Apparently so.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Mid-Lift-Off Colllision!

My brother-in-law, Bubba (no joke), is a pilot. He is also one of the funniest people alive and once tricked me into walking full force into a tree.

Well, check out what happened to Bubba yesterday as he was zooming down the runway about to lift off and a blue heron decided to do the same thing in the same place at the same time.

(I know he says it's a buzzard here, but he later found the bird's head,
which, you know, cleared things up.)

I've always sort of thought Bubba was pretending about being a pilot. It's not that he hasn't had the training or doesn't have the brains... it's just that when the people you know well become professionals at something, the eliteness of that position is erased and you're like, they trust Bubba to fly a plane?!! The same guy whose preferred brand of relaxer is the one with the smiling little black girl on it? What's next, Mack becoming a doctor?!!