Zumajim

With the school year finally ending last week, we now embark on our brief, wonderful summer vacation. The usual June gloom has been staying away for the most part — surprisingly, the weekends have been clear and warm thus far. The water is inching up to an almost-tolerable 65 degree average. That’s as good as we can expect for our area of the coast. The boogie boards are stacked in the driveway. The surf is spotty but we’ve had some decent swells in the past week.

Not much else going on in Malibu. (I’m starting to sound like Garrison Keillor!) We don’t particularly care for the new shopping plaza built on the site of the former Malibu Lumberyard, but that’s OK. Let the tourists come and buy their $200 cargo pants. Summer in Malibu is about the beach and taking it easy. So excuse me, I’ve got to get busy doing as little as possible.

OK, enough already with the 55-degree water temps! Can’t we get a 65° southerly current for just one weekend, please? Why do we have to go to San Diego to find water worthy of ditching your 3/2 full suit? Gah!

Came into the office at 6:00 AM (Pacific, of course) to watch the inauguration ceremony. I set up a streaming feed for the whole company to watch the ceremony via their desktop computers, so I have to babysit the system and hope 1000+ users don’t crash the entire network. That said, it’s a great day and I’m glad to be here nonetheless. The kids are staying home from school to watch with Mom.

It just dawned on me how truly historic this day is. Scanning the headlines, it’s obvious that most of the world thinks so, too. This is all quite a change from eight years ago. I’m really proud of our country once again.

Just after my last post, a routine system update to the Zumajim server hosed the network portion of the system, leaving this blog inaccessible. Perhaps that was fortuitous timing, since Christmas was one of the busiest ever. We spent the day normally enough, driving 100+ miles to visit both sides of the family. The kids are happy with their new iPod Touches, I’m three pounds heavier — not bad for this time of year. As always, Christmas went by in a blur. Most of the malls have already taken down their trees and decorations. I’m fine with that. Maybe one of these years we’ll celebrate it in true pagan fashion: Far away from the big city and giving thanks just for being able to keep warm. Maybe that mountain cabin in Big Bear…

The following Sunday we took off for a few days in Las Vegas, where if you like to see lots of bright, glittering lights, you’re in heaven. Stayed at the Mandalay Bay which was pretty nice. We were on the 60th floor overlooking the strip. (In Vegas, it helps to ask for an upgrade for just about everything… seating, meals, hotel rooms, etc.) We spent two full days just wandering the strip and ogling all of the amazing hotels. Nothing on Earth is more artificial and contrived than Las Vegas, and that’s its beauty.

I finally had some time to debug my server and got it back online. Zumajim runs on Fedora Linux, which can be a little too bleeding edge at times. Keeps you on your toes though.

Spent a week down in Borrego Springs to get away from the noise and commotion of the holidays. (Well, at least that was the idea.) A relative lets us use his little vacation house on the outskirts of town a couple of times a year, so we like to visit in the spring and fall. (Summers get a little on the toasty side so we stay home.)

The Anza Borrego desert can do the soul a world of good. It’s a great place to decompress: Vast, wild, and silent. There isn’t a single traffic light in the whole town. You can hike for miles in the foothills without seeing another soul. The town itself is well-stocked with a wide assortment of desert types: Artists, bikers, hermits and weirdos of all kinds. The only local scene is a wonderfully dumpy bar and grill called Carlee’s, right in the center of town off the “Christmas Circle” roundabout. If you’re in Borrego on a Friday night, Carlee’s is the place to be. Just don’t raise a fuss about the food prices because, as they’ll proudly tell you, they don’t care what you paid for it in San Diego.

Borrego is like a Palm Springs that never grew up.  If you’ve never heard of the place, you should know that the locals like it that way. They are (quite reasonably) protective of this little town. I for one hope it never “grows up.”

Well, in any case we’re home now. Malibu is not quite as lit up as usual for the holidays this year. Perhaps a sign of “these troubled economic times” (like that’s an issue with the average resident here!)

Bring on Christmas.

If your (American) family is long on tradition like mine, then Thanksgiving day is just an excuse to get together and feast with relatives, some of whom you prefer to see only once a year. This year I’m giving thanks for a whole new set of reasons, not the least of which is the resounding defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket. Yes, I’m still gloating!

If anyone still doubts that keeping Gramps McCain and his utterly bizarre and inappropriate choice for a running mate out of the white house, then watch this YouTube video of Sarah Palin back home in Alaska as she pardons a turkey from slaughter, while in the background other less-fortunate turkeys are mechanically executed by a very self-conscious farm worker.

It has to be one of the funniest yet most pathetic things I’ve ever seen, and I’m so very grateful that this woman is no longer just a hearbeat away from the presidency. Gobble gobble!

I almost wretched when I read that the CEOs for Ford, GM and Chrysler all flew on private jets to Washington DC this week to make the appeal for a government handout. Alan Mulally of Ford, Robert Nardelli of Chrysler and Richard Wagoner of GM all took their corporate Gulfstreams or Learjets or whatever at a cost of around $20,000 each (one way) to plead for taxpayer help in saving their bloated, top-heavy operations from bankruptcy. You talk about not getting it! That’s one mixed message they’re sending the shareholders and you and me. Ugh.

I’m really torn about the whole bailout issue for the Big Three. (I could care less about the banks and loan companies; greedheads whose “products” included the sub-prime loans that have undermined the entire US economy. Cars are another matter altogether.) My dad worked thirty years for GM, grinding out a career with barely adequate benefits and a minuscule pension. Now even the benefits are in jeopardy. Dad passed away almost ten years ago, leaving Mom as the sole beneficiary, and now she’s threatened with losing her health care coverage at a time when she needs it most. So now if I say to hell with the Big Three, I’m also saying I don’t care about Mom’s health care coverage. Lovely…

As to their collective futures, I’d love to see GM, Ford and Chrysler pull their collective heads out and show some real commitment to “ending our  dependence on foreign oil.” (That’s quoted in the same spirit as “keeping us safe from terrorism.”) But I’ve run out of sympathy for the CEOs.  The only way I’d agree to a Federal bailout is if they all bail out of their private jets — from 30,000 feet — without parachutes. Maybe with some younger, more open-minded leadership, they might even start making cars we’d want to buy again.