let's BEE friends

I decided to jet down to Los Angeles for the weekend to pay a visit to the House of Geek. And thank god I had a geek at my direct disposal, because I arrived here only to discover that my laptop, which I had put in sleep mode, placed in a drawer, and not used for maybe two weeks before hauling it down here, had decided to re-set its internal clock to 4:01 p.m. on DECEMBER 31, 1969. This of course interfered with the internal doodads and their ability to properly interact with the whatchamahickeys. It also debarred the machine from connecting to the wireless network, which it deemed to have "incompatible security" (incompatible with the wireless security available in 1969? You don't say!).

James opened up a command shell, made some disapproving comments such as "Well, THAT'S not good," and generally scared the crap out of me and had me convinced that my iBook was toast, forever to remain in a virtual world where the Beatles were still together and I had barely outgrown the nickname "Peach Fuzz." Except I forgot that this is a man who can cobble together a supercomputer/DVD player/refrigerator/spaceship combo from the detritus he finds in the dumpster behind Fry's, and so two minutes later my iBook was behaving as if nothing had ever happened, coaxed into forgiving and forgetting that its owner doesn't remember that there is a difference, power-usage-wise, between "sleep" and "shut down."

I say I am in Los Angeles, but really I am in Monrovia. Not the capital of Liberia, but rather the small city east of Pasadena in the San Gabriel foothills. Or as I like to call it: Bear Country, U.S.A. I haven't seen a bear here myself lately, but James's neighbor has a recent photo of one in her pool. Last night as we were driving up to the house, four critters of some variety scampered across the road. One turned and looked at us with a little masked face. "Ach du lieber! Raccoons!" I exclaimed. Not because I was surprised, but because that is what I always say when I see raccoons (see Vitti, Jon [Writer] & Kirkland, Mark [Director]. Episode 46 [1991], "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk." The Simpsons).

That reminds me, the other day Alex was giving some kind of tech-head presentation (I refuse to say "brown bag") about a particular document review platform, and at the end there was time for questions. I kept my mouth shut, but on the way out I stopped by and said to him, "I have a question. Is it right to buy a Chrysler?" (see Kogan, Jay and W. Wolodarsky [Writers] & Lynch, Jeffrey and B. Bird [Directors]. Episode 41 [1991], "Like Father, Like Clown." The Simpsons).

It is a sad (but occasionally hilarious!) state of affairs that I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to slip over-15-year-old Simpsons references into anything Alex might hear me say. Alex, I hope you appreciate that.



Speaking of The Bumblebee Guy, last week James finally took care of the bee population that had been inhabiting his eaves for, oh, approximately 8 years. The guys came out to remove the bees, and then when they returned a few days later to close up the damage, a new population of (angry) bees had already moved into the now-vacant, pre-honeycombed paradise that was James's roof overhang. So, they had to kill those too, resulting in a scene that James refers to as "sort of a bee Armageddon." ("You may not want to walk barefoot outside for a few days," he added. Right, because the threat of rattlesnakes is not already enough to convince me that footwear is a good idea out there.)

But here is the fun part. Please guess how many pounds of honeycomb they pulled out of the eaves. I'd keep you in suspense, but this entry is already long enough. THREE HUNDRED POUNDS. So if you're in the greater Los Angeles area this weekend and see a guy in a funny hat driving a pickup hauling 12 full-sized garden trash bags stuffed with honeycomb, please salute him.