Is Los Angeles Burning?

Is Los Angeles Burning?
I think the good answer is probably yes.

We had a nasty fire that broke out on Thursday in Montecito which is about 100 north of Los Angeles on the coast. The fire, driven by high winds, burned over 100 homes through Friday. I have no idea what the total number of destroyed homes is now from this fire.

On Saturday, as I drove to San Diego for the Utah – San Diego State football game, another fire broke out in the Chino Hills area of Southern California. This area is about 50 or 60 miles east of Redondo Beach. I never saw this fire until I drove home today. The smoke plume extended well out over the ocean in the Santa Monica Bay and over my flat as well.


This was the view from the second floor of the parking structure looking east.

Ash was falling on the Pathfinder when I stopped at Giuliano’s to pick up a small salad for my dinner tonight. I was so not happy with this result since I had the Pathfinder washed on Friday. At least, the ash would blow off if I drove fast enough.

I have no idea how big this fire is. I didn’t put on the television because I didn’t want to get sucked into watching the disasters with the usual cast of less than qualified, but pretty, field reporters.

Visitors
We set a record of sorts last week with 1,199 visitors. This is a new record for the blog. Our biggest day was November 11t with over 500 visitors. I do appreciate all of you who came out and visited the blog this past week.

Dr. Karen and Me
I had my every hree weeks visit with Dr. Karen on Friday.


Our visits are becoming shorter these days as we have fewer things to talk about. All of my tests were good and continued to show improvement. I am continuing to get better. Dr. Karen thought my peripheral neuropathy [tingling in my finger and feet] would finally go away in May 2009.s she said it usually takes a year for the Oxaliplatin to dissipate.

This will be a nice birthday gift for me.

We also talked about my choice of an avatar for Dr. Karen. When I explained what I had selected, she wasn’t completely on board with the image. I will bring a copy of the image to my next appointment. I hope she likes it or at least is not too upset.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf & Tihana
Tihana [pronounced Tea-anna; the “h” is silent] is the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf barista who makes the best ice blended drinks ever.

I happened to stumble into the Coffee Bean on Wednesday after my morning class and discovered that Tihana was working then. She said, “Where have you been? I’ve missed seeing you.” Now that I know when she will be working, I will be visiting the Coffee Bean on those days.

Perfectomundo.

Teaching
I picked up my tentative teaching schedule for the next term at school this week. I am scheduled to teach four classes; two old ones that I have taught before and two new ones. This will be the first time in about a year and a half that I have not taught a writing class.

One of the new ones is Cost Accounting and Budgeting. These topics are usually a full quarter length course in and of themselves. When I told My Brother that I was teaching this course, he said that I wasn’t qualified and laughed at the idea.

I ignored My Brother.

On Tuesday, some of my current and former students were asking me if I was teaching a writing class on Tuesday night or on Saturday morning. I said that I wasn’t and I also added that my teaching schedule is subject to change.

I was curious and I spoke with the Associate Dean on Wednesday after my morning class. He said that he hadn’t made any changes yet and that he was working on giving me an additional class. It was not a writing class.

It was nice to know that my students wanted either me or my friend David to teach their writings classes. I said they should talk to their department chair and ask her to do something about having us teach the writing courses.

The students’ comments made me feel good.

On Thursday evening, all but two of my students left at the middle of the session break. The two that stayed were really behind in their homework. Instead of lecturing for an hour and a half, we sat and talked about their homework assignments. I gave them the choice of talking about the assignments instead of writing about them. I told them that they would most likely get better grades by the discussion.

Naturally, they agreed and thought this would be excellent for them.

Esther, one of the students, said that she was apprehensive about taking the State and Local Government course from me because she said that I had a reputation of being a hard instructor. I will admit that I am harder than some instructors because I insist on having all of the assignments completed. I also insist on the students using proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling on their course papers and projects. We are talking about college level work here.

Esther said that she was so happy that she stayed in the course because I was only being a reasonable instructor and not hard. She admitted that she didn’t like to do the work. Esther also admitted that I was a fair grader.

One of the things that Esther and her friend Jessica really enjoyed about my class was that I treated them like adults and not like a high school student. They also enjoyed the opportunities to work in small groups in class and the class discussions and informal debates.

Some days, I really feel great about being a teacher.

Phi Delta Theta Utah Alpha Chapter
I went to San Diego this weekend to meet up with a few of my fraternity brothers and go to the University of Utah – San Diego State University football game. It was an excellent way to spend the weekend. I was able to reconnect with some of my fraternity brothers that I have not seen in over forty years.

Most of the time, we spent catching up with each other live and families. I think we may have also stretched the truth a bit in some of our conversations. This is all part of human nature I guess.


This is a group photo of us, I am the one in the Utah sweatshirt, taken at Qualcomm Stadium after our Utes beat San Diego State 63 to 14. You can read about the game in the following section. We had a lot of time to talk during the game.

I will see some of the Salt Lake based brothers when I go to Salt Lake early next year.

I am highly confident that we will do this again in 2010 when Utah will play San Diego State.

No. 7 Utah crushes San Diego State, remains in position to bust BCS again
Associated Press via ESPN.com

SAN DIEGO -- Their last speed bump out of the way, the No. 7 Utah Utes are heading toward a high-stakes finish to the regular season.

Brian Johnson kept Utah on a BCS-busting course by throwing a career-high five touchdown passes in a 63-14 win over San Diego State on Saturday night.

Utah (11-0, 7-0) clinched at least a share of the Mountain West Conference title. The Utes will try to finish the regular season undefeated when they host No. 17 BYU in their big rivalry game on Saturday.

Fast Facts

• Utah improved to 11-0 for the second time in school history (12-0 in 2004) and moved to 19-1 in its last 20 games dating back to last season.
• Utah outscored San Diego State 28-0 in the fourth quarter, including two interception returns for touchdowns by Deshawn Richard on back-to-back drives.
• The 63 points scored by the Utes are the most since 2004 when they scored 63 against both UNLV and Colorado State.
• The Aztecs lost their 10th game of the season for the first time in school history.
-- ESPN research

"It's big, you know, because so much is on the line," Johnson said. "We've got an opportunity to do something really special and we hope we can take advantage of it."

Utah was the original BCS buster in 2004, becoming the first team from an outsider conference to crash the Bowl Championship Series. Those Utes finished 12-0 after routing Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl.

"We've got to be ready to play," Johnson said. "It's a huge game. We've done a good job of being ready and being prepared to play, week-in, week-out."

SDSU (1-10, 0-7) lost 10 games in a season for the first time.

The Utes had 520 yards in total offense and never had to punt.

"This is a tough night," SDSU coach Chuck Long said. "Utah is good but we also made them look good. We did everything possible that you can think of to give them part of the game."

Utah was already up 49-14 when Deshawn Richard had two interception returns for touchdowns in a span of four plays late in the fourth quarter. His first went for 89 yards and his second was for 38 yards. Both passes from redshirt freshman Ryan Lindley were tipped.

"I was just like, 'Not again,'" Richard said. "I was pretty tired still from the first one. When the second one came I was like, 'Here we go again.' "Richard was the third Utah player with two touchdowns.

Johnson threw all five touchdown passes in the first half, giving the Utes a 35-7 lead. He was one off the school record. Utah scored on its first three drives and five of its first six against the outmanned Aztecs. Johnson had 228 of his 283 passing yards in the first half. Overall he was 27-of-38.

Johnson threw touchdown passes of 4 and 5 yards to Freddie Brown, 32 and 3 yards to David Reed and 2 yards to Colt Sampson.

"We felt like we could throw the ball fairly well," Johnson said. "They've given up a ton of yards rushing the football and teams just kind of threw on them when they had to. We wanted to come out and kind of establish our program early. We did that. We kind of got some spread going, ran some option routes and we were able to get into a rhythm with some touchdowns."

Johnson, a senior, has 50 career TD passes, moving him past Alex Smith and Mike McCoy into second place on the school's career list behind Scott Mitchell with 69. He joined Mitchell and McCoy as the only Utah quarterbacks to throw for 7,000 career yards.

"They have a great ability to get the matchups that they like," SDSU linebacker Russell Allen said. "They get their receivers on linebackers. That gives them an advantage."

Brown had 11 catches for a career-high 110 yards.

As if they needed it, the Utes got a gift on the game's first play from scrimmage when SDSU's Tyler Campbell fumbled at the end of an 18-yard run, with Koa Misi recovering at the Utah 47. Johnson hit Sampson with a scoring pass seven plays later.
Utah's Matt Asiata took a direct snap and scored on a 1-yard run early in the fourth quarter. Ray Stowers added a 1-yard TD run on Utah's next drive.

There were a few bright spots for the Aztecs, who have beaten only Idaho this season and are 8-27 in three seasons under Long.

Jose Perez intercepted Johnson at midfield early in the second quarter to set up SDSU's first score, a 31-yard pass from Lindley to Darren Mougey.

On the first drive of the second half, Johnson was stuffed on fourth-and-goal from the SDSU 5-yard line.

The Aztecs then moved 95 yards in 17 plays, with Lindley throwing a 16-yard TD pass to Justin Shaw.

Utah's Louie Sakoda tied the school record with nine PATs.

Sara from SWA
Sara is an attractive middle agish flight attendant from Southwest Airlines [SWA].

Sara invited herself to join me and three of my fraternity brothers as we sat in the hotel bar watching Sports center on ESPN. It was my idea to go to the bar and get caught up on the day’s events.

Sara’s reason for joining us was that she wanted to find out how the game turned out. On the surface, this was a fairly innocuous request. Yes, it was until you looked around the hotel bar and found that half of the people there were wearing Utah red and they had gotten to the bar before us.

So why sit at our table?

There were no other women at the table.

In the course of the fifteen minutes Sara was with us, I learned that she was divorced with two children in college; she lived in Northern California; and was senior enough at Southwest to have a fairly steady and predictable fight – work schedule. Sara’s base was Dallas and some of her regular destinations were San Diego, Oakland, and Houston. Sara was staying at our hotel because it was the normal SWA hotel for flight crew layovers

I thought about asking Sara how a college English instructor would get in contact with her after that evening. Then, I thought some more and decided to sit on the sidelines some more. Her schedule is always going to sketchy and changing every month. I would probably have to see her in Northern California and that would probably mean a full weekend spent on seeing her. Then too, if she was talking to us, Sara was probably also talking to other men in other cities.

This was a definite time to sit on the sidelines and watch the game of life.

My Friend Gloria
Some of the fraternity brothers wanted to know if I was going to stop at Gloria’s ice cream store on my way home. They read the blog.

I said of course.

I pulled into the parking lot and waited around for the store to open. I only had a ten minute wait so I snapped a photo of the store as you can plainly see.

I felt good today so I had two scoops of ice cream. Dr. Karen would be proud of me for sucking down so much rich chocolate ice cream with chocolate and caramel sauce and chocolate sprinkles.

Gloria and I talked briefly while she was busy setting up the store for business, I was the first customer of the day. I told Gloria that I would be back on Wednesday after my morning class. Gloria asked why I was going to be stopping by so soon. I said I wanted some more ice cream.


That was my week and weekend. I hope your weekend was as good as mine.


Be well and stay happy.