Cars, Cars, Cars, Cars...

Cars and Freeways, San Diego, CA. (Tomasito photo)
(Please click photo for detail)

Cars, cars and more cars.

Being in cars for hours every day is so much a southern California thing that distances here are given in time instead of miles.

Example: "San Diego is 30 minutes from Escondido." (If traffic allows.)

It is NOT considered odd to commute from El Cahon (12 minutes North of San Diego) to Escondido (30 minutes East of San Diego) every working day, as one of our new friends does.

("You get used to it." she says.)

What IS considered odd here is to consider people who drive the freeway for hours every week odd!

Freeway driving--commuting back and forth to work is normal. Two or three cars per family is normal. It is part of the essential "American way of life" which our armies are presently willing to die for here and there around the planet.

What is considered freaky odd here is to WANT to work NEAR the place where you sleep--to walk or bike to work instead of drive.

Coming out of San Diego there is a place on Highway 15 sixteen lanes wide if I counted right--and traffic on all lanes moving bumpertobumpertobumper at at least 65 miles per hour.

And this is considered normal??

This IS considered normal!!

Tomasito


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Wilderness Gardens

Wilderness Gardens is a park situated about 5 mils east of Pala, which is an Indian reservation. The park itself is not on Indian land, however.

The park is very desolate. There are some great trails to walk. They are all of moderate lenght, less than 1 mile but they continue and branch off from each other.

So is this park worth visiting? I think so. It's very dry and not many visitors there. You can see lots of typical wild plants of Southern California. There is San Luis Rey river running right through the gardens. Well, the name gardens is actually an exaggeration. So is the river. There is no river there but rather a dry river bed which I presume gets filled in the winter after rainy days.

One of the trails is full of horse flies so be sure to wear proper clothes.

There is also a pond in these "gardens" which you can't see because of cattails.

The landscapes are beautiful and there are some trees and unusual plants to break the monotony.

It's rather an unusual place. Yes and cacti were blooming while we were there.

Too Many Babies

Swarming Time in California

Us

I know as well as you do that you CAN'T say anything bad about children.

In fact children are about the only sacrosanct topic left.

You can say all you want about how cute and how dear and how wonderful and precious they are--

But you CAN'T say there are just too many of them! (Oh my, did I say that!?)

A politician can kiss as many babies as she wants--but she better not say anything like: "There are just too many babies being born!" if she wants to be elected!

Nope.

She can't say THAT!

And if the freeways are jammed--the food is growing ever more expensive--the water is going to be rationed--there are more and more homeless--the forests are disappearing--the oceans are polluted--and there need to be lots more prisons...

You just can't say: "Enough babies!"

Because babies seem to be the only sacred things left.

And always the more the better.

Well, the "Planet Eaters" (us) do seem to be entering their final swarming stage and the whole human population is quickly approaching the final destruction of the earth's resources.

Save and recycle as we will--there seems to be no way to slow the cancer of the planet--us.

Tomasito


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Fattening Up Dumbing Down

There are so many MORE fat people around now than I remember in my youth that I feel I should send out another notice to the internet community about the problem.

There were NO fast food places when I was a child--they are definitely a phenomenon of the latter part of the twentieth century. It is kind of hard now to believe--but there were no McDonald's or Burger Kings or Round Table Pizzas in all the world!

And for many of us Americans, meat was a once a week treat--Sunday: CHICKEN!

Not a big hamburger every day and some form of meat at every meal!

So big fat people--really big, fat people were very rare.

This morning I watched a huge lady slowly lumber across a street--her buttocks were so big that--well she was more like anther kind of an animal than a human being--more like a pig or a cow--and then it hit me!

She was becoming a pig or cow!

And I could guess from the expression on her face that her brain was not functioning very well either--sort of a dumb look is the best way to describe it.

Then I remembered all the growth hormones and chemicals that are put into the cattle, pigs and chickens which are then consumed in huge quantities by many , many people and it was more clear that these same growth hormones are being passed along to the human eaters of the meat and they are fattening up and dumbing down too!

"You are what you eat!" And if your diet is full of growth hormones, you will definitely grow!

If you're not a vegetarian yet, you will be.

Tomasito, 2009


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Kids at Picnic

Picnic at Felicita Park. (Tanya photo, 2009)


Cinco do Mayo, Escondido, CA, 2009

There are some nice parks in Escondido and one of our favorites is Felicita Park.

It is VERY quiet on weekdays and on weekends it is used a lot by families and parties of people--all kinds of people.

I know it is a lot of fun for the kids--we can always hear them yelling and laughing.

Cinco de Mayo was an especially lively time there for all of us!

Tomasito, 2009


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I got a Job

After a long period I finally got a job. Hooray! It came in a nick of time too as we were running out of money. But now things are finally turning for the better.

Cinco de Mayo

Un Mexicano Borracho!
(Tomasito photo, 2009)

Here's the funny display I mentioned a couple of days ago.

The Mexican beer "Corona" had the great good sense of humor to lampoon their own product with this "typical" dummy figure of a "traditional" Mexican--serape, straw hat and sandals, VERY drunk on "Corona de Mayo" beer!

Now THAT shows good taste and a healthy sense of humor--especially since the biggest customers of Corona beer around here are undoubtedly the latino population.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Tomasito, 2009


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We Went to the Animal Fair...

These guys kindly posed for me. I love the expression on their faces.

The Adventures in the Indian Land

One of the most beautiful parks in Escondido is Felicita County Park that you must pay to get into. Cheapskates and smart people (that is, us) can park a block away and walk in there for free. They don't charge you for being in the park, only if you drive in and most of the day you can even probably get away without paying. But not on weekends: this place is very popular for family picnics and there us usually somebody at the gate charging you admission.

Anyway, we went there a couple of weeks ago and the place was full of Mexican families having picnics all over the park. Yes, there were mainly Mexicans, very few gringos, though of course now and then you will see a gringo.

Anyway, driving past it the other day we saw a huge number of cars parked all over inside the park. Something clicked in my head: this is too many cars even for Mexicans. So the next day curiosity got the better of us and we went in.

Well, our usual parking spot a block away was taken. In fact, there were cars parked literally all over the place so we had to park TWO blocks away. No biggie, though.

Then we walked in and found out what all the fuss was about. I was right, it was not an ordinary Mexican get-together thing. It was

A Renaissance Fair!

Now my only experience with Renaissance Fair before was one in San Luis Obispo. It was fun but nothing really to write home about. The costumes were cool though.

Well, we tried to get in but they wanted money for admission. Well, I hate to admit it but we just did not have the money. So we turned around hoping to get in through the back way. It was not a priority though, we actually did not give a damn whether we get in or not.

So we went to one of the playgrounds and watched a Mexican family have a good time there. We even climbed a couple of kids' ladders ourselves and saw a guy performing pushups on one of the pieces of equipment. Then we went around...

And here we were in the dark and shady grove. Down the slippery slope we went, across the bubbling brook we jumped and lo and behold, in five minutes we were in the Fair. I want to accentuate the fact that we did not do anything illegal, did not climb over the fence or breake any other rule. There was a yellow ribbon prohibiting access across the only footbridge. We wily coyotes did not need the bridge.

The Fair was closing. The best part was that we got to see people in cool costumes and take some pictures. You can see a couple of them here.

What a fine costume! Thank you, dear stranger, for posing.

Don't get any ideas of doing illegal stuff. The method described above takes extreme knowledge of the area and the ability to slide down the slopes. We do not promote any illegal activity.

Beer Palace

Cinco de Mayo Beer Display. (Tomasito photo, 2009)

I have told you that Escondido has become a Mexican town in the last decade--which is fine by us since Mexicans seem to have more fun. We shop at a very nice, clean supermarket a 15 minute walk from our apartment--and lucky for us--it is a big Mexican super market--which means it has a LOT of Mexicanismo!

The name of the place is Vallarta, of course, and as soon as you walk in the door you've crossed the border.

Salsa music instead of Muzak--bright, colorful decorations instead of the usual insipid "buy me" stuff--good smells from the deli department--bakers slapping bollios into shape by hand--big tortilla machine cranking thousands of the flat things out to package in large family-size quantities--cactus leaves and all kinds of chilis as well as the usual great California fruits and vegetables--huge cooking kettles for tamales--saints statues and candles--it's a whole different scene!

The whole place, which operates with as much pizazz and high-tech precision as you would want in a supermarket, is a folk-culture experience.

The prepared meats in the deli have been shaped into little piggie-wees as decoration for example--and the fruit salads have boats and flowers, carved from the same fruits, perched on the trays!

Food as art!

Good for the soul as well as for the tummy.

But the latest display--made up for the coming Cinco de Mayo celebration--is a castle like construction made of pretty cases of beer! It is SO bizarre that I took a photo (above) of the building work--but when I went in for fresh bolillos this morning the construction was finished in such an hilarious way that I had to take another photo--I'll show it to you on May fifth!

You can just wait in suspense (in suspenders as we say) until then!

Tomasito, 2009


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Debit Card Robbery

Fear in Escondido. (Tanya photo, 2009)

An odd thing happened to us last week.

The kind of minor disaster that happens to everybody sometimes it seems--but had never happened to us.

When our bank statement arrived we found that someone had bought something very expensive--almost $2,000 expensive--using our debit card--which had never left our wallet!

The thief or thieves had used our credit card number somehow way up in Fullerton, CA (Which we still don't know where is!) at a Sam's Club--(Which we are not members of!) and made this expensive purchase without even using our four-digit pen number!

The purchase wiped out our checking account and dug into our savings account (which cost us $24 for the automatic overdraft coverage)!

Ouch!

And worst of all left us with not enough money to pay our rent which was due in two days! Stress time and double OUCH!

We went right down to the bank which is now Chase and was Washington Mutual and told them what had happened and very good for us they immediately canceled the card number which the thieves had compromised.

Before the two days before rent due were up Chase also mailed us a new debit card and replenished our account with the amount which the thieves had stolen.

GOOD and THANK YOU, CHASE BANK!

BUT!

HOW were the thieves able to get a card with OUR number on it and use it in a store like Sam's Club in another part of the state from where we live without using a pen number for such a large purchase??

To us "babes in the woods" this smacked of an inside job.

Some bank employee with access to our numbers and confederates in the Sam's Club at Fullerton must have pulled off this robbery without fear of being caught!

And no one is responsible.

I think this type of thing--including big-time theft in very high places--is one of the things that is going to bring this whole country down.

Tomasito, 2009



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