Explorations and Adventures

Maybe we will set a record for Field Trips this week. So far we have been to a polling place (multiple polling places, actually), on Monday. The same day we made our first visit to the Marine Mammal Care Center. This morning we went back to the MMCC--those northern fur seal babies are sooo cute. I discovered today that it is actually the baby sea lions, not the seals, that sound like sheep. After visiting the MMCC, we stopped at the Korean Friendship Bell Park. There is a huge bell there under a canopy, a gift to the United States for the bicentennial in 1978. I would love to hear the bell rung! The park is beautiful, overlooking the ocean. Pictures would be appropriate here, but as usual I forgot to take a camera.
This afternoon I drove to Lily's piano teacher's house, only to realize after we got there that we were an hour early. I can't even blame this on the recent time change; all my clocks were set correctly. I got in the car at 1:15, I knew the lesson was at 3:00. Somehow in my mind 3:00 comes 45 minutes after 1:15. My only excuse is that I had been up since 2:30 AM (when I heard Nathan get up and turn on the computer to check election results). We watched the early results coming in for Proposition 8, and felt cautiously jubilant as it looked like passing. But I was way to keyed up to go back to bed, so I stayed up doing dishes and laundry (just a few of the things that have been seriously neglected in these last few days of campaigning).
Anyway, the upshot of arriving an hour early for the piano lesson was that we had an hour to kill. We took of to explore the neighbourhood. Less than two miles from the piano teacher's house we discivered a 1844 ranch house (built spanish-style around a courtyard) that has been converted into a museum od that period in California's history. We only got a quick tour, but we will be going back. Maybe we'll go an hour early to next week's piano lesson.