My Christmas video for all y’all

I went to Ocean Beach early on Christmas morning to get pictures and videos of 2015’s King Tide.

A “King Tide” coincides with a full moon and is the highest of the high tides for the year, excluding storm tides and tsunamis.

The King Tide for 2015 was about 7¼ feet.

While not nearly as exciting as storm tides, I got a nice video that includes several rainbows created by the ocean spray, smack dab in the middle of the video.

I didn’t see the rainbows until I got home and watched the video.

The area in the video normally is a wide, sandy beach full of people, even on cold winter days, “cold” being defined as temperatures below 60°F.

The area where I was standing normally is a dry bluff about twelve feet above the sandy beach, but just to get this Christmas video for all y’all, I stood in water and got significantly wet from the spray of the waves crashing a few feet from me.

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Be sure to post videos on YouTube

Hope everyone had a merrier Christmas than this poor Ocean Beach community Christmas tree was having in the 33 mph winds yesterday:

Now go get all of those gifts returned!

Be sure to post videos on YouTube.

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Crazy, crazy people

One of the highest high tides (a “king high tide”) in San Diego occurred this morning at 8:23 a.m., a whopping 7¼ feet.

Naturally I headed to Ocean Beach.

The temperature was a very wintery 58°F and the wind was a blustery 33 mph.

Prior to November 2001, that would have felt like 40°F.

The post-November 2001 formula

says that it felt like 52°.

(Global warming?)

I trust my bare, exposed ears, and they definitely tell me that it was more like 40°F.

There were people jogging in shorts and tank tops, playing football, walking their dogs….

….all just normal activities on a sunny summer day….

There were even photographers out taking pictures of the waves.

Crazy, crazy people.

When it’s effectively 40° outside, you should be inside.

Wait…………

Nevermind.

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The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California

Many decades ago my mom took us kids down to the courthouse to get the latest polio vaccine. I remember it well because it didn’t involve a needle. In fact, the vaccine came via a sugar cube, and as an 8-year-old child, the lack of needles and someone giving me a sugar cube was pretty cool.

What we had received was an oral polio vaccine developed by Albert Sabin in the late 1950s. It underwent human trials in 1957, was selected by the U.S. National Institute of Health as the polio vaccine of preference, and licensed in 1962.

The first widely available polio vaccine, an “inactivated poliovirus vaccine,” was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk while at the University of Pittsburgh. After two doses, 90% of the people develop protective antibodies to all three types of poliovirus. After three doses, that increases to 99%. Sadly, it is given by injection, which involves needles…….

In 1960, Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, a suburban neighborhood of the City of San Diego, about 20 miles north of downtown San Diego.

The Salk Institute is an international center for medical and scientific research. Architects and those who know architecture rave about the Salk Institute campus. Personally, I find the architecture dull, boring, and uninteresting, verging on flat-out ugly. But what do I know?

Here are some pictures of the Salk Institute campus:

The Salk Institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the United States in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world’s top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas.

The institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses its research in molecular biology and genetics, neurosciences, and plant biology.

The campus was designed by Louis Kahn. According to Wikipedia sources, “Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings for the most part do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Louis Kahn’s works are considered as monumental beyond modernism. Famous for his meticulously built works, his provocative proposals that remained unbuilt, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century.” Suffice to say that he and his style are not among my favorites.

The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated as a historical landmark in 1991. The entire 27-acre site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Salk’s personal papers are stored at the Theodore Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego. You might recognize the name of Theodore Geisel as that of Dr. Seuss. Geisel’s personal papers also are stored at the Library.

The Geisel Library is what I consider beautiful architecture:

(More on the Geisel Library can be found here: The Geisel Library at the University of California San Diego.)

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Fly your own bird of prey!

There’s no doubt that having nice weather for about 335 days a year provides opportunities to enjoy the outdoors and all that Mother and Father Nature have to offer. In fact, even for those other  30 days each year, the weather can be so interesting that one is encouraged to go out then!

With so many days of nice weather, entrepreneurs have created companies with many interesting things to do that don’t involve sitting at a desk behind a computer or staring at a smart phone screen. One interesting thing to do that I discovered recently is flying your own bird of prey.

I discovered a group of people preparing to fly their own birds of prey recently, near the Torrey Pines Glider Port, all listening intently to the instructions on how to do this properly so that the raptors don’t bite your nose off or grab hold of your arm and take you for a sky ride….

Bucket List.

If you’re looking for something unique to do, contact Sky Falconry and book a Basic Falconry Lesson, a Hawk Walk, or a Photo Hawk Walk. These events are not inexpensive but I bet they provide once-in-a-lifetime memories.

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Carmelite Monastery of San Diego

As one drives (or rides the Trolley) through Mission Valley, one tends to notice the magnificent homes perched high up on the ridges, like these:

One of the homes looks to be even more magnificent than the others:

That is the home of the Carmelite Monastery of San Diego.

According to their web site, the Carmelite Monastery is “daughters of St. Teresa of Avila who profess an allegiance to Jesus Christ by living a consecrated life of silent, solitary prayer in a small community of sisters….”

The Carmelite Monastery of San Diego is of The Order of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and is rooted in contemplative tradition. The nuns of the Carmelite Monastery are more properly known as Discalced Carmelites, meaning that they adhere to the Carmelite reformation begun ca. 1550 by St. Teresa of Avila.

The Carmelite tradition itself was founded in 1204 by a group of hermits who came together under the rule given them by St. Albert of Jerusalem. Eventually, due to “strife and unrest” in the Middle East (sound familiar?),  the hermits moved to Europe. The women’s branch of the Order began in 1452.

Four American women returning home from the Carmel of Hoogstraten founded first community of religious women in the thirteen original States. After establishing a Carmel at Port Tobacco in Maryland in 1790, the moved to Baltimore in 1830. A Carmel was founded in Boston in 1890, which founded the Carmel of Santa Clara (California) in 1906. From Santa Clara came the foundresses of the San Diego Carmel in 1926, headed by Mother Emmanuel of the Passion as the first Prioress.

The cornerstone of the church reads January 4, 1932 (in Roman numerals). It also has this inscription:

IN NOVINE
PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI
DEO GRATIAS IN AETERNUM
J.D.P.

According to Google Translate, that is Latin, meaning “In newspapers, Father and Son and the Holy Spirit thank God for ever.”

The Carmelite Monastery of San Diego is located at 5158 Hawley Boulevard. It’s not easy to get to but is worth visiting if you have the time.

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Where are all the morning people?

Well, I thought the new job would be one of the more “brainless” jobs I had ever had. I was determined not to let that deter me.

Surprisingly, it’s not brainless. It’s quite interesting and challenging, and the icing on the cake is that I get to listen to my music collection during about 7½ hours of my 8-hour shift.

Since I work the late shift, 2:00-10:00 PM, I have the mornings to run errands, blog…. little things like that.

I have discovered that there is no one at the gas stations at 6:00 AM, no one at Food 4 Less or Walmart at 6:00 AM, few people on the highways and side streets at 6:00 AM…..

Basically I have almost the whole world to myself at 6:00 AM.

Where are all the morning people?

With my work schedule pretty much set at this point, I can now get my personal life back on track because it’s been pretty messy. That means that I can return to daily blogging. Yahooooooo! Pictures, pictures, pictures. And I’m making note of interesting places I see during my work travels so that I can return to them and taking pictures. Yahooooooo! More pictures, more pictures, more pictures.

As I was cataloging some pictures this morning I found lots of pictures that I knew I had but which I couldn’t find because they were in the wrong folder and had not been renamed from their generic camera-provided names. Like this one:

Last week it snowed in Julian, in the mountains about 40 miles east of me. I didn’t get to go so I was looking for old pictures of Julian in the snow. Couldn’t find them even though I knew I had them. That’s one of them.

Also, after seeing what’s possible with the new camera drones, I have put a camera drone #2 on my wish list. Number 1 was a new DSLR. I was specifically looking for a DSLR that took excellent videos. Did you catch the past tense “was” in those previous two sentences? That means that I bought it, and I just got notice that it has been shipped.

I bought the Canon EOS Rebel T6s, released to the market this past summer. I’m buying the body only since I already have lenses that I’m quite happy with. Looks like this:

Since everyone in the U.S. has it on back order, I am importing it from London. As an import, mine will be like that in the picture, labeled EOS 760D. Same thing. For some reason Canon renames their cameras as Rebel just for the United States market.

I could only find a few DSLR cameras with better video, but they also cost a thousand dollars more than I was willing to spend. I’m saving that thousand dollars for the camera drone….

Number 3 on my current wish list is a new laptop computer so that I can visit blogs from the car when I’m at work, but waiting for other people to do their jobs so that I can do my job, something that comes with the territory of the new job. I’m specifically looking for a fast laptop, which means 12 GB of memory and an Intel i7-rated computer.

All of this is because not only do I get paid to drive in rush-hour traffic while listening to my music collection (first time I have ever enjoyed rush-hour traffic!), but during an 8-hour shift, I actually only “work” about six hours due to time waiting on other people. That two hours, though, is split into various time increments as short as a few minutes and as long as 90 minutes, and currently is spent sitting in the car listening to music and reading (currently “The Hollow Hills” by Mary Stewart, 1973). I can easily see me alternating so that each time I have to wait, I either read or visit blogs. I could also be cataloging pictures….

So probably sooner than later, possibly even by the end of the year, look for my visits to YOUR blogs to increase to the point where they were just a year ago.

I miss visiting everyone like I used to, but we’ll get there again.

Meanwhile, Happy Thursday, Happy Weekend, Happy December, and Happy Make A Gift Day (more info here: http://updates.daysoftheyear.com/NLI/LE35.ashx?a=E7FDDF7E6AE4FA5485989908DB918342&b=8EB07832405FA92A68EF7BCB85AC2A9A).

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Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos at Fine Art America