Tag: Orange County

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Two arches of water pipes sticking up out of the ground and back in next to a hedge, with valves at the top of each. One has a sign hanging from it that says Macy's Domestic Water.

We made our first Christmas-season foray into South Coast Plaza over the weekend. Well, really, we just walked over there to grab something at the Coffee Bean after a late lunch at Finbar’s at Metro Pointe, then walked back…but it was a taste of the holiday insanity of the mall. Especially that mall. (Usually I try to avoid it during the holiday season, but I always seem to end up making at least one trip.)

Anyway, the phrasing on this sign just struck us both as odd. Okay, obviously, these valves control the water for Macy’s, which was right on the other side of the shrubberies. But why Macy’s domestic water? Is there another pipe for foreign water?

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Smoke from a brush fire near San Juan Capistrano, seen from the parking structure at the Irvine Spectrum. I wouldn’t have caught this if I hadn’t checked Twitter when I sat down to lunch and seen an update from @LATimesfires. (As it is, I still had to make do with the camera on my phone.)

The picture was taken around 1:30. It’s about 3:30 now, and I don’t see a plume anymore (though it could be behind a building) — just a smear of haze to the south and west.

According to the LA Times, the fire started when a tractor crashed into a power pole this morning.

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The Great Park Balloon in Irvine, California, all dressed up as a Jack-o-Lantern for Halloween. I was hoping to get a shot of it aloft, but it landed as I approached the park.

It looks really eerie lit up at night, floating off in the distance. Or just floating above office buildings.

It’s not as good a picture as the one I found on Flickr last week, but you can see the whole face.

More of my own photos of the balloon on Flickr, including this non-zoomed shot, showing the big empty field and Saddleback in the background: