ELF STORAGE, originally uploaded by conradh.
A decade ago, Katie saw a self storage place with the first S missing from the sign. She didn’t get a picture, and has been looking for another sign with the same failing ever since.
Last summer we spotted a sign with the S broken. It turns out that the S eventually did fall off the rest of the way.
Watched the sun set, its disc tinged almost magenta by the smoke plume from the Morris fire near Azusa stretching along the horizon.
When I lived in Lake Forest during the year 2000, I used to frequent a place called Panda Panda. It was your basic steam table Chinese restaurant, but it was good. I remember the occasional evening on which I’d think, “Do I go to the store, buy ingredients, come home, then spend time cooking just for one person, or do I go out and grab some fast-ish food?” Panda Panda was a frequent winner of these decisions.
It was located at the corner of El Toro and Raymond, near the library. Panda Panda shared a building with a Quizno’s sandwich place and was one driveway away from a Wendy’s.
I don’t know if they were a small chain or a solo restaurant, but they were eventually bought out or otherwise assimilated by Panda Express, which I’ve never particularly liked. (Though Panda Inn, a table-service restaurant owned by the same company, has been consistently good.) Naturally they homogenized the menu as well.
That was the end of that.
A few years later, as part of the big project to renovate the area, both buildings were bulldozed to make way for a new strip mall segment. Panda Express got the prime spot in the new building, but all traces of Panda Panda are lost.
For the record: I’m currently sitting in a Wahoo’s taco place roughly where the driveway used to be.
The south end of Santa Catalina Island as viewed from Newport Beach this morning around 9am. The winds have cleared out a lot of the haze that would normally obscure the island, and I had a great view of its entire length.
Interestingly, while the sky seemed clearer at 8am than at 9am, by which time a thin layer of gray haze clung to the horizon, the photos taken at 9 are sharper. It’s almost as if the dust settled during that hour, clearing above the layer and obscuring below it.
There was also a definite mirage caused by that same layer. You can tell the lower 1/3 of the island is distorted.
Walking to lunch. Vacant lots are actually green!
Spotted Venus at 1 in the afternoon! Thanks, Sky Map app!
Saddleback Snow – Spectrum Wheel Two Days Later.
I’ve added a few more pictures to my Snowline photoset showing the unusual amount of snow in the local Santa Ana Mountains.
There’s a few more from Thursday, plus a couple of pictures I grabbed Friday morning, like the one shown above.
Update: Here’s one more, from a batch of photos I took at lunch today. More at Flickr…
Saddleback and the Santa Ana Mountains got an amazing amount of snow yesterday, and I went out to a couple of spots this morning to take photos. Check this Flickr set for more.
