The Agrinautica

   A Week Ago: I hung out with Chief Justice Khan of the Judicial Horde Supreme Court of the student government of Mount San Antonio College down at Laguna Beach last Sunday, because you know, us Chief Justices gotta stick together (Rehnqvist couldn't make it, said he wasn't feeling well. pff).


The 70s House
   Sometime midweek we got a call for an abandoned house in Nellie Gail (where rich people who don't feel like they need to be walled in live). Technician Ryan went out there. The rest of us were cleaning the garage I think. Then he called in for "every available technician" to come back him up, so we all piled out there.
   We arrive on scene and there are three raging colonies. Like each one of these would have been massive on its own. When we were done Ryan's truck was completely full with 10 of the five gallon buckets full of honey & comb, and there was more in the other trucks. We pull 4-500 pounds of honey out of those things altogether.
   How'd these colonies get so big? Well the house has been abandoned since the 70s. Or rather, it was owned but I think its rich owner forgot that he owned this little house. This little house had like 10 bedrooms, including one that was definitely only for the servant (it only opened to the kitchen).
   So inside the place was all 70sed out. But not just any 70s but rich people 70s. It was like something out of Austen Powers, with huge fancy completely obsolete TVs and radios, and a whole crapload of surveillance cameras that were all huge.
   Place hadn't been visited by its owner in forever. There were fish living in the pool. Squatters and pillagers had apparently already given the house a shake-down. Everything of value had been removed. Someone had hacked the lock to the master bedroom to submission. There was however one part of the house that all these years still retained its secrets -- the garage remains solidly locked. Considering the awesomeness of the rest of the house and the thoroughness with which its been scoured for things of value, the garage really piques the curiousity. There are two abandoned cars in front of the garage.
   Whats weird though is when I hear abandoned (or type it) I picture these things being all rusty and overgrown, graphitied and open to the elements. But its more like a normal house just stopped being used for thirty years. No broken windows, no graphiti. Cars looked completely fine except all tires were completely flat. Ryan drank a coca-cola he found in the refridgerator (which still reeked of food that had long since gone terribly bad since the refridgerator was no longer operating)
   Man I wish I'd taken pictures. One of us is going back on Monday to check on the bees. I hope its whomever I'm runnin around with so I can take some pictures.


Return to Wild Rivers
   So I've been meaning to go back to Wild Rivers with Alexis the Frenchman. Last two weekends I had plans that fell through on account of not being able to get ahold of anyone on the inside to get me $14 discount tickets.
   Finally I got forrest441 (Jeff Whetstone) to volunteer to get me the employee discount tickets, but more importantly, this caused me to deal with the will-call people down in Admissions. Jeff hadn't communicated the will-call to them yet but "its okay, we remember your brother" (my little brother worked as a cashier at WR).
   So me and the Frenchman show up. When we get to will-call we're still not on the will-call list. The Admissions supervisor who happened to be in the kiosk without even looking up told the 14 yr-old attendroid who was attending to us just to print us two tickets. So she printed two tickets and gave them to us and we were in... for free!

   My friend Hannah was supervising today. Or rather being a supervisor-in-training, or a "semivisor" as I like to call the position. Its the highest my WR career led me. When I met Hannah she was just a wee "ride attendant," and now she's on her way to live my supervising dreams for me.
   Shortly I encountered ultravisor Randy Jostlin (sp on that last name?), who gave Alexis and I free wristbands to the stronger wavepool where one can go boogie-boarding. What was really odd was that just as I was talking to Randy about my bee busting job, a bee landed on my hand. It was like magic or something.
   And so everything was going awesome and for once I felt like Wild Rivers was actually treating me well rather than raining weaksauce upon me. But I should have known the day was going too well, when we returned to my krismobile, my keys had disappeared!!
   Now this was quite odd since I DIDN'T lose the money or ticket stubs in my pocket. I dove to the bottem of "Blizzard Bazooka Bowls" but didn't find them down there, and Jeff (forrest441) let me swim around in the stronger wavepool with goggles to look for them but no luck.
   And I didn't recognize nearly any of the current deep guards or even some of the supervisors!! I've been gone too long. /=


Picture of the Day

Now that my flickr account is all full up I'm very reluctant to add new things.. d=

   So yesterday, Thursday, was the much awaited Flogging Molly (& the Vandals) show at the OC Fair. Earlier in the week Allie (Bloomquist) had called to invite me to attend the show with them (her and Amy Bartrum), to which the answer was a firm heck yes. As I was preparing to leave for the show, my friend Hannah (Westergard) called to invite me to the fair with her and her friends that evening.
   When I arrived at the fair both Allie and Hannah were far from ready so it looked like I'd be lollygagging by myself for a bit. However barely had I stepped out of my car then I ran into Jamie, which was awesome because we've been meaning to hang out for awhile but it keeps falling through. She and her friend were awaiting more of her friends so I hung out with them for awhile.
   Unfortunately the Pacific Amphatheatre in which the show was happening had assigned seating by section, and the fascists wouldn't let me sit with Jamie and her friends because I was assigned to a different section. )= So I stood by myself for awhile but then the ubernazi security people told me I had to keep moving as long as I wasn't at a seat -- one couldn't stand around. So then feeling very persecuted and oppressed I slowly paced back and forth while watching the vandals. Shortly however I met up with some other disgruntled youths who were not subjecting themselves to assigned seating, preferring to roam freely along the walk way, and I joined their noble cause of trying to start a mosh pit on the walkway.
   We had some good times but the fact that literally if at any point both our feet were on the ground and not moving at the same time we'd be sternly told to keep moving got pretty old. Eventually Allie and co arrived so I had to leave the nomadic adventurers, but they'd eventually join me and Allie and co.
   So Allie had her boyfriend along, as well as some other guy and Amy and Amy's mother, Dr Bartom (don't dis, everyone thinks she's hip -- she's also a teacher at Villa Park HS incidently). Shortly after we started trying to infiltrate the amphatheatre seating we spotted Alex Hughes, and we all managed to infiltrate that section and hang out with them. Eventually as I said the guys I'd been hanging out with earlier joined us there as well.
   And then Flogging Molly came on and verily they were excellent. It was weird to see them from an assigned seat (we were all standing at our seats the whole time though) rather than somewhere where one could freely rock out and mosh about.
   When "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" came on Allie, Amy and Amy's mom had their arms around eachother and I knew they were thinking about Eric and it was sad. )=

   After the show ended I caught up with Hannah and we hung out for a little while. Also ran into Jessiska (afoxygoddess) exiting the show.


In Bee News
   On Wednesday we responded to a call at the Disneyland Sheraton Hotel. They kept us waiting for twenty minutes and it wasn't until Jeremy announced that we were leaving in five minutes if someone didn't come tell us what was going on there. The Man promptly arrived and explained that he had been meeting with the owner-representatives. He showed us where there had been wasps nests, but painters had already removed them.
   It seems to me that if there's only one person who can tell bee removal people what needs to be done (and he was the only person who could sign our paperwork), and that is the same person who meets with the owner-representatives, the Disneyland Sheraton must have an absolutely cripplingly bottlenecked management hierarchy.

   While waiting in the lobby I read a copy of the Wallstreet journal that was sitting on the desk there. Did you know miners in iron mines make $50 an hour?! Some college students on the East Coast do that as a summer job. They work 16 hour days, but heck, thats $800 a day! I think I have a new plan for next summer.

   Today Jeremy (pictured here hard at work on Wednesday, note his dog) and I stopped at In-N-Out for lunch. There were some punk kids hanging out outside it. I casually took my hat off to itch my head as I passed by and sure enough they were immediately like "hey ghostbuster!" (mohawk = instant punk cred)


Picture of the Day

Returning home from work yesterday I felt compelled to rescue this bee that was drowning in my pool. In retrospect the picture would have been really awesome if I'd been doing a thumbs up. I'll try to recreate it sometime. See also THIS picture of bee buster Bobby on a roof, and THIS picture I took while leaving the fair.

   So today was my first actual day of work at Wild Rivers for the summer. I worked 11-7.
   When I got there Nikki informed me that since I'm not area trained in anythign yet this year I can't work anything but three places, two of which are the most unpleasant places in the park (the kiddie pools argh!). I'm like... I am practically qualified to GIVE the area training.. I'm the most senior lifeguard there and have seniority over several supervisors (Yes thats right; I get passed over in favor of people like Hethr, who with half as many years as I and a number of no shows already that season was promoted to supervisor, why? So Ryan Carter can date her. I'm serious).
   So the first half of the day I'm working these sucky places and thinking about going postal or something. I felt like "the funnyman" from Boondock Saints, like everyone knows I'm never getting promoted and is laughing at me. But then the second half I got to spotbreak shallows and basically things went a lot better.
   The highlight of my day was DEFINITELY seeing SHASTA who happened to be in the park, randomly. Yay. Seriously made my day.
   And I met this girl Hannah who seriously is for awesome. I worked with her at the bottem of "patriot," where there's always two employees. Of course supervisor Jeff Whetstone (::caugh::manwhore::caugh::) was flirting with her when I got there. We were only working together for like five minutes but it was long enough that now we're LIKE THIS. Good times.