L.A. Trip Listening

Well, after a day helping Kim's mother get her father safely transferred out of the hospital and into an "extended care" facility for his rehab stint and another day recovering from the experience, I can follow through on the promise in my last entry.

Here are my listening choices from the drive to L.A. last Thursday, while driving around in L.A., and from the return trip on Tuesday:

DRIVE THERE

• Nick Lowe, Greatest Hits
• The Coup, Steal This Double Album (reissue)
• The Wedding Present, Seamonsters
• Exploding Hearts, Guitar Romantic
• Gene Vincent, Greatest Hits
• Tujiko Noriko, Make Me Hard

DRIVE AROUND L.A. METRO AREA

• Japanic, Red Book
• Enon, High Society
• Tom Waits, Closing Time
• Prince, Dirty Mind

DRIVE BACK

• Wire, Send
• Mojave 3, Spoon and Rafter
• Jawbreaker, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
• Matmos, The Civil War

Thought I'd let you off that easily, did you?

( Read my copiously annotated version of this list, which includes links to MP3s it's legal to download. )

Fire Station #7

Today Skylar went on her first field trip with her pre-school class, to Tucson Fire Department's Station #7 (Arcadia and Pima, east of Swan).

She was very excited beforehand. And so was I. I remember pre-school field trips with particular fondness, especially the visits to see baby chickens, to picnic at Lake Towhee, or to feed the bison at Trexler Park.

As one of many parents who were driving, I got to take Skylar's classmate Sedona there and back as well. Most kids Skylar's age are used to riding with other kids, usually because they have siblings. But as an only child who only drives with us, Skylar found the ferrying to be a noteworthy experience.

It really was the cutest thing ever when they settled in for the ride and said to each other, "What should we talk about?" and then answered the question with "Halloween!"

The visit itself was longer and more technical than four-year-olds can stand, though the parents seemed to be learning a lot.

Kim stopped by to take some pictures for a few minutes before heading back to work and got to polish up her fireman fetish. All that hose pulling seemed to give the men upper arms that look more "natural" and better than ones arrived at through lifting alone, though there were plenty of weight benches there. There was one guy with a shaved head and sideburns who I swear must have been a model who stepped out of a photo shoot about "real" fireman, since he was too young and too hot to be real. As Kim noted, several of the moms present seemed to be enjoying the firemen as she was, expressing great excitement at getting to see the place where they sleep.

I learned one interesting thing, which is that those decals that people used to put on windows to inform fire fighters that there were small children or invalids in a room are now out of fashion because they gave burglars the perfect point of entry.

Oh, and the hook and ladder truck's ladder -- which one of the fireman climbed to impress the kids -- goes up eight stories, or almost 100 feet.