A PromaxBDA Award

A few months ago I wrote a post about my former boss, who was laid off.

I can't tell you how happy I was, that one of her main projects from last year, "More: The Real Creatures of Primeval" just won a Gold Award at PromaxBDA.
I know how hard both she and Dudley, worked on the project.

"More" are fillers that we aired immediately before and immediately following Primeval, a show we licensed from the BBC.

Here is the press release:

Burbank, Calif. – July 1, 2013
KCETLink was honored with a PromaxBDALocal Award on June 27. The network received a Gold Award in the “Interstitial/Promo-tainment/Program Wraps Campaign” category for More: The Real Creatures of Primeval, an original series of educational shorts designed to serve as enrichment companions to KCETLink programming.

Presented at the PromaxBDA Station Summit in Las Vegas, the PromaxBDALocal Awards celebrate excellence, creativity and innovation in local television promotion, marketing and design.

The winning entry, More: The Real Creatures of Primeval, was produced to complement Primeval, a hit British sci-fi thriller, which depicts dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. In collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the shorts detailed scientific facts about dinosaurs and the circumstances around their existence centuries ago. The vignettes also include commentary and observations by Dr. Luis Chiappe, Director of the Museum's Dinosaur Institute and lead curator of the Dinosaur Hall.

Executive producer Tené Harris and writer/producer Dudley Saunders, along with award-winning visual production company, Big Machine Design, created the shorts for television and the Web - in an effort to provide viewers the opportunity to access the educational spots anytime. To watch More: The Real Creatures of Primeval, please visit MORE.

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In case you care, the above photo shows off the two awards that Dudley has won. He received a Silver Award for his Tavis Smiley promos, a few years ago.

Cloudcakes

It took me months to get around to it, but I finally made these pancakes.

They are called Cloudcakes and I got it from (I believe) Linda Howard/Linda Jones Facebook Page. When I went looking for the source of the recipe today, I found out it was America's Test Kitchen's Christopher Kimball, who had it.

The secret to making them, is to beat the egg whites until they are light and fluffy and the mix them into the batter. It makes the pancakes light and filled with air. They are easier to eat, then a regular pancake. In other words, they are not heavy and don't make you feel like you have a lump of dough in your stomach.

Being I try not to have too many carbs at a time, these sounded good.

My personal problem with them was that I made an incredible amount of dirty dishes, just to make a few pancakes. Be cautioned about this!

Otherwise, I was very happy with them and enjoyed them immensely...so you decide.

You can see the recipe, HERE.

A Sunset Worth Painting

My Water Post For Today.

I am not big on majorly altered photos...but this one was particularly nice, due to the rocks over on the left side.

I love the splash of green reflecting on the rocks and (of course) the waves in the water.

A truly stunning photo that almost looks like a painting (or is a painting, for all I know). It was a share from a Facebook page called Dream Catchers. I couldn't resist it, so I broke a cardinal rule I have about taking stuff from others, without permission. I hope they understand. :-)

Yes, I really feel like painting this and of course, I hope you enjoy.

10 Year's Ago: The Opening Of The Gold Line

2 weeks before I leave.

It was all on the news this week. It has been 10 years since the opening of The Gold Line to Pasadena.

The dates to Discover Gold were actually July 26th and 27th 2003. My son was 12 years old at the time.

I went digging into my old photo albums (the last one before my home went all digital) and found our photos of the opening.

My Husband was working that day and so just me and my son managed to take the free ride weekend.

This first photo is at the end of the line, Sierra Madre Villa in Pasadena.

It has the Discover Gold sign on it and I thought it should be at the top of this post.

A nice stranger took this 2nd photo. It is of the two of us and was taken in the Union Station tunnel area.

By this time we had waited for hours, snaking through a line in the parking structure.

We were minutes from actually boarding the train.

As you can see, we were sweating that day, since it was a typical hot and humid summer day.

The third photo gets down to business.

Here is The Gold Line loading and unloading passengers.

Our turn is finally here. Woot!

The final photo was taken from the train. There he is, the happy rider, enjoying a trip through Chinatown, Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena.

It is probably the most interesting ride, since no freeway goes through some of these places.
We keep hoping to live to see something done about this atrocity, but somehow I don't think it will happen.

Maybe my son will someday get to ride from the I-210 to the I-710 and visit his old school, Cal State LA.

Happy 10th Anniversary Gold Line. We love having you around.

An Icon Comes To Africa

Last August I went to an Icon Workshop and created a St. Kateri Icon. The man who arranged it, keeps us informed of things, via email.

The most recent message announced that the Icon Workshop this year, will be in September.
I, of course, will be in Oswego, so I will be missing it.

Along with the information on the workshop, came some photos of our teacher's latest project.

He flew to Africa this summer (the reason for the delay in the workshop) to paint an Icon of Jesus, in an African Church.

I don't know anything about where it is, or how poor the parish is, but you can see that my teacher did quite a wonderful job of bringing holiness to a worship space.

If you remember how hard a time I had laying on the gold leaf for the halo, I can't imagine how hard it was to do this mural for the Church.

He is a true master of Iconography.

East Ventura Station

My son decided that he wanted to go to dinner with us in Ventura and more importantly, he wanted to be picked up at East Ventura Station. I was like, OK, if you insist...and what the heck is East Ventura Station?

Before I gave up my commute by train, I used to see a train with Montalvo on it, so my thought was, did they rename the train station? It ended up that this was exactly the case. It is right by one of the more popular areas of Ventura, the Harbor area and Victoria Ave. As a matter of fact, we usually stay at a hotel within feet of the station. OK, so I knew the area, but we had no idea how to get to it.

Well, thank goodness for the direction feature in our phone. The nice digital lady kept telling us to turn right and turn left and we ended up right there at this tiny little station. The station is SO tiny that the train comes in on a siding and then backs into the station.

They then leave the 3 trains on the siding overnight for service and storage and then the trains go back to LA in the morning. 3 out and 3 in.

If you click on the photo you can see (off in the distance) that the train is doing its backing into the station thing. It came as quite a surprise to me.

Thanks son, for teaching me something new.

Chicano Batman

It doesn't happen often anymore. Music coming out of Stage A, is as scarce as anything coming out of Stage A. In other words...nothing going on this year, due to a budget crunch. Well, our next episode of Artbound, will be featuring, among other things, an East LA Band called Chicano Batman.

I wasn't sure what to expect, music wise, but they were quite good. I definitely heard some nods to Santana in their one song and being I like Santana, that was just fine with me.

As they mention in THIS ARTICLE, they like to blend many sounds and styles into their music and I think that is a good thing.

The concert will air tonight, July 25th at 9PM on KCET. If you are an LA resident, check it out, or play it later, on our website...Artbound #203.

A couple of things to note in the photos...you can see some of our staff hanging out at the 6th floor window in the left corner of the first shot.

The 2nd photo is the control room, of course. It was such a low budget production, that an AD directed the shoot. Oh and our transmitter technician was called in to run camera. I got a real kick out of that.

Good thing our tower didn't blow up or anything. :-)

A Beautiful Close Up

As I promised last week, here is the close up photo of Makenna.

As I mentioned in the Vetri-Lysine post, as soon as I get home at night, she plants herself on the side of the desk, waiting for me to acknowledge her and feed her the "treats".

I had to move away from the desk, to take this shot, because she is usually about an inch or two away from my head and ear.

What amazes me is that even after she has had her treats, she returns to bug me.

Again, a total routine, even though we have absolutely never fed her another treat, after she has had her two.

It is medicine and so it is treated as such.

Seriously, don't you think she is just too stinking cute?

Borgen

The main program coup that Link TV brought to the KCETLink table, is a Danish drama called Borgen. Borgen literally means Castle, but in this case, means the location of the Government, which is at Christiansborg Palace (the 4th palace or castle that has been built on the site.)

Since the merger, we have aired the show multiple times on Link TV, but never on any of our channels.

Well, that has changed with this current airing. KCET (Channel 28) is running Borgen on Friday and Monday nights at 10PM.

My Husband and I decided to check it out and quickly got hooked.

It is a combination of a political show, similar to The West Wing, and a news show like The Newsroom. There is also drama in the personal lives of the characters, which adds to the whole thing.

We are currently airing a marathon of the first season on our air, which means that if you don't get Link TV (via Direct TV or Dish), you can stream the entire 10 episodes from today through August 4th on KCET's Website. We only get 2 weeks streaming rights, each time it airs, so if you would like to watch it, now is definitely the time to catch up and then move forward with Season 2. Those shows will be immediately following the first 10.

Interested? Check out our KCET website HERE, for recaps of each of the 10 shows and video of each of the 10 episodes. Here are the titles and episode numbers, to help you navigate the web page. If you check it out, come back and comment please...oh and enjoy.

1. "Decency in the Middle"

2. "Count to 90"

3. "The Art of the Possible"

4. "100 Days"

5. "Men Who Love Women"

6. "State Visit"

7. "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil"

8. "The Silly Season"

9. "Divide And Rule"

10. "The First Tuesday in October"

Upper Van Norman Reservoir

My Water Post For Today.

You may ask what this is a photo of.

It was taken back in 2009 and this is the upper San Fernando Valley area, just before you reach the Newhall Pass.

I took this photo, from a plane, by the way. :-)

The water you see right down below, is the Upper Van Norman Reservoir. That is the water that comes all the way from the Sierra's, down the Central Valley and arrives via 2 aqueducts, to this dam. The water is then sent to the homes and businesses in Los Angeles. One of the many ways that Los Angeles is allowed to have so many people. If it was up to us to live with our God given water, we would still be a rancho...seriously.

Anyway, the dam has a history. It holds all our imported water now days, because there is something called the Lower Van Norman Reservoir. The Sylmar Earthquake took that out of commission and so they built this little one above the old one. The old one is left empty (just in case there is another Earthquake). It will hopefully hold the water, if the Upper Van Norman Dam fails. I am sure the San Fernando Valley appreciates this fact.

It is actually the only water I pass on the way to work and it always makes me happy.

I hope you enjoy.

This Year's Crop Of Nectarines (and the start of a countdown)

I have just 3 more weeks til I am leaving for school. I will be counting them down each Sunday.

Remember my neighbor gave us a bag of peaches the other week. Well, right after we cooked them up into peach compote, I walked around to the fruit tree side of my house and found out my neighbor wasn't the only one who had a fruit problem...we did too.

In our case it was our nectarine tree that was just loaded with fruit. Seriously, who knew?

So the week after I made the peach compote, I picked our tree and made nectarine and blueberry compote. Sigh...

There are even more on the tree, but they were not ripe at the time, so I think more nectarine compote is in our future.

Maybe I will freeze this batch. :-)

A New York City Subway Puzzle...And Young Love

There is a story to this puzzle.

Many, many years ago, a man met a woman at the pool of the apartment building where both lived. She had just arrived in town and he had lived there for almost a decade.

They talked, as people tend to do and he found out (honestly, how could he miss this NY accent of mine) that I had just arrived from New York. One of the things he happened to have, was a puzzle of the NY City Subway map. So the young couple began assembling the puzzle, during those long ago dating days.

When the puzzle was complete, they got puzzle glue and eventually hung it up in their new house. It has been here for the past 34 years (not in this house that long, but in the several places we called home, over the years).

We have photos of NY City surrounding it. Those were taken our very first trip to the city as a couple. It was December of 1979 and it was cold...burr!!!

I love having the puzzle map and remembering our long ago dating days. Thanks Hubby...you rock!

Sunset At Via Princessa

I was driving home last night and as happens this time of year, the sun was going down. I decided that I really liked it and so I took a quick detour up onto a flyover bridge that goes over the road I was traveling on. You can see the road down at the bottom of the photo, by the river (which is the reason there is a bridge in the first place).

If you care, I am shooting to the west (of course) and Magic Mountain is in that direction...but out of the shot.

It's still a nice photo, in spite of that.

Enjoy.

Vetri-Lysine Plus

Our cat occasionally has eye problems.

We happened to mention this to the Vet, back in March and she gave us this very expensive product called Vetri-Lysine Plus. I was not happy with the thought of paying a fortune ($27) for something that I didn't think was the solution to the problem. She had diagnosed the problem by hearing that the cat usually had the problem in just her right eye. I had thought it was from her rubbing things (as cats are wont to do), but I did decide to try the stuff out. I was supposed to feed her 4 a day (2 at a time), but again, I wasn't happy with that. So I finally started her on 2 a day, after her first 1/2 can of food and before her second 1/2 can. So now this has become the new routine in the house...I sit down at the desk and she comes and sits on the top of it, waiting for her Lysine chews, which sit on the first shelf (see photo). They are fish shaped and she adores them.

As a matter of fact, she wants more (what a surprise) and so most of the evening, as I work on the computer, I get the cat meowing in my ear. Scares the stuffing out of me. :-)

The bottom line is, that so far, 4 months in, she has not had a problem with her eye. I am glad I am just giving her the 2 chews, though if her eye has problems, I will probably increase the dose to the full amount.

Also in good news, I found the bags of treats on amazon for half the price that I paid at the vet.

If you have similar problems with your cat, ask your Vet about these. I am pretty impressed with them.

Save It Til The Morning After...

Yes, I realize that this music video by Duran Duran is smack dab in the middle of the 80's (1982 to be exact), but sometimes things come back to me and this was one of those things.

I have actually been holding the photo (which is a screen capture from the very end of the video) for over a year. How do I know that? I was still able to watch videos and enjoy them, back on Sunset. I can't watch and listen to anything, in Burbank. Damn collaborative workspace...

Save A Prayer music video is HERE and when you watch it, note that at the very end temple scene, this is what they are saying.

"Andy Taylor recalls in his memoirs that the shooting at the temple was very tense, since the country was on the verge of civil war and the temple's monks were impatiently waiting for their leader to arrive and address a large political gathering. The band members wore bare feet in deference to the temple's religious importance, frequently scorching themselves on the bare rock they were standing on. During some takes, the band members yelled "Fuck you Russell!" instead of mouthing the lyrics."

Enjoy.