My Town Monday: Deep-Sea Fishing in San Diego

calico bass dorado yellowtail tuna



Fair warning: This may be my SHORTEST My Town Monday post ever! Because I'm writing I So Don't Do Makeup like a wacked-out crazy woman.

BUT....I love My Town Mondays. And I couldn't bear to miss a week. So, I figured a short post was better than no post.

AND this particular post is sure to appeal to Travis Erwin, Our Fearless Fishing Leader, because it's about DEEP-SEA FISHING!

SO, without further ado....There are several companies in San Diego who will happily take you out to sea for a fishing adventure. You can go for 1/2 day trip to a few weeks. The term for a trip longer than a day is "long range." You can go if you're a beginner. You can go if you're experienced. In general, the fishing companies provide the tackle (rod, sinkers, other fishing paraphernalia). When you're checking price, check if the fee includes a Mexican fishing permit (and if you're going far enough south to need one). A little trivia: by law, fish cannot be filleted in Mexican waters.

These are the kinds of fish you'll catch from 3-10 miles offshore: calico bass, sand bass, white sea bass, barracuda, mackerel and dorado.

And from 60 to 80 miles out, you'll catch albacore, bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, big eye tuna, skipjack and yellowtail.

The deeper you go, the bigger the fish. In 1997, someone caught a 388-pound yellowfin tuna! To put this in perspective, a yellowfin generally weighs 15-30 pounds.

And here's a little tip. Always, always, always, pay the $2.00 to enter the jackpot. If you happen to catch the largest fish of the day, you get to take home the kitty.

And, btw, I will never ever go deep-sea fishing you. As in, never. Why? Because I don't have sea legs. Even with dramamine.

Please swim on over Travis' blog where he'll have a fun post and links to other participants.

Sources:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/feature/464/deepsea.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040715/news_lz1w15fish.html

SUSAN PATRON NEWS!

SUSAN PATRON

YELLOW BOOK ROAD BOOKSTORE

(7200 Parkway Drive, La Mesa CA) 

SATURDAY MARCH 28 @ 11:00 - 12:30

MEET AND GREET THE AUTHOR

AND POWER POINT PRESENTATION

                                   Author Susan Patron, winner of the John Newbery Medal 

                                   (She is not blurry in person!)

 Come and meet my new BFF, Susan Patron. I'll be there too. Seriously, if you're going, email me or phone me or something, so we can meet up. It'll be fun! You can find out the connection between Susan Patron and a pink dog, sea urchins and Charlotte's Web.

I know it's last minute, but how often do you (and your kids) get the chance to rub shoulders with a Newbery winner? And because I actually did rub shoulders with her yesterday, tomorrow I'm rubbing her head. She's very nice; I don't think she'll mind.

                                             Ooooh. We can meet by this very wall!

Susan Patron

Susan Patron, Author Extraordinaire and Winner of the Newbery Medal!

Yesterday I made a new BFF.

She may not have realized it, but I emailed her the url for this post, so she'll know soon enough.

My new BFF is SUSAN PATRON. She is the author of The Higher Power of Lucky which won the John Newbery Medal in 2007. The sequel, Lucky Breaks, was released recently. Susan is writing the third book in this middle-grade trilogy. If you haven't yet read The Higher Power of Lucky, you truly should; it'll be one of your best reads this year.

I went to the Yellow Book Road (San Diego's indie children's book store) to loan Susan my projector for her powerpoint. Really I went to hang out with her and chat and fawn and follow her around and listen to her presentation. The projector was a great excuse.

Here are some reasons why you, too, would like to have Susan Patron as your new BFF:
-She is a very interesting speaker. I learned enough about her to want to learn more.
-She is gracious and thoughtful and respectful.
-Children love her.
-She is incredibly creative.
-She has an excellent sense of humor. Excellent.
-She has a dog that turns pink. She does not eat sea urchins. Charlotte's Web convinced her to become a writer. I'd like to say this is insider BFF info, but actually you could learn all about these details if you get a chance to hear her speak.

So, Susan Patron, I absolutely loved meeting you. I think we should plan a slumber party soon. We'll stay up all night eating junk food, doing each other's makeup and watching DVDs.

Me and Susan Patron. I do not know why I forget to push up my glasses. Bottom line is I need new frames. Cuter frames. With staying power.


Mary Hayward, co-owner of the Yellow Book Road bookstore and Susan Patron, Wonderful Author and Newbery Winner

Mary is also my BFF. Right, Mary?!

The following is fairly off topic, BUT I keep forgetting to take care of it. So.... a huge thank-you to Mary Hayward and Kristin Baranski (co-owners of the Yellow Book Road) who have highlighted I So Don't Do Mysteries on their store's website. Right here.

My fortune cookie message

Oooo! Sounds exciting!

Must go out for Chinese more often if I'm going to get fun fortunes like this one.

A confession: Once, my little sister and I (we were teens, I think) painstakingly removed the fortunes from about a dozen cookies. We used pins to tweezer them out. We typed up new fortunes, folded them and poked them in the cookies. These "new and improved" fortune cookies were for a family get-together at my aunt's. At the last minute, my little sister backed out of going.

Which left me at a dinner party with a bag of fortune cookies bearing rude and inappropriate messages! 

I will never forget the perplexed look on my aunt's face as she questioned in a high, sweet voice, "Where did you get these fortune cookies?"

April Fool's is coming. I may be serving Chinese that night...

And, of course, you can borrow this idea!

My Town Monday: Fallbrook Avocado Festival

It's that time of the week again! My Town Monday! And today we're visiting the town of Fallbrook for their annual Avocado Festival.

I hesitated to do another post on a food festival, but decided to run with it for two reasons:
1. I have never met an avocado I didn't like.
2. The festival is coming up in April and just on the incredible off chance that any of you might meander out this way, I want you to be in the know.

First, a teeny bit about Fallbrook: It has a population of about 30,000 and is located in the northern sector of San Diego County. The town lost about 100 dwellings to the Oct 2007 wildfires. Fallbrook's main street is a bit off the beaten track which means you leave Highway 15 and drive west for about six miles on beautiful windy roads to get to the town proper. Fallbrook is 18 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Here are a few famous people who have lived in Fallbrook: Frank Capra, Rita Coolidge, Tony Hawk, Tori Spelling. AND, surprise, surprise, Fallbrook is well known for its avocado groves.

On Sunday, April 19 from 9 am to 5 pm, the quiet village of Fallbrook will host its annual Avocado Festival, also referred to as the green crop festival. About 70,000 people will descend upon the town to enjoy the craft and food booths, culinary contests and demos, farmers' market, live music. A couple of fun contests for the kids are the Best-Dressed Avocado and the Avocado 500 (where you build and race a model car made of an avocado). I think there's also going to be a "pit spit" contest! I have at least one son who could walk away with a first!

Culinary contests include Best Guacamole and Most Creative Avocado Dish. I will not enter, but will happily taste-test if requested!

Child #4 would so rock at the Best-Dressed Avocado contest!

A little trivia about avocados so that you can dazzle everyone with your brilliance: They are also called butter pears and alligator pears. "Avocado" comes from the Nahuati (Aztecan) language and means testicle. Your average avocado tree produces 120 avocados a year.

I'm not sure I can convince dh to hit this festival with me. But I know Child #4 will be game. She's at that perfect age (she's 8) where she's enthusiastic about everything! If you're going let me know. Maybe we can meet up for some guac and chips.

Our regular head honcho, Travis Erwin, has moved and is somewhat settled in. He's back to hosting My Town Monday. Please visit Travis' blog where he'll have a fun post and links to other participants.

And I'm off to write! Have a great day, all!!


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallbrook,_California
http://sandiego.about.com/b/2008/04/12/fallbrook-goes-green-with-avocado-festival-april-22.htm
http://www.fallbrook.org/index.php
http://www.fallbrookca.org/AvoFest/AvoFest%20Poster2009SM.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado

Writing and Linkage

Guess what I'm doing? You got it! Writing my little heart out. I'm working hard on the third Sherry (short for Sherlock) Holmes Baldwin tween mystery, I So Don't Do Makeup. While it's pretty much plotted out, there are always surprises. Plot stuff that looks like it makes sense in the outline, but doesn't on the page. Characters who decide to take matters into their own hands. Children who forget their swim gear, thus forcing their busy, focused mother to make an additional trip across town. Yes, Child, #2, I'm referring to you.

But, but, but...I didn't want you all to feel forgotten. AND I've been given a couple of very adorable awards and must link and thank and even list some obsessions. Say what?? Me? Obsessions?

Thank you Barbara Martin for this, well, fabulous award! HOWEVER, what makes you think I have ANY obsessions, let alone FIVE?!

I am so very tempted to say I have ZERO obsessions, but I sense a sharpened bolt of lightning winging its way toward me. So, I will admit that Obsession is my middle name and that I'll have a tough time limiting my list to five. But here goes....

1. The first obvious one is licorice. If you've been reading this blog for even a little while, you'll know I adore adore adore licorice. Red. Black. I adore you equally. Way, way more than chocolate. Which I don't really adore at all.

2. Disposable plastic gloves. I always have around 500 of these in a kitchen drawer because there are many things I don't like to touch. Such as, raw meat, laundry, certain cleaning supplies (Comet), onions, turkey guts, wet sponges, people. Ha! Kidding about the people. Just checking to see if you're keeping up!

3. Christmas tree ornaments. I buy a new one every year and date it. I try to find an ornament that represents something significant about the year. Some years have more than one new dated ornament because I couldn't narrow down the field.

4. Packing up the night before. I just don't sleep well if I'm not ready for the morning. I haven't managed to pass this particular obsession on to my children. Pity. It would make our mornings much smoother.

5. List making. I don't know how people navigate life without lists.

And here's an obsession I've successfully given up: letting the gas gauge dip below half. My gas light actually came on this morning!

Thank you, Barbara Martin for this very fun exercise. Although I'm little worried at how quickly I was able to type out this list! Seriously, folks, I'm reasonably normal, lots of fun and not nearly as odd as this post would suggest!

I'll take care of thank-yous for the other adorable awards in another post.

Please, please don't feel obligated, but I am curious about others' obsessions. That said, I completely understand if you don't join in (busy life, privacy issues, eating lunch). But if you do want to play, I'm nominating the following bloggers (in alpha order--oops! another obsession!) for the Your Blog is Fabulous Award:

Brian Kell of The Eyeball Afterlife
From the Desk of Bee Drunken
Gabe of Gabe's Meanderings
Maggie May of Flux Capacitor
Sara of Putting the Sara in Sarakastic

My Town Monday: Moreton Fig Tree

Near the north end of the San Diego Natural History Museum, you will find an incredibly large tree. By incredibly large, I mean 78 feet high, 123 feet wide, and with a trunk girth of 486 inches!! At least, that's what it measured in 1996.

The Moreton Fig tree, an East Australian native, was planted from a five-gallon container in 1914. Many trees were planted in Balboa Park around this time to prepare for the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition.

Here is an example of a Moreton Fig tree and its roots. This isn't the tree in Balboa Park, though.

When I first moved to San Diego, you could actually climb on the aerial or surface roots and sit under the tree for a picnic. However, all this foot traffic began to damage the roots and affect the health of the tree. In 1989, a fence was built around the tree, which has completely recovered and is doing very well now, thankyouverymuch. People do still picnic under the tree.


The Moreton Fig tree and the fig wasp share an interesting relationship. The tree is only pollinated by the fig wasp. And the fig wasp can only reproduce in fig flowers. In this complicated world of dating and courtship and global warming, this doesn't seem wise!

In Balboa Park, you will find other smaller Morteon Bay Figs along with 32 other kinds of fig trees. Here's the link to a previous My Town Monday post I did on Balboa Park

In the interests of fair reporting, I must tell you that the famous Santa Barbara Moreton Bay Fig tree has a wider canopy than ours. However, the tree is shorter. The two trees are listed as CO-CHAMPIONS in the California Registry of Big Trees. No, I am not making this up!

The largest Moreton Fig tree in the world is located on a cattle farm near Egg-rock in Queensland, Australia. It measured ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-ONE FEET in 2006!

Here's the address for the San Diego tree:
Moreton Bay Fig Tree
Village Place
San Diego, Ca 92101

And the phone number:
Ha! Gotcha! (But the address is real.)

Our regular head honcho Travis Erwin is moving. Although he still managed to post a My Town Monday! Jenn Jilks is pinch-hitting for Travis, and she'll have all our links. Thanks Jenn!

Sources:
http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/places/moreton-bay-fig-tree/
http://www.sdnhm.org/fieldguide/plants/moreton.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Bay_Fig