Ug's Grad School Blues: R and Ug's Fiesta Celebration

Despite our late night of cartoon watching yesterday, R and I got up before 9:00 am to go for a walk around Lake Los Carneros to start off our Fiesta-filled Saturday. So we put on our walking shoes and got out the stale bread to feed the waterfowl at the lake.

August 5 2006: R and Ug walk to Lake Los Carneros Sat 9:01 am -- Picture of Stow House (Victorian architecture)

It's kinda weird, but there's no huge sign denoting the main entrance to Lake Los Carneros. Instead, there are signs pointing out historical landmarks adjoining the lake. So R and I, walking from my apartment, first reached a small fire station at the main drive-in entrance. From there, as you walk toward the parking lot, you see a memorial for the Goleta train station, and then later you reach a bright and happy Victorian House, known as Stow House. As you walk past Stow House towards Lake Los Carneros, you'll see a farm historical "museum" of sorts that comprises a bunch of old-fashioned farming tools. Anyhoo, onto the park!

The miraculous non-molding sourdough bread R bought from Trader Joe's before leaving Santa Barbara, way back in March.

On the surface, this picture of sourdough doesn't seem so miraculous. But wait! Check out the expiration date on the tag... Yes, March 16, as in March 16, 2006. Currently it is August 5, 2006. Everyone in the lab was surprised as well.

Note that even the external slices of bread are untouched by mold!

Sorry for the blurry pic, but here I'm trying to show you all the lack of mold on the bread slices. Astonishing, no?

Our first bread seekers -- momma coot + baby

So R and I weren't having any luck attracting ducks, coots, or geese on one side of the lake, so we moved to another. The first bird that came toward us was a coot. At the time, we didn't know if it was a female or not. But as we threw the bread at it, it suddenly picked up its pace and headed straight toward our bread. R said to it, "We're going to spoil you soooo much little coot."

But then, the coot made this horrendous noise, somewhere between a honk and a screech. R and I looked at each other and were like, did we do something wrong? Then we heard this higher pitched "pi pi pi" coming from a part of the lake hidden by dense foliage.

Yay, mom and baby got bread

Soon after, R spotted a tiny package of fluff whence the high pitched noise was coming. Apparently the baby coot got worried about being left behind by its mother. To reassure it, the mother made the horrendous noise and swam back to get it, then quickly swam towards us, with baby in tow.

Mom and baby coot approached us even closer

Eventually, mother and baby got bread. Actually, it turns out there were two baby coots. Guess one of them was just a lot slower than the other.

Uh oh, here come the reinforcements

All our worry about having too much bread and not enough customers was all for naught. Eventually, lured by the mother coot's noise, the ducks and geese and other coots started heading for us in droves.

R playing Lady Bountiful to the waterfowl

Look, here's R trying to hand feed the geese. It was really weird, 'cause the geese weren't as proactive about chasing after food as the ducks, and the ducks weren't as bad about the whole thing as the coots.

All those lady ducks

There was this one coot, whom we christened the a$$h*le daddy coot, b/c even with its beak full of food it kept chasing away all the other waterfowl. We reasoned it wasn't just trying to get food for itself, it was just being an a$$h*le.

After using up all our bread, we walked back to my apartment, then drove off in R's shiny silver baby to the Cajun Kitchen restaurant. There, we had a calorie-packed breakfast, and then drove back to my apartment to finish watching the latest fansubbed One Piece episodes, and an episode or 2 of Samurai Champloo, which I had rented from Netflix.

--- more writing forthcoming....