superfly

last night, or more exactly, earlier this morning, a bunch of us (our hosts, amy & gordon, scott, carlin, char, jenny, melva, dan, and myself) went grunion hunting off of hermosa beach. i've lived in la for over 20 years and have never been running with the grunions before. needless to say, i was pretty stoked.

by stoked, i meant screaming like a little girl... but more on that later.

jenny and i decided to carpool to gordon & amy's out in hermosa beach. after getting there, the rest of the group were playing this boardgame called settlers of katan, which basically is a game where you're trying to obtain as many points as you can by building cities, settlements, and roads by accruing various raw materials. it looked to be a very interesting game.

an hour later, we were ready to head off to the beach (amy & gordon's home is like a 10-minute walk to the beach) to get the featured guests of our mid-morning snack. so with bucket and flashlights in hand, we took a leisurely stroll to the beach.

there was definitely excitement in the air, at least for me.

we immediately saw the tiny, silver, eel-like fish by the time we got down to the ocean. it was interesting. i never realized how fast they were. it was like they were practically flying on sand, heading back out into the ocean. it is exactly this behavior that freaked me out.

yes, it took me about 10 minutes to catch my first one and actually put it into the bucket. everytime i tried to pick one up, it would squirm away from me. this didn't really sit well with me. and yes, i screamed like a little girl. it's just so... unnatural (but probably not so for the grunions).

but i think in the end, i caught about 5 or 6 of them. and once you have them in your hands, they would flip and flop trying to get free. it was actually pretty interesting. thank god, the dont' have teeth. that would have been disastrous.

if i was a casual observer and ran across the bunch of us at the beach last night, i would have probably died laughing. between me screaming like a little girl and other people yelling for the bucket ("the bucket! where's the bucket! i need the fucking bucket!), it was a crazy mess.

anyway, after about 30 minutes of folicking and screaming at the beach, we decided that we had enough grunions for a nice snack. we headed back to gordon & amy's. along the way, scott trespassed into a garden, grabbed a watering pot, filled it with water to wash off the sand on his and carlin's feet.

grunions don't really survive long out of the ocean. midway to gordon & amy's, a number of them went bellied-up. we even had them in ocean water, but to no avail.

when we got back to the apartment, scott had to leave because he was going to volunteer putting roofs on houses out in san bernandino in the morning. gordon, amy, and jenny dealt with cleaning, gutting and cooking the fish while the rest of us played poker (points). of course, i made a killing when there's no money involved.

at around 2:30, the chefs were done with the cooking. amy fried up the fish with some flour, cornmill, salt, and paprika. it was delicious. who knew these little tiny things were so damn good.
after we finished eating, we helped clear the table and since it was getting to be about 3:30am, we headed home. it was a rather interesting night so say the least.

i got home at about 4:30am. took a shower and was in the middle of putting some clothes on when i heard a noise by the front door of our apartment. at first, i thought it was a skunk trying to get into the cat food. so being the stupid ass that i am, i began to stomp and bang on the floor and the front door.

if you don't know why that was stupid, let me elaborate. 1. it's a freaking skunk in my porch. scaring it would only lead to one thing. and if you don't know what that is, you're stupid. 2. i woke up deidra at 4:45am. for someone who takes their sleep seriously, that's not a good thing. of course, once she found out what was happening, she was pretty understanding.


so i went into the computer room, turned on the porch light, and peered out the window to see a freaking huge raccoon staring back at me. the way it was looking at me (without any sense of fear, just basic curiosity), it reminded me of, "ahhh, fresh meat." (me being the fresh meat).

keeping in mind, i'm still naked (yeah, i know... shudder at the thought), i immediately got a bat, and tried to scare it away. nope, nothing. the fucker had no fear. so for about a minute, it was just me waving the bat at it behind my screen door, and it running back two or three feet and then returning to where the food was.

i then decided to throw the bat at it. well, let's just say it didn't work out quite well. now i have no bat, a bemused raccoon, and a naked me. the cool thing is that it was trying to drag the plastic container into the garden and trying to twist off the top to get into the food. it would have been really fucking interesting if i didn't give a shit about the cat food.

by this time, deidra was out of bed, carrying zofvig (one of the cats that also has no fear... well except for me), and was wondering why i woke her ass up. i was like, dude, there's a big fucking raccoon trying to get the damn cat food. then she blames me for not bringing in the food. yeah, okay.

i screamed at her to bring me the tennis racquet, which was basically our last line of defense. i must have been playing the xbox too much because the next thing i knew, i was running outside, naked, swinging my tennis racquet at the damn raccoon. finally, it ran away and i quickly snatched up the plastic container and the bat. as i was running back towards the apartment, deidra had closed the door on me. nice.

so yeah, if you were at my place at 5am this morning, you would have gotten a nice view of me... all of me.