This is why he’s my brother

Splat (2:53:10 PM): http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/01/07/fat-before-a-visit-to-the-loo-skinny-after/
danielle (2:53:47 PM): for your eyes only:
danielle (2:53:56 PM): I weigh myself before and after poos all the time
danielle (2:54:02 PM): my scale is next to the toilet
danielle (2:54:11 PM): I’m always curious about how much poo I carry around
Splat (2:54:13 PM): how big are your average poops?
Splat (2:54:25 PM): this is such a JD moment
danielle (2:54:28 PM): and the answer is: between .5 and 1.5 lbs of poo
danielle (2:54:39 PM): but once, I had a 2.5 lb poo!
Splat (2:54:52 PM): that’s like a whole puppy!
danielle (2:54:56 PM): I know! A puppy tail!

The Weekend with Mom : Yucca Valley, Salton Sea, and others

OK! The time has come for the massive weekend explanation. I find it easiest to illustrate with photos, so I’m linking off to my Flickr set.

Yucca Valley
I have no photos from our visit to Deeze and Annette’s. Their house feels so much like home to me that I don’t even really think to take photos there. My mom and I stayed up late talking to them and it was so nice to see my mom genuinely appreciating my friends.

Pioneertown
Similarly, the photos from Pioneertown really were pretty lame. My mom took some pretty good ones, but she doesn’t use Flickr, so it’s a little hard to get the photos in here without some amount of effort. Plus, she doesn’t read this blog (as far as I know), so I don’t want to give her indication of how to find it.

The Walk Near Pioneertown
Mom and I went for a walk through the burned out brush near Pioneertown, CA, outside of Yucca Valley. I took some photos of plants and found two cans from when there were pull tabs that pulled off the can! One is a reaaaaly old Coke can and the other is a Coors with a bullet hole in it. I didn’t take photos of those, but they’re sitting in my car in arrested decay.

The Windmills

A Windmill is Very Tall

On our way down to Salton Sea and Slab City, we stopped off at some of the huge windmills that are in the mouth of the Coachella Valley. I’d never seen the windmills up close, so it was quite a thrill. As you may or may not know, Jetfuel, Connie-Lynne, and I all undertook to build windmills for the Burn this past year, but they actually completed theirs (I did not).

Salton Sea
This warrants a large photo:

Mom and I drove off the main road and down to the Salton Sea shore (no, she didn’t sell sea shells by the shore of the Salton Sea). I was amazed (disgusted?) to find that the whole place smelled AWFUL (truly stomach turning) and it was pretty clear why after about 40 seconds of standing there: the entire shore was covered in mounds of dead fish, fish bones, and bird poo. Really, every gross thing you can imagine was all over the place there. I don’t know how to describe how gross it smelled, but it sure was picturesque:

Why are all the fish dead? It’s seasonal and based on agriculture in the area. Nitrates and other fertilizer runoff causes a huge algae bloom in the Salton Sea, resulting in a reduction of oxygen in the water. As the algae consumes all the oxygen, the fish literally suffocate in the water, dying by the thousands. They wash ashore and rot.

There were also a lot of birds hanging out:

Salvation Mountain
One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen is Salvation Mountain

Crap. I have to go to work, since my mom needs to use the internet and I need to send a big file.

Also, there was this sunset: