A Leonid meteor streaks across the sky over the desert of Joshua Tree National Park on Nov. 19. Click here for photos of Becky’s and my drive to and from the desert. Click here for videos of the meteors!

A chicken, whose clucking awakened Becky and me on Nov. 17, walks around outside near Becky’s apartment. Click here for a complete gallery of photos of the chicken!

Becky, Rachel and Matias stand in line for seats to an opening-night showing of the new “Harry Potter” movie at University Village on Nov. 15. For a complete gallery of photos from the Harry Potter opening, click here.

This is the first picture ever taken with my new Fuji FinePix 3800 camera — a slightly blurry shot of me holding the camera, as reflected in the Circuit City men’s room mirror on Nov. 14. For a complete gallery of the earliest images taken with the camera, click here.

Here are a couple of short animated GIF video clips (repeating over and over) of Leonid meteors, taken with my Sony Digital 8 camcorder on “Super Night Shot” mode, from the Joshua Tree National Park early this morning. Note the Big Dipper in the background. More movies and information on the 2002 Leonids coming soon!

Saw dozens of meteors, and got at least a dozen on video! Now on I-10, en route back to L.A. Yay Leonids!

Becky and I are heading out to the desert tonight — the Joshua Tree National Park, to be specific — for a view of the Leonid Meteor Shower/Storm early Tuesday morning (the peak in Southern California is expected to be between 2:00 and 3:00 AM). We chose our planned viewing location partly on the basis of this map of light pollution in Southern California.

For the latest on the Leonids, visit SpaceWeather.com!

Sunday, November 10 was that rarest sort of day in Los Angeles — a clear day. Following a heavy weekend rainstorm, the smog cleared and L.A. was suddenly a beautiful city. In the picture above (taken from Parking Structure D), the distant dome of the Griffith Park Observatory — miles away in the Santa Monica Mountains — is almost as crisply clear as the nearby dome of the Second Church of Christ Scientist on Adams Boulevard, just a few blocks away. Click here for a whole gallery of scenic images from Nov. 10.

Becky wraps up her shivering kitten in a towel and cuddles with her for warmth after giving her a bath.

A student living on 30th Street shows off both school spirit and Halloween spirit with this jack-o-lantern encouraging USC’s football team to go to the Rose Bowl. Here’s a whole gallery photos from my birthday and Halloween.

I savor my first sip of my first legal beer at Traditions bar on campus on my 21st birthday.

Becky and I awoke this morning to the decidedly unusual sound of a chicken clucking outside Becky’s apartment.

How the chicken ended up in South Central Los Angeles, and whether this is the beginning of a full-fledged invasion of L.A. by radical Islamic fundamentalist chicken terrorists, is hard to say. But it certainly made for some good photo opportunities.

In other fowl news, I bought Becky a turkey dolly on Wednesday at the 32nd Street Pharmacy. Its name is Gobble.

I believe the turkey’s full name is Gobble Cornelius Zak. “Gobble Gobble” was briefly considered, but rejected as too repetitive. My Internet-savvy suggestion of “Gobble Gobble Google” never really got off the ground (so to speak).

Get it? Digital wizardry? Like, my new digital camera, and the wizardry of Harry Potter? Well, anyway…

I decided to buy the Fuji FinePix 3800, with its 6x optical zoom and resolution of up to 3 megapixels. Here’s a picture of the display model that I took with my camera after buying it:

Here’s a picture of the camera I would have bought if I were rich… the Fuji FinePix S602, which goes for $649 at Circuit City…

But I’m not complaining about my $349 FinePix 3800. Actually, the standard retail price on my camera is $399, but I bought it for $349 as an “open box” (previously purchased and returned) camera Thursday morning at Circuit City. A few items were missing from the box, so I came back to the store in the evening… and since they couldn’t find the missing items, they gave me a brand-new camera instead. So, in the end, I got a new camera for $349! Hooray!

I have the option of returning the camera for any reason within 30 days if I don’t like it. But so far, I like it. Here are a couple of examples of the high-quality images it can produce. Click for the full-size versions:

2048 x 1536 (3 megapixels) - 1.25 MB

1280 x 960 (1 megapixel) - 341 KB

My new camera also got a workout last night when I went with Becky, Rachel, and two other friends, Nikki and Matias, to University Village to watch the new Harry Potter movie.

Click here for a gallery of images…

Anyway, the movie was quite good. As the reviews suggest, it’s better than the first movie. Sorcerer’s Stone was a bit like the first Star Trek movie, I think, in the sense that they focused too much on the special effects and the scenery rather than the actual plot. This one was much more plot-oriented… and much scarier. I definitely wouldn’t take my 6-year-old to Chamber of Secrets. But I certainly enjoyed it.

Best line of the movie, when Hagrid told Harry and Ron to “follow the spiders” if they want to unravel the mystery…

“Follow the spiders? Why does it have to be ‘follow the spiders’? Why couldn’t it be ‘follow the butterflies’?” –Ron (paraphrased)

Oh, and about that Lord of the Rings extended-edition DVD… it was very good, too. Some of the things, I don’t understand why they left ‘em out of the movie, like Isildur’s full death sequence and Gandalf’s recitation of the Ash nazg gimbatul speech in Rivendell, each of which took maybe 15 seconds but added an enormous amount to the movie. Other gems were a scene at the Green Dragon featuring a hobbit drinking song and a brief appearance by the Gaffer, and a great line when the Fellowship ceremoniously leaves Rivendell:

Frodo, whispering: “Mordor, Gandalf — left or right?”
Gandalf: “Left.”

USC’s football team beat Arizona State, 34-13 on Homecoming Day, to keep the Trojans’ Rose Bowl hopes alive. USC now just needs to beat UCLA next week, and hope Washington State loses to Washington next week and to UCLA on Dec. 7. (Or, hope Washington State wins both of those games, and hope either Miami or Ohio State loses to somebody, so Washington State will go to the national-championship Fiesta Bowl and USC will weasel into the Rose Bowl via the back door.)

Meanwhile, USC’s women’s soccer team beat San Diego on Friday, 1-0 in overtime, to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Women of Troy’s next opponent: archrival UCLA, tomorrow at 1:00 PM, for the right to play in the Sweet 16.

Also on Friday, the women’s basketball team won their season opener, the women’s volleyball team swept UCLA, and the men’s water polo team beat UCSB.

Hail the conquering Trojans!

Getting back to football for a second: it’s too bad Ohio State pulled off another close victory, beating Illinois by a touchdown, because a Buckeye loss would have improved USC’s Rose Bowl hopes a lot (by improving Washington State’s Fiesta Bowl hopes). But Texas’s loss to Texas Tech is very good news for USC; if Texas had finished in the BCS Top 4, but had failed to win its conference (which seemed likely), the Longhorns would have gotten an automatic at-large BCS bid. Now that almost certainly won’t happen, which opens the door a little wider for the Trojans to secure that bid… to the Rose Bowl if the Cougars go Fiesta, or perhaps to the Orange or Sugar Bowl, even if the Cougars don’t. Only time will tell.

One more thing, not USC-related: the Newington High School football team lost a heartbreaker to Bristol Central, 26-20, Friday night at home. The Indians had a chance to make a late comeback when Bristol Central had a 4th-and-1 at their own 39 with 2:20 left, but before the Rams could even snap the ball to punt it away, the Indians committed a personal foul, giving Central an automatic first down and sealing the loss. Newington falls to 3-7 on the year. Still, the Indians have a chance to wrap up their best season in years — and their first Thanksgiving win since I was in middle school — when they play lowly Wethersfield (1-8-1) on Thanksgiving morning. Let’s hope for the best. Go Indians!

Saw the movie; loved it; details tomorrow. Also tomorrow: the first photos from my new digital camera!