I'm not going to write anything early though since I'll overwrite this later ....
If you actually look for pictures, you'll find some early this month. Then in May I'll update with all the travel pictures.
And let me just get it out of the way now. April will be late. Hopefully it will be worth it, but it will be late.
Do you know what today is? Of course you do. But, as always, your “today” and my “today” are almost certainly different days. Today is the last day of March of 2024. It is also the 9th day of my sabbatical (with an extra week of vacation and Memorial Day that means I am already 3/22nds of the way through my time off ... time flies as the saying goes.) It is also Easter Sunday, which, as you know, is one of the roving holidays. "Why is that?" you might ask. Go ahead. Ask. I'll wait.
For the church, which believed that the resurrection took place on a Sunday, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 determined that Easter should always fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. In consequence, Easter remained without a fixed date but proximate to the full moon, which coincided with the start of Passover on the 15th of the Hebrew month Nissan.
So, with the differences between a lunar calendar and a solar calendar and the joys of mathematics, we can determine when Easter will fall in any give year. Right? But really it can't be all that hard. There must be simple pattern we can follow. Right? Wrong-o buddy boy. Easter can fall on 35 different dates from March 22 to April 25 and the pattern of dates takes 5.7 million years to repeat (so mathematically not as bad as Pi but effectively just as bad given human lifespans.)
But surely there must be more interesting facts about Easter? (Of course there are, but you still shouldn't call me Shirley ....)
Hopefully I will have some more exciting pictures from April, but you never know. If you haven't already looked at March, go ahead. If you have, feel free to revisit other months that might have more interesting pictures ....
To be clear. I realized this was late on March 1st, but I didn't feel compelled to update it until the weekend. Feel free to submit your request for a refund for your monthly subscription.
Did you know that you can go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/ and look up a month ... say February_2024 and get all the depressing information you could ever want?
Ongoing conflicts:
And don't forget about
What was it that we (or our political “leaders”) were whining about here in the US again?
I didn't intend to be so negative when I started, but that's what you get when you just start looking stuff up on the internet. Maybe look at the pictures and then go outside for a walk.
I'm sure I should have something witty to say to start 2024, but obviously I don't. I couldn't even get the web site published on time.
And now that it is late, there aren't even really any exciting pictures.
Lucie went back to Boulder before my birthday, so we got a little cake instead of a train cake and ate it before my birthday. Then we spent a whole day getting Lucie to the airport in the snow (thank goodness for the new Volvo.) Then, for my birthday I tried to clear the snow and ice off the driveway. Eventually ... days after it was supposed to ... it warmed up enough for the snow and ice to melt away. Then, for Caroline's birthday, she spent the day flying to Florida to go on a cruise with her friends (and not me.)
And then I forgot to put the pictures up for the end of the month. Oh well. There they are. Enjoy.
Here we are at the end of 2023. At least we were at the end of 2023 when I wrote this. No telling when you are when you read this. But, that isn't my problem. My problem is just coming up with something witty to say about the end of another year. Now, I know what you are thinking ... “Why do you need to come up with something witty this time?” But that is just rude, so I'm going to ignore you and do what I want anyway. (I know ... “How is that any different than every other time?” Aren't you just the critical one today?)
The first thing that happened was we went from 2022 (divisible by 2, 3, 6, 337, 674, and 1011) to 2023 which is a prime number. No it isn't. Why would you believe me like that? It is divisible by 7 and 17 (which are prime numbers) and 119 (which is also divisible by 7 and 17) and 289 (which is also divisible by 17.) So now you are probably wondering, “What year would it have to be to only be divisible by 7?” Well, that happened in 7, 49, 343, and won't happen again until 2401. (Yes, I know that technically 49, 343, and 2401 are also divisible by 49, but now you're just being difficult!) But that is a lot sooner than the next year divisible only by 17. That last occurred in 289, and won't occur again until 4913. But that was just a big distraction.
According to Gallup, 2023 was a year of major trends. A world-wide decline in approval of Russian leadership; China becoming our number one enemy (and North Korea which had a brief blip of “leadership” in 2018 (I wonder what that was all about?) has once again dropped off the radar almost entirely; Managers feeling squeezed and quitting in greater numbers; trust in the media reaching an all time low (but why should I belive this Gallup poll about that?); public confidence in the Supreme Court at a new low; more people more worried about their bank failing; young people drinking less (that might seem odd given all the other items on the list, but the poll points out that it is easier to get pot now ...); but everyone eating more with almost 40% of the adult population now registering as obese; and thinking about school less with confidence in higher education falling.
CNN has a list of notable US events and a list of notable international events. They also have a list of people we've lost in 2023. Amazingly, only 160 people have died ... oh wait ... that's 160 people CNN thinks are famous enough to include in their list. And, their “list” is actually a photo graphic that requires you to click the next button 159 times to see everyone on the list. Who has time for that? And the notable events are just depressing. (You can start with 11 people killed in a mass shooting on January 21st and end with 18 people killed in another mass shooting on October 25th in the US. Or you can start with 15,000 killed in an earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6th and end with 2,000 killed by an earthquake in Morocco on September 8th.)
But surely there must be some good news about 2023? No there isn't and don't call me Shirley! Ba dum tssh. I don't know if there is actually any good news. The CNN good news generator spits out dumb stories about cute fish deep in the ocean, elephants peeling bananas, and a cat winning an award for getting trapped in a sofa. Those might be cute but I don't know that they constitue good news. How about the end of war? Actual progress on being civil to one another? Any indication that we aren't just in a downward spiral? Probably too much to ask for ....
With that happy ending to 2023, just go look at the pictures.
We'll get it out of the way first. No doggy obituary yet. In fact, other than being a pain about taking her medications, Buttercup seems like her old younger self again. And you're probably thinking “doesn't like to take her medications? ... who does?” But, that isn't the point. The point is Buttercup loves cheese. Until she doesn't. She also loves cream cheese. Until she doesn't. And you should see the way she wolfs down meat-flavored pill pockets. Until she decides to spit them on the floor in disgust ... I think it is all just a game to keep us guessing, but other people don't think she is doing it intentionally ...
But, what else can I write about this month? Not a whole lot. Lucie came home for Thanksgiving. That's really why there are pictures of Portland. I made a platelet donation at the Red Cross and then hung around downtown until Lucie's flight was supposed to come in from Denver. Then I picked Lucie up and we went home long enough for her to change and go to the high school so she could appear in the Unified program play. That's right, not just attend, but appear in the play. She found out she was going to be in the play the day before and got her lines when we got to the high school. She was the star of the show! But, the fact that she was in the play kind of describes her trip home. We haven't seen too much of her.
The earlier pictures from the Evergreen Aviation Museum are from a special Nighthawk event. We, and few hundred of our closest friends, got to get into the museum in the evening and hear from some of the people that worked on the F-117 skunk works project or fly the F-117 in combat. Like most things military, it is amazing what we can accomplish in the name of finding ways to destroy each other. If you can overlook that small detail, the F-117 is an amazing aircraft and is practically invisible when flying at night. And, it transmits no electronic signals so even if you can find it you can't tell what it is. Which led someone in the audience to ask, “how did you fly back from a mission and not get shot at by your own side?” The answer was surprisingly simple. They were assigned a specific altitude to fly back and everyone else was told “Don't shoot at anything flying at that specific altitude.”
What else can I say?
I guess I could try a teaser and say, "Wait until next month for all the holiday pictures!" but that might set an unreasonable expectation for next month .... Oh well, I guess you'll just have to wait and see if anything develops (get it? pictures? develop? I crack me up.)
So we'll get right to the reason why these pictures are late. It is all Buttercup's fault. That's right I'm blaming the dog (and you can't even smell it ...) You'll have even less sympathy for me when I say the reason I'm blaming Buttercup is because we didn't know if she would still be with us by today ... we thought we might have to send her over the rainbow bridge. On Saturday the 28th she looked like she was just about done, but eventually the vet got some prednisolone into her and she started her recovery. By the time Caroline got back from Texas and took her to two different vets, she was doing pretty good again so I don't have to write a doggy obituary this month.
Besides that, I also had a bunch of work to do so I didn't get around to posting and captioning the pictures. But I would have if it weren't for Buttercup. Really.
Most of this month's pictures come from North Carolina. I had to go for work, but I took a little extra time to go back to Winston-Salem (and Pfafftown) as well as to Durham. It was shocking to see how narrow the streets have become! Many more much bigger cars made the roads seem like a death trap. I can't believe I used to ride them. But you can see the pictures and read the captions for that.
We also held another Shriner's walk in our neighborhood even though Shriner's got back to their own get together this year. Team Harry, of course, raised the most money and our group got to walk our neighborhood and then dine on fabulous snacks in our garage. Surely that was better than going downtown to go to the zoo (and have a bunch of your money go to pay for zoo admission rather than go to Shriner's ...)
Otherwise, I don't have a random rant for you this month, so just go look at the pictures
What should we talk about this month? I'm sure I could go on and on about Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock ... or I could just let you go to Wikipedia and read about it yourself. I could go on and on about the McMinnville Air Show, but to be honest, I'm writing this before even going to the air show, so what could I really say? It sure was is going to be exciting? Who can even keep up with verb tenses when dealing with the past future (or future past?) But there really isn't much point in writing about those since you can look at those pictures.
I could just brag about rowing 2,000,000 meters. I actually rowed more than that, but I've only been keeping track for the last 2,000,000. I did manage to row the second million in just 201 days. Of course, if I had been paying closer attention I would have done it a little faster so I could say 5,000m a day for 200 days instead of 4975.12438m a day for 201 days. But how cool would it have been if that had worked out to 4975.124386m a day? Look at it ... sure there is an extra 4, but otherwise everything from 1 to 9. Of course, I could have told you it was 4975.124386 and you would have believed me, but I couldn't lie to you about something like that. What kind of a person do you think I am?
If you are going to treat me like that, then I'm just going to stop writing these introductions!
Oh! You'd like that, wouldn't you?! I see what you are doing! You think you're so smart, don't you?
Well, you won't get rid of me so easily. Instead you will be subjected to Scott Pakin's automatic complaint-letter generator ...
I have never aspired to become a speechwriter, politician, or mainstream political columnist. Nevertheless, if you can look beyond my pitiable writing style you’ll definitely see that I have something important to tell you about the internet. I should start by clarifying that I’m not here to be a self-aggrandizing, noisome master of deceit. I’m here to give you facts. Allow me to present the most important fact up front: Trying to keep the internet from driving our community into an abyss of immorality and mendacity is a sucker’s game. No matter how hard we try to stop it, it’ll always find some new way to viliorate what would otherwise be a positive experience for all of us. I predict that by next weekend, people will generally agree that the internet is like a Judas goat, leading us all to the slaughter. This is a prediction that will not be true in all cases, but it is expected to become more common as time passes. Normally, I’d describe the internet’s surrogates as “drossy”. However, that word assumes the presence of a cerebral cortex, something that its surrogates clearly function without. Otherwise, they’d realize that the internet’s expositors very much belong to an intellectual closed shop. They refuse to entertain the possibility that the internet’s dream is for ultracrepidarianism to be instituted from the top down because that will most effectively deny citizens the privilege of peaceful assembly and protest. This same technique was employed by Marxist ideologues in Russia who used ultracrepidarianism to divide and conquer resistance to the institution of a communist state. What makes the internet’s dream even more worrisome is that some of the internet’s lapdogs were kind enough to provide a locus classicus for the internet’s true intentions. They wrote, “The internet told us that what it wants more than anything else is to usher in the beginning of a corrupt new era of commercialism.” I don’t know about you, but that tells me that the internet is a pretty good liar most of the time. However, it tells so many lies, it’s bound to trip itself up someday.
In keeping with all of their inner damnable brutality, the internet’s cronies see to it that all patriotic endeavors are directed down blind alleys where they end in frustration and discouragement. Think about how easy it’s become for insincere, loud tatterdemalions to hijack our nation’s greatness and sink it with the internet’s egotism. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the internet is known for fabricating evidence. A person could write a whole book on that topic alone. In order to be as brief as possible, though, I’ll state simply that the internet keeps saying that anyone who stands in its way is an enemy of humanity’s salvation and perfection. The internet, don’t you realize that such blatteration will cause louche, oppressive gomerals to batter at the foundations of society some day? Why don’t you read a book one of these days and learn about how barbarous dummkopfs speak in order to conceal—or at least to veil—their thoughts? Let me leave you with a message that is as real as it gets. Vandalism, death threats, and slander are typical tactics used by the internet’s zealots.
Amazingly, many young people live on granola. What does that have to do with taking Lucie back to school this month? Nothing at all.
Of course by now you've come to expect random rants about all kinds of silly things, so why not granola? I bet there are all kinds of things you don't know about it. For example, you probably didn't know that Granola was a registered trademark in the late 19th century or that both James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg both started with Granula but Kellogg was forced to change to Granola. Or that Lisa Law used $3,000 to buy rolled oats, bulgar wheat, wheat germ, dried apricots, currants, almonds, soy sauce, and honey to feed 130,000 people at Woodstock. I know you have to take inflation into account, but that means she paid ~2.5 cents per person ... You couldn't provide anyone with much of anything for $1.92 today.
$1.92? Where did he come up with that? Well, you can take the average annual inflation rates for every year from 1969 to 2023 and work out the growth from 2.5 cents to $1.92 or you can figure out that the overall average inflation rate from 1969 to 2023 has been 8.54% and do one calculation. That's right the average rate of inflation for the last 54 years has been 8.54%. So that terrible inflation that we had in 2021 and 2022 ... still below average. This younger generation is just spoiled by not living through the 70s. Just a few years of really high inflation early on and the average is screwed ...
But I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about John Harvey Kellog. If you know anything about him it is probably that he invented Corn Flakes to make people stop masturbating. Of course, this isn't true. According to Snopes “The creation of corn flakes was part of J.H. Kellogg's broader advocacy for a plain, bland diet. Without referring to corn flakes in particular, Kellogg elsewhere recommended a plain, bland diet as one of several methods to discourage masturbation.” So, he did want you to stop, but he didn't create Corn Flakes specifically to make you. But more importantly, “Kellogg held beliefs radically different from that of mainstream Nicene Christianity. He was an advocate of liberal theology and strongly rejected traditional notions of original sin and inherent human depravity, viewing Jesus' atonement as 'his exemplary life' on Earth rather than his death on the Cross.” (from Wikipedia)
But how did we get here? I bet ChatGPT couldn't have wandered so far so quickly! Anyway ... This month we saw Michael Franti & Spearhead at McMenamins right here in Forest Grove and we took Lucie to school far away in Boulder Colorado. We probably did other stuff as well, but you can tell from the pictures, we didn't do anything else really exciting. Oh yeah. That second super moon? We got rain instead. Now the challenge will be coming up with pictures for September.
Given the infinite flexibility of the digital world, I could go back and fix my mistakes with the June pictures, but I'm not going to stoop to changing history. No! I'm going to take a stand and own up to my mistake! Hopefully now you are intrigued and are maybe going back to look at last month's pictures to figure out what the big mistake is ... or maybe you already know ... maybe you've figured out that the reason I'm not fixing it is not my incredible integrity, but instead is just being too lazy to fix the watermarks that somehow got reset to 2019.
But not this month, baby! This month I have made sure that I reset them to 2023! Aren't you excited?! Something you probably didn't even pay attention to before, but now you'll be on the look out to see if I mess it up again! But there aren't many opportunities to mess up this month. Maybe next month will offer more chances ....
Surely there is something I can write about this month since there are so few pictures. Unfortunately, other than "No there isn't, and don't call me Shirley!" there really isn't too much to say. I could comment on the Women's World Cup ... except I haven't actually paid any attention to it even though it is being played in Australia and New Zealand. Maybe if I had gone to Australia and/or New Zealand to watch any of the games I would have something to say. Having just checked the standings, it doesn't look good for the home countries.
How about ... when I looked up interesting facts about July, one of them was the hottest temperature recorded on earth was 56.7°C (134°F) in 1913, “setting an extreme record that still stands today.” Except that there is reasonable doubt about the accuracy of that reading and it is more likely that the record is only 130°F from 2021. Either way, I don't know what all the whining about how hot this year has been is about when Death Valley only got to 128°F ... besides the record high average temperature for the whole planet is only 17.18°C (62.9°F) (set on July 4, 2023) though that is about 1°C warmer than it was just 40 years ago.
Look at that. Two in a row. Of course, I did hundreds in a row originally.
But, that was before. This is now.
Or is it? It is now as I write this. It is also now as you read this this. But I haven't actually posted this yet, so how can you be reading this at the same time that I'm writing it?! There are only two possible answers ... either I have stopped time or you are psychic!
That, of course, is a lesson in faulty logic. There is obviously a third possibility that I hadn't even counted upon ... we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said “Obie, I don't think I can keep writing this blog with these handcuffs on.” He said, “Shut up, kid.” But obviously it is way too early in the year for Alice's Restaurant Massacre so we'll move on now.
As you can see from all the pictures, this month was travel month with a family trip to Florida followed by a family trip to Texas. We went in June so it wouldn't be as hot. Thank goodness for that since it was 95+ in Florida and 105+ in Texas. Who knows how hot it would have been if we had gone in July or August? Well, I guess we all will in July or August (and it will probably wind up being colder this year just to make our trips that much more memorable.)
Anyway, there are a lot of pictures this month. Don't get used to that. We won't be going anywhere in July so next time there will probably be a lot fewer opportunities to work with.
Welcome back.
It has been a while hasn't it? I did post a few pictures in 2022, but after an OK start in January things really dropped off pretty fast. I would apologize for that, but if there is one thing that I have learned from our political leaders, that would be never apologize. For that matter, what do you mean that I didn't post enough pictures in 2022? I posted plenty! More than ever in fact. And don't go “counting” them or anything and then try to use “facts” to prove I didn't. I did. And that's the truth.
Now, if you are really observant you'll note that I went from ranting about our absurd politicians to quoting Lily Tomlin (aka Edith Ann.) Now you might think that a 1972 comedy album is not as relevant today as our current political leaders, but I don't think you'll find more insight anywhere than Edith Ann's thoughts on living in a tree house. “If you live in a tree house and you want to keep it a secret, you must paint it green. Then when the leaves turn brown, you must paint it brown. And when the leaves fall off, you must move out.”
Think about that ...
Isn't that better than thinking about the news of the day? I thought so.
Anywho. The site is back and all new and improved. You will note I did not say better. I just said new and improved, and we all know new and improved is not the same thing as better. But, we also all know that you can't fight progress (or city hall (but why you would want to fight a building is beyond me)) so you'll just have to put up with the new format and look at the pictures.
Welcome to the end.
Maybe I should just stop there and let you ponder “the end of what?” The end of 2021? The end of the website? Or just the end of everything?
I guess the end of everything is kind of dramatic. I suppose it is possible that someone could read “Welcome to the end” and then immediately drop dead. That would be the end of everything for them. It seems pretty unlikely that someone will read it just as the universe reaches the end in 10 to the 32000th years when galaxies will have dispersed, black holes will have evaporated, and the expansion of the universe will have pulled all remaining objects so far apart that none will ever see any of the others explode so that the last stars will, like the proverbial tree in a forest, fall with no one around to hear the sound - not even other stars.
But first we'll have to endure 2022.
Maybe there will be a website to look forward to. Maybe there won't. Maybe I'll start doing re-runs or “greatest hits”. Of course, every month is already available if you just click on the Photo Gallery link so that would be kind of silly. Who knows, maybe I'll come up with a new website design...
Anyway ... here are the pictures for December. I'm not even going to pretend to wait until midnight.
East coast college tours didn't result in that many pictures, but walking around Washington D.C. did. However, I did decide to spare you the image of the giant bruise on my butt from falling into the World War II Memorial. Don't ask. I don't know how I managed to do that (but I didn't break myself or my camera and the bruise will soon fade away ...)
Anyway ...
Now it is the end of November. That means that Thanksgiving has come and gone so at least we don't have to worry about being thankful for another year! And the way things are going, it just might be another year ...
If that isn't happy enough for you, how about “In Finland, they call November marraskuu, which translates as 'the month of the dead.'” Not just the day of the dead, but a whole month!
Or maybe just a random collection of November events:
The Erie Canal was formally opened in New York on November 4, 1825.
Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.
The Suez Canal opened on November 17, 1869.
The United States and Panama signed the treaty that provided for the Panama Canal on November 18, 1903.
The US and Canada celebrate the end of WWI every year on November 11, 1918. (Do we really celebrate it every year on November 11, 1918? Aside from the fact that most of us don't even know it ended on November 11th, how could we celebrate it in 1918 every year?)
The first mechanically ventilated underwater tunnel in the world, the Holland Tunnel, opened to traffic on November 13, 1927.
Commander Richard E. Byrd and crew of three became first to fly over the South Pole, November 29, 1929.
Parker Brothers introduced the world to the Monopoly game on November 5, 1935.
On November 18, 1963, Bell Telephone Company introduced to the public the push button phone. Apparently not much happened between 1935 and 1963 (there were a couple long gaps in the 1800s too, but we were on a roll there.) More importantly, why was I rotary dialing my youth away if push button phones already existed before I was born?!
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
The Reverend Jim Jones led over 900 of his followers to their death in a mass suicide, the largest in history, at Jonestown, Guyana, November 19. 1978.
On November 22, 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned after 11 years in office, the longest term of any British Prime Minister in the 20th century.
The apartheid system in South Africa finally came to an end on November 1, 1995, with the first all-race government elections.
And apparently nothing has happened in November since ...
Well Lucie has made it to adulthood.
I wasn't sure if adulthood was actually a word and that led me to look it up. Not in a dictionary! What century do you think this is?! I looked it up online. It turns out that it is a word, but it is actually pretty run of the mill. Sure, it has 9 letters and that makes it pretty unlikely as a Scrabble word (unless someone played adult or hood and then you were able to play the other part) but the shortest '-hood' word (other than 'hood') is 'unhood' at only 6 letters while the longest is 'grandparenthood' at 15 letters! Adulthood shares the same number of letters as childhood (as well as puppyhood (why is there no doghood or kittenhood?) which might mean something cryptic except that it is the same number of letters as falsehood as well so there you go.
And that about sums up everything I have to contribute on the subject of adulthood.
Originally I updated the website more often than once a month, but that became the standard pretty quickly and the earlier posts have been consolidated by month as well, so now there are 217 months to enjoy. Will I keep going? Who knows? I guess you can wait a month and find out. I'm sure if something happens you'll be able to see pictures of it here. Just doing my part to limit Facebook's power :-)
Enjoy the pictures.
Yes.
I completely forgot about the web site for September. That's what happens when you basically live in one room all month. I didn't think the pandemic was getting to me, but apparently it is.
Besides the current crises (some real and some manufactured by our representatives in government) September should, of course, cause us to pause and remember the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history (2977 fatalities and more than 25000 injuries, including substantial long term health issues.) Unfortunately, a quick search of the internet finds many different “truther” movements that either claim it was the government, not terrorists, or that it didn't even happen.
OK, I couldn't find any that tried to claim there were no twin towers or that the twin towers didn't fall, but there are those that claim no airplanes were involved, despite eye witness reports and photos to the contrary. Thus, it is no wonder that we can't agree on a path forward to end COVID-19 since the abundance of free “information” out there offers alternative facts for everyone.
But ...
I can't fix any of that. So moving on to other things that you can think about September now that we're firmly in October:
September comes from the Latin septem, meaning seven. Which is why September is the ninth month in the year. (The year used to start with March and September was the seventh month and they didn't bother to rename it when the start of the year moved to January.)
September used to have 29 days. An extra day was added to recognize Julius Caeser. But in 1752 when the British empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, the day after September 2nd was September 14th and thus September had only 19 days. (And it probably didn't impact anyone all that much, but can you imagine the confusion that skipping 11 days would have today? Wait a minute ... The British empire skipped 11 days in September in 1752 and terrorists attacked the US on September 11th 2001 ... 249 years apart ... 2 + 4 + 9 = 72 ... September was the 7th month until 2 months were inserted ... it is all so obvious now!)
I like this useless fact (assuming it is a fact and not another lie from the internet) - Shakespeare did not mention the month of September in any of his plays. That would, of course, imply that he did mention the other eleven months, but I didn't find that information anywhere. Sort of like when someone tells you the second tallest thing is X but never tells you what the tallest thing is.
There are three birth flowers for September. The morning glory, the aster, and the ... I can never remember the last one ... oh yeah ... the forget-me-not.
Anyway. Look at the pictures.
Hopefully you didn't get used to 100 photos in a month. Of course, I don't know how you could have gotten used to something in one month, but if you did you'll have to suffer withdrawal this month because we're back to 14 ...
None of these are actually my pictures either. The copyright is really just because I touch them up in Lightroom and put them on the web ...
Last month I let you off the hook by not rambling on and on over here and just let you enjoy the pictures. I could do that again, but you can safely assume that that isn't going to happen ...
It turns out that I have been using points of ellipses incorrectly. They don't start right after the last letter, but are separated by a space. And the primary purpose is to indicate omissions in quoted material. But ellipsis points have other uses. The two main ones:
1. To indicate a trailing off of speech or thought
You know. You start a sentence or thought and fail to finish it. It has vanished, along with all memory of the location of your glasses. Or, let's be generous, you simply lost interest. This is the way we talk, the way we think. Ellipsis points let us express this reality in writing.
I was going to pay you back, but ... (Oops, out of plausible excuses.)
I'm going to the store for onions, avocados, cilantro ... Do you need anything? The list keeps going, but no need to run through the whole thing. And obviously that was a bad example because I wouldn't go to the store for those things. I should have started with Pop Tarts, ice cream, M&Ms ...
I read this great article yesterday about ... (Looks like a case of plain-old brain freeze.)
Can you get the thing and put it in the, uh ... Yeah, thanks. (Ditto. You know, the thing. In there.)
2. To indicate a pause
And the winner is ... Buttercup!
Some thought, some ... thing was taking over Lucie's brain.
Let's see, that'll be ... fifteen dollars.
As you can see, ellipsis points can communicate a great deal. Just remember that, like so many devices and marks of punctuation, they're most effective used sparingly.
So ... try not to over use those ... uh ... things.
OK - so we're actually going from 12.5 pictures a month for the last 15 months to 100 pictures for the month of July. Don't expect that again in August as we, like the rest of the US, will be slowing right back down again...
However, with 100 pictures to get through, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on my blog this month. Time to let you in on a little secret... I have to come up with all the photo captions - Lucie doesn't actually write those :-) I know that comes as a shocker, but it was time to come clean...
Also, I should point out that I had nothing to do with any of the San Juan Island photos since I wasn't there...
And you know what that means?! It means I'm going to whine some more!
Do you know what the average high temperature in Portland is supposed to be in June? It is supposed to be 73! Even if you take in to account that the end of June is hotter than the beginning, the average high temperature for June 28th is just 75 degrees. So, we were only 41 degrees (53%) hotter than average.
But we all know averages are just the most basic statistic with which one can lie. So, I found a few other numbers... 90% of the time, the high temperature on June 28th is less than 87 degrees, so this year we were 29 degrees above that! And 25% of the time, the high temperature on June 29th is as cool as 67 degrees so were 49 degrees (72%) hotter than a somewhat normal low high temperature...
And finally... in the last decade, Portland has hit 100+ degrees for a total of 16 days: 102, 100, 103, 101, 100, 100, 100, 101, 103, 105, 100, 100, 100, 108, 112, and 116 (and three of those years had zero days at or above 100 - but back in 2016 we did hit 100 as early as June 5th) In the 40s, we hit 100 in June once. In the 50s, we only hit 100 twice and those were both in July. In the 60s, we only hit 100 in July and August. In the 70s, the earliest 100 was July 15th. In the 80s, we set the previous record of 107 on August 8th (and matched it on August 10th.) In the 90s, we did finally hit 100 in June again, reaching 100 degrees on June 22, 1992. But, of course, we didn't get here until 1995... Since we've been here - just 33 days at or above 100 degrees, and only 8 of those in June (3 of which were this year's records.)
OK. I'm done whining.
Do you feel sorry for us yet?
Don't worry, none of the pictures have anything to do with the high temperatures at the end of the month. It would just be sad to show pictures of all the wilted / burned up plants... (oops, I was whining again.)
Once again, time to scour the interwebs and see what there is to babble about before telling you to just go look at the pictures...
Probably you went and looked at the pictures first didn't you? You probably aren't even reading this, are you? You realize, that means I'm just talking to myself... like some kind of crazy person on the sidewalk ranting about things that no one else understands or is even aware of...
Do you know what you find if you search “crazy sidewalk rants” on the internet? First of all, note I didn't say “'google' crazy sidewalk rants... I said 'search'.” Why? Because I don't use 'Google'... I use 'DuckDuckGo'... the search engine of conspiracy theorists everywhere, because 'Google' (which now calls itself 'Alphabet' - why would it do that if it didn't have something to hide?) keeps tabs on everything you've ever searched and who knows what they could tell the government one day... where was I?
Oh yeah - “crazy sidewalk rants”...
Video shows rascist woman using N-word in sidewalk ...
Sidewalk Rant with Pink Flamingo and Chicken of a Rope (what?! that doesn't even make internet sense...)
Public Freakout Videos | Know Your Meme - Crazy Rhubarb Lady is the nickname given to a woman who rose to viral fame for her hostile, foul-mouthed rant after being confronted about stealing a neighbor's rhubarb in a town in Iowa. (And that was back in 2013 and you can still find it... as just one of many examples on the subreddit /r/PublicFreakout...) So, be careful of what you rant about in public. Someone is going to record it and post it and make fun of you.
Hopefully Google won't notice my rant above and start a file on me... But that would be crazy wouldn't it? Time to clear my browser history and cookies... Maybe you should do that too, just to be safe...
Anyway - if you haven't already looked at the pictures, go ahead and do that...
OK, so there are a few pictures this month. Nothing too thrilling I'm afraid...
So what weirdness can I find to write about in this month of April Fool's? How about this knee slapper I found online?
With everything out there on the board for everyone to see, chess doesn't really lend itself to quality April Fool's tomfoolery. But that doesn't mean some weird stuff doesn't go down every once in a while at the chessboard. Today's first game, for example, between Hungarian master Endre Steiner and Belgian great Edgar Colle makes no sense by the traditional rules of chess. White launches a promising gambit in this Alekhine Defense, but things go screwy after 18. Rae1+ Be7 19. Rxf6??, as two fine players appear to miss elementary checkmates over and over again: 19...gxf6 20. Bxf6 0-0 21. Rxe7??
To make sense of things, go back to the diagrammed position, where White has just played 14. c5. At that same moment, Steiner's king on h1 was accidentally knocked off the board and mistakenly replaced on the g1-square, with neither player noticing. Woo boy! What hilarity! Once you stop laughing, you can start reading again...
How about - only in Florida? A 71-year-old woman riding with her daughter on Florida's Interstate 95 suffered a gashed forehead Wednesday when a turtle smashed through the windshield of their car, striking her, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reports. The daughter pulled over and got help from another motorist. According to a 911 recording, both were surprised by what they found. (But why were they surprised? This was Florida after all...)
And you would think that this was also in Florida... One family's gender reveal party was such a blast that it rattled towns, set off reports of an earthquake, and could be heard from across the state line, police said. Police received reports of a loud explosion Tuesday evening. They responded to Torromeo quarry where they found people who acknowledged holding a gender reveal party with 80 pounds of explosives... It actually happened in New Hampshire, but they probably just moved there...
And how about? A police bomb squad called to investigate a suspected hand grenade determined that the object actually was a rubber sex toy. A jogger reported finding a bag containing the device. When a bomb squad arrived and inspected the contents of the bag, they determined it was a rubber grenade replica. The condoms and lubricant in the bag helped inform the hypothesis about the device's intended use, police told the news agency. “An internet search confirmed the suspicion,” police said. “There are actually sex toys in the form of hand grenades.” Again, though this happened in Germany, you have to think someone from Florida must have been visiting...
But that is enough “Florida Man” bashing for one month... Just look at the pictures and be thankful that pollen counts should be going back down soon...
Fortunately, Caroline picked up the slack and took a few pictures this month so there is something for the web site...
The world has stopped spinning for a year now... where were we last March?
On March 1st Turkey was quite involved in the Syrian Civil War, shooting down two Syrian Air Force jets over the border, striking Aleppo International Airport, and killing 19 Syrian troops with drones. The Syrian Civil War continued to worsen the European migrant crisis with Greece deploying its military to keep migrants from entering the EU from Turkey. In other parts of the world, Muhyiddin Yassin was sworn in as Prime Minister of Malaysia, Luis Lacalle Pou was sworn in as the new President of Uruguay and Parliamentary elections were held in Tajikistan. Here at home, Pete Buttigieg suspended his campaign for President, Florida confirmed its first two cases of COVID-19, and a nursing home in Washington locked down due to COVID-19 fears.
By March 31st the news was basically all COVID-19. The G20 finance ministers were working on an action plan to address debt vulnerabilities while the Dubai Crown Prince was providing financial assistance to Emirates Airlines. The Solomon Islands closed schools, Myanmar reported its first death, a 12-year-old died in Belgium to become the youngest COVID-19 victim, New York hit 75,000 cases, the US surpassed China in number of deaths, and Turkmenistan took bold steps to ban the use of the word “coronavirus” and the wearing of face masks and decreed that there were no cases in the country.
Apparently they had the right strategy, “As the whole world continues to struggle with COVID-19, Turkmenistan remains an oasis in the desert of viruses. Officially, this is the only state in the post-Soviet space that has bypassed the infection” reported special correspondent Anna Afanasyeva in May of 2020. Or maybe they're just lying. Officially there have still been no cases of COVID-19. However, at least 202 deaths have been reported, and the country is trying to get as much of the Soviet vaccine as they can...
Anyway...
A year later and the Syrian Civil War continues with 7 civillians killed and 16 wounded in a government airstrike on a hospital on March 21st, the European migrant crisis continues with 39 people dead and 165 rescued from two sinking boats on March 9th, and, of course, COVID-19 continues with Florida reporting its first case of the 501.V2 variant on March 1st and Texas expanding vaccine eligibility to all adults on March 29th.
While we've all been focused on the coronavirus, however, a lot of other tragedies have occured around the world. Just this March there have been conflicts associated with an Armenian coup e-etat, the war in Donbass, the Tigray War, the war in Afghanistan, kidnapping schoolgirls in Zamfara, the Somali Civil War, Sudanese-Ethiopian clashes, Mynamar protests and a coup d'etat, a terrorist attack in Sweden, Columbian FARC conflicts, the Second Libyan Civil War, Persian Gulf conflicts, farmers' protests in India, the Yemeni Civil War, Gaza-Israel conflicts, police killing activists in the Philippines, more school children kidnapped in Kaduna, an insurgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an insurgency in the Maghreb, the Mali War, the Mexican drug war, a bombing in Guangzhou, an insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, an insurgency in Naxalite, an insurgency in Cabo Delgado, a cathedral bombing in Makassar...
Boy - that took a dark turn...
Anyway - look at the few pictures and be glad that your news feed doesn't really keep you up to date on all the terrible things going on in the world...
Well that was February.
Normally this month is a bit of a challenge. Many people dread Valentine's Day even if it is really a Christian feast day celebrating Saint Valentine of Rome who we all know was the 3rd-century Roman patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers. Of course, when we think about this critically it raises two obvious questions: 1) how did Hallmark and the diamond industry tie epilepsy and beekeeping with romance, and 2) when do we eat?
The equally obvious answers: 1) just be glad they didn't latch onto July 6th (when the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the Roman presbyter Valentine) and July 30th (when it celebrates the hieromartyr Valentine) as well, and 2) don't be stupid - a feast does not mean “a large, celebratory meal” - it means “an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint”. I just can't take you anywhere, can I?
And now you're thinking to yourself “Is a presbyter a Presbyterian or what?” No. A presbyter is a leader of a local Christian congregation. A Presbyterian is someone that walks across the street (ba-dum-tshh! That one is just for Ashley (assuming she even remembers why...)) And, of course, you're all familiar with hieromartyrs so I won't waste time explaining that one.
But my point was going to be that for many people February is not easy because of the unrealistic expectations society has created surrounding an otherwise random day. For me February is not easy because it makes me stop and think about Harry and as you are likely aware from my monthly rants, it is much easier for me to ramble on about random stuff than to think deeply about a topic that actually matters... (see how I've done that again?)
This year Harry would have turned 15. As I've written in the past, I can't really think of him in those terms since I'm still stuck at 5. As you can see in the picture this year, I tried a technique in Photoshop (but it is really aimed more at taking someone who is 20 or 30 and making them look 70 or 80.) It didn't really help me think of Harry at 15, but I included the result here anyway. Hopefully he watched me try it and enjoyed my frustration when I had to keep redoing things because they didn't work the first time...
Happy Beekeeping Day, Harry!
The other big news this month; that will come as a surprise to no-one other than Caroline; Caroline has an identical twin sister! And don't ask, “Who?” or “Oh really, when is her birthday?” Caroline and Maggie sent off their DNA and the lab came back with some astronomically large odds in terms of how closely the DNA matches. So, now they just have to wonder what else Mad Dog and Snake lied to them about as children... I mean beyond telling them the creepy doll look was a good choice...
And with that, maybe I'll be back for March or maybe not...
2021... The year that was going to fix everything that was wrong with 2020...
It only took six days for that to go down the tubes...
At least we all had an opportunity to learn the difference between sedition and insurrection... but, if you're still unclear: sedition was the act of inciting insurrection while insurrection was the act of actually attacking the capitol. That, of course, leads to the question, “what was the act of live-streaming oneself while attacking the capitol?” Obviously, that's what's known as self-incrimination. Apparently people are more concerned about their 1st amendment rights than their 5th amendment rights...
Naturally, that isn't really the big story. The big story is that Kim and Kanye are getting divorced! No wait! Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina candles are exploding! (That one could be much worse... just sayin') Or is the saddest thing really that Ben Affleck broke up with a life-size cutout of Ana de Armas?! Oh no - wait - sorry... apparently he actually broke up with Ana de Armas. He just also threw out the life-size cutout that he had...
And I forgot all about Bernie's mittens! How could I forget Bernie's mittens?! Oh wait... I meant to say, “who cares about Bernie's mittens?” I realize that many people seem to care, but I suspect that is just simple escapism from everything else that happened in January and really no one cares... Or maybe that's just me. You never know.
Welcome to 2021...
This year you don't get a Christmas collage... You get a bunch of separate pictures! That way it looks like more happened this month!
Of course, what isn't happening this month is our trip to Times Square for New Year's Eve. And, “Why?” you ask. “Is this another lost opportunity due to Covid-19?” you cry in despair. Hold on there little buckaroo... Don't get so worked up. We're not going to Times Square for New Year's Eve because you would have to be crazy to want to be packed into an enormous crowd in freezing and/or wet weather just to watch a gigantic lit “ball” drop. We can do that from the comfort of our couch... and if I can find a live stream, we can do it at the much more reasonable hour of 9pm! Do I know how to party, or what?!
Besides, getting all excited about an arbitrary date on an arbitrary calendar isn't very inclusive. What about all the Hindu, Chinese, Coptic, Jewish, and Islamic people who aren't celebrating a new year on January 1st?
Still, a lot of people are looking forward to getting rid of 2020, and apparently the whole planet couldn't wait for that... 2020 had the 28 shortest days on record. Think back to July 5, 2005 - you'll likely remember thinking to yourself, “Today feels like it just flew by!” because that day was only 86399998.9484 milliseconds long (a full 0.0000012% shorter than average!) But, while 2020 seemed to go on forever, it actually had 28 days even shorter than that, including July 19th which was only 86399998.5398 milliseconds long which is clearly massively shorter! I mean, just think, a beam of light could travel more than 76 miles in that time!
Of course, not every day in 2020 was shorter than average. Some were longer than average, but 2021 is projected to be shorter than average over all, shortening the whole year by almost 19 milliseconds which would let a beam of light actually cross the entire United States...
And while we're on the subject of ridiculous time constructs - is midnight AM or PM? And what date is it? Clearly 11:59:59PM on 12/31 is just before the new year and 12:00:01AM on 1/1 is just after the start of the new year, but what is 12:00:00 exactly? Is it still PM? If not, when exactly did it become AM? Is it still 12/31? If not, when exactly did it become 1/1? Surely these are important questions...
And one last time conundrum for you... Did the 20s start on 1/1/2020, or do they start on 1/1/2021? You are probably confidently answering, “They started on 1/1/2020, of course.” But, when did the 21st century begin - 1/1/2000 or 1/1/2001? If you are now smugly thinking, “1/1/2000, of course!” then you would be entirely wrong. There was no year 0, so the first century began in year 1 and thus the 21st century (and the 2nd millenium for that matter) did not start until 2001.
Happy New Year - at least 2020 is done now...
2020 is getting closer to being over.
Well, that's it folks. Nothing else to say.
Given that I didn't get out to take a single picture this month, and took all three of the ones on display on the 28th, I guess I should try to come up with something to write about.
Way back when I was just a little bitty boy living in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house, half a block down the street from Jerry's Bait Shop (you know the place.) Well, anyway, back then life was going swell and everything was just peachy!
Except, of course, for the undeniable fact that every single morning my mother would make me a big ol' bowl of sauerkraut for breakfast. Aw, big bowl of sauerkraut! Every single mornin'! It was driving me crazy.
I said to my mom. I said, “Hey, mom, what's up with all the sauerkraut?” And my dear, sweet mother she just looked at me like a cow looks at an oncoming train and she leaned right down next to me and she said, “It's good for you!” And then she tied me to the wall and stuck a funnel in my mouth and force fed me nothing but sauerkraut until I was twenty six and a half years old.
That's when I swore that someday; someday I would get outta that basement and travel to a magical, far away place where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer and the towels are oh so fluffy... Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long and anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel.
Wacka wacka doodoo yeah!
Well, let me tell you, people, it wasn't long at all before my dream came true because the very next day, a local radio station had this contest to see who could correctly guess the number of molecules in Leonard Nimoy's butt. I was off by three, but I still won the grand prize! That's right, a first class one-way ticket to Albuquerque! Albuquerque!
Oh yeah! You know, I'd never been on a real airplane before and I gotta tell ya, it was really great. Except that I had to sit between two large Albanian women with excruciatingly severe body odor. And the little kid in back of me kept throwin' up the whole time. The flight attendants ran out of Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts. And the in-flight movie was Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore. And, oh yeah, three of the airplane engines burned out and we went into a tailspin and crashed into a hillside and the plane exploded in a giant fireball and everybody died! Except for me. You know why?
'Cause I had my tray table up. And my seat back in the full upright position. Had my tray table up. And my seat back in the full upright position. Had my tray table up. And my seat back in the full upright position. Ah ha ha ha. Ah ha ha.
So I crawled from the twisted, burnin' wreckage. I crawled on my hands and knees for three full days draggin' along my big leather suitcase and my garment bag. And my tenor saxophone and my twelve-pound bowling ball and my lucky, lucky autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel. But finally I arrived at the world famous Albuquerque Holiday Inn where the towels are oh so fluffy and you can eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna. It's okay, they're clean!
Well, I checked into my room and I turned down the A/C. And I turned on the SpectraVision. And I'm just about to eat that little chocolate mint on my pillow that I love so very, very much when suddenly, there's a knock on the door... Well now, who could that be? I say, “Who is it?” No answer. “Who is it?” There's no answer. “Who is it?” They're not sayin' anything.
So, finally I go over and I open the door and just as I suspected it's some big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and only one nostril. Oh man, I hate it when I'm right. So anyway, he bursts into my room and he grabs my lucky snorkel. And I'm like, “Hey, you can't have that! That snorkel's been just like a snorkel to me!” And he's like, “Tough.” And I'm like, “Give it!” And he's like, “Make me.” And I'm like, “'kay!” So I grabbed his leg and he grabbed my esophagus and I bit off his ear and he chewed off my eyebrows and I took out his appendix and he gave me a colonic irrigation. Yes, indeed, you better believe it. And somehow in the middle of it all, the phone got knocked off the hook and twenty seconds later, I heard a familiar voice and you know what it said? I'll tell you what it said:
It said... “If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again; If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator; If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again; If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.”
Well, to cut a long story short, he got away with my snorkel but I made a solemn vow right then and there that I would not rest. I would not sleep for an instant until the one-nostrilled man was brought to justice... But first, I decided to buy some donuts.
So I got in my car and I drove over to the donut shop. And I walked on up to the guy behind the counter. And he says, “Yeah, what do ya want?” I said, “You got any glazed donuts?” He said, “No, we're outta glazed donuts.” I said, “You got any jelly donuts?” He said, “No, we're outta jelly donuts.” I said, “You got any Bavarian cream-filled donuts?” He said, “No, we're outta Bavarian cream-filled donuts.” I said, “You got any cinnamon rolls?” He said, “No, we're outta cinnamon rolls.” I said, “You got any apple fritters?” He said, “No, we're outta apple fritters.” I said, “You got any bear claws?” He said, “Wait a minute, I'll go check...”
“No, we're outta bear claws.” I said, “Well, in that case - in that case, what do you have?” He says, “All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels” I said, “Okay, I'll take that.”
So he hands me the box and I open up the lid and the weasels jump out and they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin' me all over! Oh man, they were just going nuts! They were tearin' me apart! You know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started goin' through my head. I believe it went a little something like this...
Doh! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me! No, get 'em off, get 'em off! Oh, oh God, oh God! Oh, get 'em off me! Oh, oh God!
I ran out into the street with these flesh-eating weasels all over my face wavin' my arms all around and just runnin', runnin', runnin' like a constipated wiener dog. And as luck would have it, that's exactly when I ran into the girl of my dreams. Her name was Zelda. She was a calligraphy enthusiast with a slight overbite and hair the color of strained peaches. I'll never forget the first thing she said to me. She said, “Hey, you've got weasels on your face.”
That's when I knew it was true love. We were inseparable after that. Aw, we ate together, we bathed together. We even shared the same piece of mint-flavored dental floss. The world was our burrito. So we got married and we bought us a house and had two beautiful children - Nathaniel and Superfly. Oh, we were so very very very happy, aw yeah.
But then one fateful night, Zelda said to me... She said, “Sweetie pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club?” I said, “Whoa, hold on now, baby, I'm just not ready for that kind of a commitment!” So we broke up and I never saw her again. But that's just the way things go in Albuquerque!
Anyway, things really started lookin' up for me because about a week later, I finally achieved my lifelong dream. That's right, I got me a part-time job at The Sizzler! I even made employee of the month after I put out that grease fire with my face. Aw yeah, everybody was pretty jealous of me after that. I was gettin' a lot of attitude...
OK, like one time, I was out in the parking lot tryin' to remove my excess earwax with a golf pencil when I see this guy Marty tryin' to carry a big ol' sofa up the stairs all by himself. So I, I say to him, I say, “Hey, you want me to help you with that?” And Marty, he just rolls his eyes and goes “No, I want you to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw.”
So I did.
And then he gets all indignant on me. He's like, “Hey man, I was just being sarcastic!” Well, that's just great. How was I supposed to know that? I'm not a mind reader for cryin' out loud. Besides, now he's got a really cute nickname: “Torso-Boy”! So what's he complaining about?
Say, that reminds me of another amusing anecdote. This guy comes up to me on the street and says he hasn't had a bite in three days. Well, I knew what he meant, but just to be funny, I took a big bite out of his jugular vein. And he's yellin' and screamin' and bleeding all over and I'm like, “Hey, come on, don'tcha get it?” But he just keeps rolling around on the sidewalk, bleeding, and screaming. You know, just completely missing the irony of the whole situation. Man, some people just can't take a joke, you know?
Anyway, um, um, where was I? Kinda lost my train of thought
Uh, well, uh, okay. Anyway I, I know it's kinda been a roundabout way of saying it but I guess the whole point I'm tryin' to make here is:
I
Hate
Sauerkraut!
That's all I'm really tryin' to say. And, by the way, if one day you happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential quandary full of loathing and self-doubt and wracked with the pain and isolation of your pitiful meaningless existence... At least you can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that somewhere out there in this crazy mixed-up old universe of ours there's still a little place called Albuquerque...
You didn't think I was going anywhere with that did you? Geez. I just found a list of “100 Strange but true facts that will shock you” and #13 was that “Weird Al” Yankovic wrote “Albuquerque” as a joke specifically to “annoy people for 12 minutes”. It ended up becoming one of his most popular songs so I scrapped the list and just gave you the lyrics to “Albuquerque”. You're welcome!
Hey! I could have gone with Alice's Restaurant and you would still be reading...
Last month I was pretty negative. It is no easier to be positive this month.
I mean, it would have been, but then Sean Connery had to go and die...
But then I did find this exciting article telling me to avoid using slang because I'm too old. “All the feels”, “YOLO”, “Totes”, “Lit”, “Cray-cray”, “The struggle is real”, “Oh, snap!”, “Basic”, “Sus”, “Hangry”, “Put on blast”, “Humble brag”, “Clap back”, “Talk to the hand”, “Savage”, “Yaaaaaas”, “Fam”, “Bruh”, “Baddie”, “Finesse”, “Spill tea”, “I'm dead”, “Bye, Felicia!”, “Dank”, “I can't even”, “Adulting”, “OMG”, “Wig snatched”, “Boujee”, “Thirsty”, “Hashtag”, “Don't @ me”, “Ghosting”, “Slay”, “Canceled”, “Trill”, “IRL”, “Swole”, “Mom”, “I'm shook”, “Fire emoji”, “Hella cool”, “Literally”, “Left on read”, “Fauxpology”, “Take the L”, “Highkey”, “Turnt”, “Hundo P” “Shade”, “JOMO”, “Phubbing”, “Bae”, “G.O.A.T.”, “JK”, “Woke”, “P”, “As if!”, “Stan”, “Preggers”, “TBH”, “Extra”, “OTP”, “Perf”, “Keep it”, “Netflix and chill”, “Ship”, “Salty”, “FOMO”, “TL;DR”, “Slide into your DMs”, “Goals”, “Sorry not sorry”, “Ratchet”, “Dumb”, “Krunk”, “Cash me ousside, howbowdah?”, “Snatched”, “Wassuuuuuup”, and “Thicc” are all slang terms that 1) take up a lot of space this month and 2) are things I wouldn't have said when I was younger anyway...
Unfortunately, all my other internet searching this month just led to links about how terrible all the politicians and their supporters are going into the final days of the election. Hopefully we will be able to avoid civil war on the 4th...
And this year you don't even get to see Lucie in a fabulous Halloween costume...
If you thought 2020 was bad... just wait until September...
It is definitely time to employ ostrich mode...
While you were watching current events unfold, were you aware that Wall Street was bombed on September 16th? The blast immediately killed 30 people and another 10 died later. In addition, hundreds of people were injured, including 143 seriously. Sadly, this was much more deadly than the bombing of the Los Angeles Times, but not nearly as deadly as the race riots in Tulsa that killed between 100 and 300 people and basically leveled 35 square blocks...
Of course, you've already realized that these events didn't happen in 2020... The Los Angeles Times bombing was 1910 (pro union iron workers dynamiting the offices of an anti-union newspaper publisher) while the Wall Street bombing was 1920 (possibly in response to the arrest and indictment of Sacco & Vanzetti (who, as you know, were immigrants wrongly convicted of murder who were sentenced to death for the crime they didn't commit)) and the Tulsa massacre was 1921 (a race riot in response to an alleged assault by a black teen against a white teen who stated clearly that it did not happen and she wouldn't press charges.) Ideally we could say we have progressed significantly over the last 100 years or so, but clearly we have not.
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” - Winston Churchill 1948.
Unfortunately, Mr. Churchill was, in fact, repeating history.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana 1905.
The Tulsa massacre was basically ignored until 1996 when a commission was formed to review the events 75 years after they occurred. In 2001 they concluded that the city conspired with white citizens against black citizens, and finally this year the massacre was added to the Oklahoma school curriculum... maybe the kids will see it on Zoom and pay a little attention if they think it is a YouTube or TikTok video... you never know.
Now I should turn this into something light-hearted and silly, but I really can't. Seriously, look at thte state of our country. Have we learned anything?
So instead I will say just look at the pictures.
Last month was a little light on pictures, so we're trying to make up for that a little bit this month... Feel free to check them out rather than reading this...
You're still here? You were supposed to look at the pictures... What am I going to talk about now?
I can't write about current events as I have been intentionally avoiding the news for weeks. I highly recommend it for everyone. Other than a little sand in your ears, pretending to be an ostrich is much better than being anxious about everything all the time.
Naturally, that leads us to talk about how ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand. Aside from the absurdity of thinking that a predator can't see you if you can't see it, is the absurdity that an ostrich has the ability to think rationally (or irrationally if you prefer.) Not to mention the fact that it would do you no good to deftly avoid a predator only to die of asphyxiation... Ostriches do, however, lay their eggs in shallow holes and use their beaks to turn them periodically, so perhaps some stupid person looked at an ostrich and said, “Look at that stupid bird, burying it's head in the sand.” Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking “it's” is not the possessive form of it, it is a contraction for it is... But, you clearly forgot that I started with “a stupid person...” who clearly wouldn't know the difference!
Now, you probably think you know all about the ostrich and how it can't fly and doesn't really bury its head in the sand, but did you know that it was known as the “camel bird” because of its long neck, big eyes, long eyelashes, and unique walk? And, of course, the ostrich is by no means the weirdest duck out there (I know... an ostrich isn't a duck... it's a figure of speech (actually, an ostrich is a bird... “it is a weird duck” is a figure of speech... and a reason to use “it's” correctly :-) )) I think that would have to go to the Hoatzin...
Commonly known as the “Stinkbird” because it smells like manure, it is one animal that has not become endangerd due to human poaching. Like a cow, the hoatzin has a foregut to break down the plants that it eats, but birds don't have rumens (ruminants like cows have a rumen) they have crops. The hoatzin's crop is so large that it displaces muscles that would otherwise help it fly. However, that doesn't stop the hoatzin from flying. It just stops it from flying well. Fortunately, baby hoatzins don't have to fly to survive to become adult hoatzins. When a great black hawk attacks a hoatzin nest, the chicks simply stop - drop - and roll and fall into the water below the nest. Then they swim to shore and use the CLAWS ON THEIR WINGS to haul themselves back on land and up the tree to their nest... Be sure not to think about a bird with claws on their wings when you're trying to get to sleep tonight... just put your head under your pillow and pretend they don't exist... And even though they do, they are a lot less scary than everything going on in our own country these days...
First, I was afraid...
I was petrified that I might be late getting the website updated. What? You thought I was going full Gloria Gaynor on you? Actually, Gloria Gaynor's real name is Gloria Fowles, and while you may (or may not, for that matter) know her for “I Will Survive”, she is also closely related to Popeye the Sailor.
As you know, Popeye the Sailor was created by Elzie Crisler Segar in 1919. Elzie, despite what you might be thinking was not related to Bob. Besides Bob spells his last name with two ees. But, you might feel that Bob and Gloria have more in common since they both had top pop songs in 1979 (and if you combine their hits you would get “I Will Survive Old Time Rock and Roll” which is kind of funny, but if you really wanted to stretch for that year you could get a family of bad girls with hearts of glass that will survive and aren't gonna stop the good times 'til they get enough of that old time rock and roll at the YMCA with my Sharona... all while Rod wants to know if you think he's sexy...
But now you're wondering what Rod Stewart has to do with Gloria Gaynor... Nothing. I never said that he did have anything to do with her. But now you made me go and look, and don't you know you can find anything on the internet... Actually Rod & Gloria have Baron Raymonde in common. He played saxaphone for both of them... but more importantly, he played saxaphone in the original Blues Brothers Band! (What kind of music do you usually have here? Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country AND Western!)
Anyway, we were talking about Bob Seger, not Rod Stewart...
No... wait... we were talking about Popeye the Sailor. Note, that Popeye was not a sexist. He was NOT Popeye the Sailor MAN. He was just Popeye the Sailor. Not that I'm questioning his manliness! No! No! No! He was definitely a manly man's man kind of a guy... except of course when he was belting out his rendition of Gloria Gaynor's hit (remember Gloria, its a ramble about Gloria (but don't get me started on Arlo now...)) “I yam what I yam. I yam my own special creation. So come take a look. Give me the hook or the ovation. It's my world that I want to have a little pride in. My world and it's not a place I have to hide in. Life's not worth a damn... 'Til you can say I yam what I yam!”
I sure hope I can get out of the house soon...
I keep hoping I'll find some kind of inspiration and take some great pictures or have something witty and insightful to write about, but that apparently is not in the cards for this month.
In the cards of course comes from 'on the cards' and is related to fortune telling, not gambling. It is an old expression used in several novels from the 1800s, including everyone's favorite, Bleak House from 1852 which was actually a sci-fi novel predicting a dsytopian future in which an orange madman takes over the White House and rants about how everything is unfair and how he doesn't get the credit he deserves for being able to drink water out of a glass and walk down ramps...
But did you ever stop to think about all the places something can be in? In the abstract - in the act - in the air - in the altogether - in the back - in the back of my mind - in the background - in my bad graces - in the bag - in the balance - in the ballpark - in the best of health - in the biblical sense - in the black - in the blink of an eye - in your blood - in the boonies - in the buff - in the bull pen - in the can - in case of - in the catbird seat - in the clear - in the closet - in the clouds - in the cold light of day - in the cross hairs... and that's only the abc's... we haven't even started on in the dark yet and it is a long way to in the zone...
And what about the one's you maybe didn't know? In the pudding club? In the cactus? In the days of Queen Dick?
What else can I talk about this month? As you can see from the pictures, we didn't go anywhere, but we did get a lot of bark dust to spread. Caroline and Lucie did most of the work (Happy Father's Day to me.) We also celebrated our 24th anniversary, though it might be more accurate to say that we simply observed it this year. Hopefully by next year we'll be able to actually go somewhere (Caroline has hinted at Hawaii by subtly saying, “We should go back to Hawaii for our 25th anniversary.”)
Of course the weather is always an exciting topic, and June in our part of Oregon has been its usual unusual self alternating between hot, sunny days and cold, wet days. It is time for July 4th so that summer can start and we can all complain about it being too hot and dry... I already can't wait to start complaining about how it is too cold and wet again... But that will have to wait until the next decade... you know in few months when many more years have passed...
Oh - did you want to know about those last three 'in the' idioms? In the pudding club is pregnant; in the cactus is a difficult situation; and in the days of Queen Dick is never... like “I love cauliflower” said no one in the days of Queen Dick.
As you know, I usually go out to the interwebs and look for something to use as inspiritation for the monthly ramble that is my blog...
This month I started with “what didn't happen in may 2020” and the results were a little disturbing...
from the AP - Not Real News: A look at what didn't happen this week...
from the Las Vegas Sun - Not Real News: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week.
from the Daily Beast - Here's a Preview of America's 2020 Nightmare if Trump Loses: CLINGING TO POWER - Foreign leaders have demanded do-overs of elections they've lost, and got them.
from The Atlantic - What Would Happen if Trump Refused to Leave...
So, I was just looking for things that got put off this year because of the quarantine and instead I got a laundry list of things that people are lying about now: editted photos of a Minneapolis police officer wearing a white supremacist hat and appearing at a Trump rally (neither actually happened), a photo of a “federal agent” inciting violence at a Minneapolis protest (actually an Antifa protestor in Germany from weeks earlier), photos of fires set while protesting in Minneapolis (except the photos first appeared in 1992), people stealing “Thomas the Tank Engine” from the mall in Minneapolis (except that photo is from 2014), proof that COVID-19 was genetically engineered as a weapon (except that the proof is (as noted in the article) roughly equivalent to “dogs have legs and people have legs, so dogs and people are the same...”), and the coronavirus isn't even a virus it is a bacterium that can be treated with aspirin and blood thinners (which is just silly since neither aspirin nor blood thinners are antibiotics even if somehow the whole medical world had misdiagnosed this as a viral problem in the first place.) Aren't the real stories bad enough? Why do people have to proliferate stupidity as well?
And I got two articles already contemplating how the political divide in the country could result in catastrophe come November. Can't we worry about June first?
Sorry - no silly ramble this month... perhaps we need to focus on World Laughter Day - a day where people meet in public to laugh. The goal is to force laughter to induce real laughter. Of course we can't meet in public, but try meeting on Zoom - that should produce enough of its own laughter (or at least cringe) worthy moments...
Surely I can come up with something fun to say about April.
No I can't... and don't call me Shirley! Ba dum tss!
If the late night talk show hosts can do their shows from home, I can do comedy on my web site... Oh wait - they still have writers. Never mind.
Maybe I should focus on my other new line of work... your spiritual well being! That's right! I'm an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church Monastery. “Why?” you ask. Because I wanted to join the ranks of Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien and Duane “The Rock” Johnson! Now I'm ready to take care of all your Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Atheist, Shinto, Sikhism, Baha'i, Confucianist, Humanist, Jewish, or Wiccan ministry needs! Let me know how I can help :-) (Alas, COVID-19 has interfered even with the church's work and I can't get my Ordination Credentials Package right now so, no minister license, wallet license, parking hanger, window cling, press pass - parking placard, or bumper sticker for me right now (dang! that bumper sticker would definitely have looked great on the Porsche...)
So - what else has happened this month? Not much going on in the world right now, so nothing really to talk about in terms of current events...
100 years ago the US entered World War I. Of course, that wasn't the headline back then since no one knew there was going to be a World War II... Also 100 years ago the body of Lillie Spielman was found 19 days after she drowned. That may not mean anything to you, but according to The Frederick News-Post, the mother of the girl, who had been suffering under the (sic) great stress, seemed much relived (sic). I'm not too impressed with their editor... Sadly Annie Summers also died tragically while attempting to build a fire in the family stove. Apparently she spilled some oil on her dress and the rest of the story (told in a bland, matter of fact way) was quite gruesome. But, hey, at least she didn't have to stay home week after week... oh wait, she probably did since she was a she and there just wasn't that much to do 100 years ago...
Maybe if we look at different points in history we can find something less tragic... or maybe we'll just find a random assortment of things:
2011 Prince William and Kate Middleton got married
2004 the last Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line
1992 riots erupted in Los Angeles after acquittals in the Rodney King trial
1974 Nixon released the Watergate tapes
1968 “Hair” premiered on Broadway
1945 American troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp
1862 Union troops captured New Orleans
1854 the first African American college was founded
1429 Joan of Arc relieved Orleans
How can this be the end of March? It seems like only two and a half endless weeks of staying home doing nothing since schools closed early and Intel decided that we should all work from home...
Sure I could keep griping about the self isolation for a few more paragraphs or I could draw up some parallel to World War II or drag in some data about the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but I won't.
In March you could normally expect to get great deals on any remaining Valentine's Day candy (limited selection, but great prices!) or frozen food (it is frozen food month after all!) or snacks (March has both National Potato Chip Day and National Chip and Dip Day!) or winter sporting goods (now that you can't use them any more, buy them and put them away so you can forget about them by next winter!) or AC units and BBQ grills (you can get a great deal on last year's model as they make room for new ones that they'll charge a lot more for now that it is April and you missed your chance!) or luggage (OK - maybe you'll be getting a deal on luggage for awhile at this point...)
And now for a bit of English history... The Tichborne Dole is an ancient English tradition still very much alive today. It takes place in the village of Tichborne near Alresford in Hampshire every year on March 25th the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady's Day) and dates back to the 13th century.
Suffering from a wasting disease which had left her crippled, on her deathbed Lady Mabella Tichborne asked her miserly husband, Sir Roger, to donate food to the needy regularly every year. Her husband was reluctant but made a bizarre agreement as to how much he would give. Sir Roger agreed to give the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around whilst holding a blazing torch in her hand, before the torch went out. Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty-three acre field which is still called 'The Crawls' to this day and which is situated just north of Tichborne Park and beside the road to Alresford.
Lady Tichborne charged her husband and his heirs to give the produce value of that land to the poor in perpetuity. But aware of her husband's miserly character, Mabella added a curse - that should the dole ever be stopped then seven sons would be born to the house, followed immediately by a generation of seven daughters, after which the Tichborne name would die out and the ancient house fall into ruin.
The custom of giving the dole, in the form of bread, on 25th March, Lady Day continued for over 600 years, until 1796, when owing to abuse by vagabonds and vagrants, it was temporarily suspended by order of the Magistrates.
Local folk however, remembered the final part of the Tichborne legend and Lady Tachborne's curse. The penalty for not giving the dole would be a generation of seven daughters, the family name would die out and the ancient house fall down. In 1803 part of the house did indeed subside and the curse seemed to have been fulfilled when Sir Henry Tichborne who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1821(one of seven brothers), produced seven daughters.
The tradition was hastily re-established and has continued to this day. Roger, Henry's nephew, was born before the restoration of the Dole and his younger brother Alfred afterwards. Roger was lost at sea in 1845 and was impersonated two decades later by the unsuccessful Tichborne claimant, Arthur Orton. Alfred was the only one to survive Lady Tichborne's curse and thus the Tichborne name did not die out. The Dole is held every Lady Day, March 25th.
February 29th! We only get to celebrate this every four years...
Actually, we only get to celebrate this slightly less than every four years since every hundred years is not actually a leap year (unless it is also an even four hundred years so 2000 actually was a leap year...) and since most of us aren't born on February 29th or in a leap year things are even more messy. For example this is my 14th February 29th in 19768 days so I'm currently averaging a February 29th approximately every 3.87 years...
Of course, you don't care about that. What is really worrying you is, “How many leap seconds have occurred in Wayne's life?” Well, the first leap second was introduced on June 30, 1972 and there have been 26 seconds added to the UTC time scale since. The last one was inserted on December 31, 2016. Which naturally leads to the follow up question, “So when is the next one?”
Leap seconds and leap years are both implemented to keep our time in accordance with the position of Earth. However, leap seconds are added when needed, based on measurements, and leap years are regularly occurring events based on set rules. Some proposals have been made to implement larger corrections like leap hours, which would occur much less often than leap seconds. Also, it has been suggested to stop corrections to UTC all together. And just who is making these proposals? Probably the same scum that de-listed Pluto as a planet! We can't let them get away with another travesty of justice! Discussions of the future of leap seconds are ongoing at meetings of the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union. Get involved! Save the leap second!
There, now you have something to distract you from politics and corona viruses. You're welcome.
Sorry there aren't more pictures, but we apparently haven't done anything photo worthy in awhile. Maybe that will change next month, but no promises.
And if you're confused by the photo captions... look for Lucie, we had to replace the inside doors in the elevator and the 2nd one didn't go better than the 1st one, Maggie really was in Oregon, I have no idea where the sparkles came from, I did it all in Lightroom not Photoshop, there's more light in the riding pen, Morgan decided to be a bigger pill than normal, and I just thought it was funny how much effort was going into a simple photo...
And we're 0.8486% of the way through the 2020s already! (Not to be confused with being 8.47% of the way through 2020 already...)
As noted, not that much has really happened in Oregon (or at least not that much that Dad could get pictures of anyway) but we've already had the NHL Winter Classic in Dallas (because when you think af ice hockey you think of Dallas), the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia (congratulations to our own Ricky Brabec who won - completing the course in 40 hours, 2 minutes and 36 seconds and our sympathies to the family of Dutch biker Edwin Staver who died as a result of his injuries in stage 11 on 1/16), the international consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, the Jaipur Kite Festival in India, most of the Australian Open (in, where else... Australia), the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the Chinese New Year (in... Japan!... no - in China, of course), the beginning of the Sapporo Snow Festival (which is in Japan), and the end of the Dubai Shopping Festival (which ran from December 26th to January 26th... which seems a little excessive if you ask me...)
Anyway... that doesn't even cover the impeachment, the corona virus, the helicopter crash, or the florida man that tried to extort a car dealership for money and a car and got caught and then tried to impersonate the prosecuter and decline to file charges against himself only to get caught at that too and now faces seven addtional felony charges... oddly impersonating a prosecutor is a second degree felony while impersonating a state attorney is only a third degree felony...
Clearly I don't have anything exciting to cover for this month, so I'll let you be on your way without a single thought about how much work it is each year when I have to fix everything to restart in January... You just enjoy the few pictures that are here and I'll try to come up with something more exciting for February (even though there is only 93.5% as much time as January (and that is with the extra day!))
Tens We Hardly Knew Ye...
Well we're finally entering the safety and security of “The Twenties”... Sure, “The Tens” or “The Teens” weren't as uncomfortable as “The Two Thousands” or “The Aughts” or “The Noughts” or “The Aughties” or “The Noughties” or “The Naughties”... Twenty Twenty... Finally a year that just sounds right. It has been a long gap since Nineteen Ninety Nine (7305 days to be precise). Maybe we can finally party again, even if the prince is dead...
What does a look back at the tens tell us?
Clearly it was a decade of terrible disasters: the Haitian 7.0 earthquake, the Japanese 9.0 earthquake and the subsequent Fukushima Da-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, the Somalian famine, Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, Hurricane Maria, the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami, Sakurajima (Cherry Blossom Island) volcano erupted for months, great white sharks killed 4 people off the New Jersey shore leading to mass panic, and the Spanish flu pandemic wiped out 3% to 5% of the world's population.
It was also a turbulent decade with unrest around the world: Iran made progress on its nuclear program, US combat operations ended in Iraq though we're still there, The Arab Spring occurred resulting in peace and prosperity... no, of course not - there is continued unrest in the Middle East, Osama bin Laden was killed, Moammar Gadhafi was killed, Kim Jong-Il died, the Syrian conflict began, the Benghazi attack occurred, the Xinghai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising, World War I started, Germans used chlorine gas on the French, the Armenian Genocide occurred, the Russian revolution began, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending World War I but setting the stage for World War II.
Of course, no decade could be all bad. We made great technological progress in “The Tens” as well... Ernest Rutherford described a model of the atom, The Large Hadron Collider reached maximum power, the first BASE jump was completed by a dummy thrown off the Eiffel tower with the first parachute, the first space jump was completed by Felix Baumgarner jumping from a balloon at 128,000 feet, Henry Ford opened the first automobile assembly line and sold the 1,000,000th Model T within the decade, we reached 1,000,000 electric vehicles on the road in only 125 years, people across the country looked up to see Halley's comet and to see a total eclipse of the sun, Alexander Graham Bell made the first transcontinental phone call, and web-connected video devices exceeded the global population.
I'm sure by now you've realized I've been mixing my tens... Heck you probably realized it as soon as I mentioned Sakurajima erupting - you couldn't possibly have confused it with Eyjafjallajokull erupting (which did happen back in 2010.)
There are a surprising (or not) number of connections between the 1910s and the 2010s...
The Boy Scout Association was founded in the 1910s... and finally recognized girls in the 2010s...
Two craft went down with great loss of life in a short period of time in the 1910s - the RMS Titanic and the RMS Lusitania... two went down close together in the 2010s as well - two 737 Max jets... it is a bit of a stretch of course, but both the Titanic and the 737s were “guaranteed” to be safe and as far as the Germans torpedoing the Lusitania, North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship in 2010 and Russian rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 in 2014 so that's almost the same thing...
The Panama Canal was completed in the 1910s... and the Panama Canal Expansion was completed in the 2010s...
Daylight Saving Time started in the 1910s... and we almost got rid of it again (at least here in Oregon) in the 2010s...
Rockefeller became the first billionaire and Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to congress in the 1910s... the first billionaire to become president prevented the first woman from becoming president in the 2010s...
“The Birth of a Nation” portrayed African Americans negatively and renewed interest in the KKK and Adolf Hitler joined the right-wing anti-Semitic and nationalistic German Workers' Party in the 1910s... and we had very fine people on both sides in Charlottesville in the 2010s...
Margaret Sanger set up the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn and was promptly arrested in the 1910s... and we tried hard to get back there in the 2010s...
Maybe I should stop comparing the tens at this point... Of course, the twenties started with an old white guy running for president on the platform “America's present need is not heroics, but healing...” so there will probably be a lot of 1920s to 2020s comparisons in the future...
November came and went.
It is already December as I type this up so it is hardly worth the effort of even thinking about November any more... Of course, November is most remembered for everyone's favorite holiday... Black Friday! But, there are a wealth of other ways to celebrate the month. The day before Thanksgiving, for example, is often referred to as Drinksgiving Day while the whole month is a celebration for Banana Pudding Lovers. It is also National Impotency Month, but I'm sure those two aren't related...
Anyway, I just don't have that much to say this month, so look at a few pictures and move along. Maybe next month will be more exciting again...
October... October... October... What can I say that hasn't been said before? According to Mark Twain, nothing. “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” Of course, that has been said before. By Mark Twain, remember? What has gotten into you?
Do you know what happens when you DuckDuckGo “mark twain october”? Do you know that DuckDuckGo is not a verb? Neither is Google, but people talk about Googling things all the time, so I feel completely justified in using DDG as a verb... even better, I can acronize DuckDuckGo and then turn it in to a verb! And according to the Urban Dictionary, acronize is a word so just stop complaining about that now... But do you remember where this paragraph started? In some stock markets, the Mark Twain effect is the phenomenon of stock returns in October being lower than in other months. The name comes from a line in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson: “October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.”
Of course, most of us don't think of the stock market when we think of October. Most of us think of Lucie's birthday! You should anyway. In case you didn't there are multiple pictures to remind you.
The rest of you probably thought I was going to All Hallows Eve... And what do you think of when you think of Halloween? Christmas, right! Well that's what you think of if you go to Home Depot or Lowes where the Halloween decorations have already been replaced by Christmas yard art... But, if you are still thinking about Halloween you are probably thinking of witches!
Why are witches a common costume on Halloween? In the Middle Ages, women labeled as witches (from the Anglo-Saxon word wicce, or “wise one”) practiced divination. Such a woman would curl up near a fireplace and go into a trancelike state by chanting, meditating, or using hallucinogenic herbs. Superstitious people believed that these women flew out of their chimneys on broomsticks and terrorized the countryside with their magical deeds.
How did we get from women getting high and chillin' by the fire to riding on broomsticks and terrorizing the countryside? I'll tell you how. Surely you know what's about to come next... (now that is, “no I don't and stop calling me Shirley” but before that aside it would have been...) IT IS JUST A PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT! And of course, it is the biggest one ever...
September seems to have flown by without a lot of fanfare...
Lucie started back to school and we did have the Shriner's Walk & Roll and the Chalk Art Festival (and Corn Roast!) but otherwise it was a pretty quiet month so I had to stretch just to get 12 pictures...
Apparently September is a historically slow month - Wikipedia starts with this exciting tidbit: “September is the ninth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, the third of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the fourth of five months to have a length of less than 31 days.” If that doesn't say “September is boring” I don't know what does.
However, a number of people have tried to make something of it, so September is National Americana, Bake & Decorate, Campus Safety Awareness, Cheese, Chicken, Child Awareness, Childhood Obesity Awareness, Chiari Awareness, Coupon, Disease Literacy, DNA Geonomics & Stem Cell Education, Food Safety Education, Family Meals, Fruit and Veggies, Guide Dog, Head Lice Prevention, Hispanic Heritage, Home Furnishings, Honey, Infant Mortality Awareness, Mulled Cider, Mushroom, Organic Harvest, Osteopathic Medicine, Ovarian Cancer Awareness, Passport Awareness, Pet Memorial, Piano, Preparedness, Prostate Cancer Awareness, Prime Beef, Prosper Where You Are Planted, Pulmonary Fibrosis Awareness, Recovery, Rice, Save A Tiger, Sewing, Service Dog, Shake (Ice Cream), Sickle Cell, Skin Care Awareness, Spinal Cord Injury Awareness, Suicide Prevention, Translators, Wilderness Month.
I bet you stopped before reading the whole list, didn't you?
So you probably didn't notice the one that is not named correctly, did you?
And now you think I'm just going to tell you which one that is, right?
Anyway, as you know, September is also when we observe International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th), but you probably didn't know that this historic holiday was created here in Oregon in 1995 by Ol' Chumbucket and Cap'n Slappy. You also probably didn't know that guacamole was invented by a pirate named William Dampier in 1679 or that it is a federal crime to discuss piracy with a pirate by email, text, posted letter, or note in a bottle. I know that those two random facts aren't related and thus don't actually belong in the same sentence, but who are you - the linguistics police?
And now you're probably thinking to yourself, “Did he just use the term 'linguistics' correctly?” Jeez! When did you get to be so critical? Here I am trying to bring a little joy to your day and all you can do is nit pick...
So in conclusion, if it were up to me I would suggest next September we celebrate National Sickle Cell Awareness Month...
There must be something exicting to say about August...
I guess we should start by correcting that headline. Though we have finished 8 of the 12 months (8/12 reduces to 2/3) we have really only finished 243 of the 365 days in 2019 so really only 66.575342465753424657534246575342465753424...% Which means there is a whole 0.0913242...% more year to enjoy that you might have thought! You're welcome for that good news!
And you're going to need some good news because apparently August is a bummer of a month historically...
August 1 1944 - Anne Frank penned her last diary entry before being sent to a concentration camp...
August 2 1923 - President Warren G. Harding died suddenly...
August 4 1962 - Nelson Mandela was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison which was extended to a life sentence later...
August 6 1945 - The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima killing 100,000 to 200,000 people...
August 9 1945 - The second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing 70,000+ people...
August 11 1965 - Six days of rioting in Los Angeles began, resulting in 34 deaths and more than 3000 arrests...
August 13 1961 - the Berlin Wall came into existence...
August 16 1780 - the Battle of Camden was a major defeat for American Revolutionary forces (of course most Americans probably don't know that the Revolutionary War was still going on in 1780 since we all think of July 4th 1776 as the big day, but that was just the beginning... and, of course, no one thinks about the Battle of Camden on August 16th because the much bigger event occurred on August 16 1977 when Elvis Presley died (or was abducted by aliens if you prefer that version of the story...))
August 19 1934 - nearly 90% of German voters grant Chancellor Adolf Hitler additional powers, including the presidency...
August 22 1986 - fumes from a volcanic eruption under Lake Nios in Cameroon killed more than 1500 people...
August 24 79 - Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii, Stabie, and Herculaneum...
August 26 1883 - a volcano on Krakatoa erupted - the explosion, heard 2,000 miles away, threw 5 cubic miles of earth up to 50 miles into the atmosphere and resulted in tidal waves 120 feet high drowning 36,000 people on nearby islands...
August 29 1792 - as the battleship Royal George was being repaired, winds blew water into open gun ports causing the ship to sink in a matter of minutes, killing 900 sailors...
August 31 1997 - Princess Diana died in a high speed car crash
I guess if you look throughout history bad things happen every month, but are you really going to find another month with three major volcanic events, two atomic bombs (of course not - thankfully there have only ever been two), and the death of a king and a princess?
Of course, there is always August 13 1964 but I'm not sure one birthday really offsets everything else...
Anyway, now that you are all cheered up... enjoy the pictures!
What can I say about July?
Obviously we went to Texas and Florida (and some of us went to Georgia as well.) And there are a lot of pictures to look at so you probably don't want to spend too much time reading over here when you could be looking over there...
But I will entertain you with a new fun “fact”...
Surely you remember (and are a huge fan of) Chuck Norris jokes? (Yes you do and I know your name is not Shirley...) For example: When Chuck Norris was born he drove his mom home from the hospital. Or, Chuck Norris doesn't need GPS... he decides where he is!
And where is he? He's in Florida! That's right - Chuck Norris is now “Florida Man” and you can google your birthday (month and day) and florida man and get your very own ridiculousness... For example, “january 15 forida man” produces “Florida Man Causes Highway Crash, Steals Good Samaritan's Truck Who Stopped to Help” (that was from this year, but in 2013 it was “Florida Man Arrested After Giving Several 'Wedgies' to Brandenton Movie Goers”) Of course, if you want a real winner you have to try January 7th which yields “Florida Man Denies Syringes Found in His Rectum Are His” or a mid-summer July 29th yields “Florida Man Tries To Steal Police Car With Officer Still Inside”!
In any case, you can have hours of fun reading “Florida Man” headlines after you run out of Chuck Norris jokes because we'll never run out of crazy people in Florida...
But first look at the pictures...
p.s. If you don't know who Walter White is then you'll just have to look it up...
Well, we're already halfway through the year... Of course, when I posted this we were really only 48.995% of the way through the year and I have no idea when you are reading this so you could be up to 58.05% of the way through the year. Or, you could be reading this in the photo gallery and 2019 could be over already. That's practically the same thing as time travel! What have I done?!
Oh yeah... nothing. I wrote something down and then imagined you reading it in the future. That really isn't like time travel at all. Oh well...
So now that your heart is racing with disappointment let's move on to discussing the month of June. As you can see from the pictures, I had (I mean, “got”) to go to China again. Caroline and Lucie took full advantage of that to travel up to Seattle and out to the coast. I hear Lucie even drove into Seattle before Caroline had to take the wheel away from her :-)
Of course, the big question is “what can I tell you about June that you can't tell from the pictures?” You almost certainly already know that June has one birth flower (the rose), two zodiac signs (Gemini and Cancer) and three birthstones (pearl, alexandrite, and moonstone.) But, you may not know that Kentucky became the 15th state on June 1st or that Tennessee became the 16th state on June 1st or that Arkansas became the 25th state on June 1st as well. And, I'm pretty much 100% sure that you didn't know that I just lied to you about Arkansas... It actually became the 24th state on June 1st. And guess what. I just lied to you again. Arkansas was the 25th state, but not until June 15th, but it was so much more exciting to claim that it happened on June 1st that I just couldn't help myself... Oh the shame... :-( Or not, just ask our president...
But you know what is really exciting about June? June is Pam Bingham's favorite month! And I'm sure you know Pam... you know, the president of the Sherman Oaks Business Builders Chapter of TEAM Referral Network... (Isn't it great what you can discover on the interwebs?!)
Actually I did discover from Pam that no other month starts on the same day of the week as June in either a regular year or a leap year and that is actually kind of cool. Of course, it is possible that Pam lied to me about this interesting tidbit... A little fact checking on my part shows that May, June, and August all start on unique days of the week this year and May, June, and October all start on unique days next year (a leap year) so apparently ole Pam didn't make up that little tidbit, but she failed to point out that May also starts on a unique day of the week regardless of whether or not it is a leap year! So much for June's coolness... it is just copying May! But I'm sure it had a bigger inaugural crowd...
Well, at least we did something different in June, so enjoy the pictures...
Here we are again at the end of another month. Do you realize that this is month 187 of this website? That means it has lasted longer than Ozzie & Harriet, King of the Hill, My Three Sons, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Frasier, Married... with Children, The Jeffersons, and even The Big Bang Theory. Sadly, not as long as South Park or The Simpsons... But at least we're brought to you commercial free!
You'll probably note this month that Lucie has fallen down on her responsibility. I mean, I posted plenty of pictures for the month, but Lucie's captions aren't really up to snuff... Which leads to an important question - what the heck does “up to snuff” mean anyway? Like me you probably thought it meant “up to the required standard”. Obviously that is what I intended when I derided the quality of the photo captions this month, but actually it originally meant “sharp and in the know”. As you will recall, John Poole wrote “Hamlet Travestie”, a parody of Shakespeare in the style of Doctor Johnson and George Steevens in 1811 which included the line, “He knows well enough The game we're after: Zooks, he's up to snuff.”
Of course, you may not be fully up to speed on your Doctor Johnson (not to be confused with Doc Johnson which has an entirely different origin - amazing what you find when you google random names) and George Steevens... As you know, however, Johnson was the Garfunkel of the pair with Steevens doing the heavy lifting which in the end resulted in Steevens playing malicious practical jokes on Johnson. Who can forget when he sent that series of anonymous items to the Public Advertiser promoting the claims of James Boswell as Johnson's biographer, in order to vex the official biographer, Sir John Hawkins. Hoo boy! What a kidder! In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in the 1976 founding of that other Doc Johnson...
But I digressed... like that has never happened before... You probably start reading this every month thinking, “I wonder how far he'll get before he digresses.” Well! That's a fine attitude to take! You try coming up with something new and exciting to say each month...
Of course, this month wasn't all frivolity... We remembered Harry again this month (along with all those who have given their lives for our country) on successive memorial days. Though Harry's Heaven Day started a bit cold, eventually the sun came out and we were able to work in the yard and pot new plants to bring some color to brighten the day. Harry probably would have been disappointed though that there wasn't a lot of frustration so no grumpy noises (i.e. cursing) from me to make him laugh...
I'm sure that he'll have plenty of opportunities in the future - until then, enjoy the pictures...
This is going to be quick this time. I should have done it over the weekend but instead we spent almost 3 hours on Friday night rewatching Infinity War to refresh our memories before spending 4 hours in the theater on Sunday watching End Game...
Oh yeah, and I'm still supposed to be getting work done...
Anyway... As you can see in the pictures... a couple of concerts, Easter, an overnight choir trip out to the gorge, and a horse show this month in addition to everything coming into bloom so you know what that means, right? Of course you do... allergies! Yea itchy, watery eyes!
I also tried to include some photo “art” for you this month. That is really for me, of course, as it gives me an excuse to try different things with the camera, Lightroom, and Photoshop... Personally I like how much color I was able to create in what was essentially a black and white dirty old window...
Other than that, I don't have a lot to say this month. I know.. I know... How will you ever get by without some random ramble about the month or totally unrelated fact? I'll give you one just so you can get some sleep tonight... In Switzerland it is illegal to own just one guinea pig. I'm sure it is true - I read it on the internet.
In fact, I read it at https://www.thefactsite.com/top-100-random-funny-facts/ and now you can go there read the other 99 on your own!
Caroline is worried that if she dies I'll replace her as fast as I replaced my car... I don't see the connection at all, but I did manage to find a new (to me) car pretty fast once the insurance was all cleaned up... I've only included one picture of the new one. You can see the original picture of the old one by going back to August 2005, though Lucie featured more prominently in that one...
So anyway there was a good bit of travel in the month of March and none of it was for business... Maybe I'll get lucky again, but I suspect there will be at least one business trip in April... Maybe there will be some points of ellipsis as well... You never know...
But I digressed again. This month we drove up to Tacoma, flew to San Jose, drove to Napa (actually Aunt Magie drove), and flew to Austin. Along the way we saw Cathy, Chris, Jane, Sam, Maggie, Gran, Maddog, Greg, Leiza, Gwen, Reve, and Robbie. We also saw a lot of people we don't know like the guy at the reception desk at the hotel in Tacoma, but if I list everyone that we saw along the way it will look like the credits at the end of a Marvel movie...
We're already in the fourth paragraph of the monthly blog and I haven't even mentioned March Madness. Oh wait. Now I have. I predict that some team will win.
What else can I talk about related to March? How about March 1st, 2007 when the Swiss invaded Liechtenstein? Don't believe me? What if I told you that the Swiss have invaded Liechtenstein three times since 1985? They blew up a significant chunk of the Bannwald forest on December 5th, 1985 (oops). They set up a forward observation post in Treisenberg on October 13, 1992 (oops again). Then they marched back across the border on March 1st, 2007 getting almost halfway across the country before being repulsed... OK, so they got 1 mile in (the whole country is only about 2 miles wide) and realized they were in the wrong place (oops again again) and went home. It sounds better the other way, but you're probably going to look up Liechtenstein / Swiss relations now aren't you? My mission here is done!
Enjoy the pictures (but don't look for any of Liechtenstein)!
Don't worry. You don't have to hear about getting the car fixed any more... it has shuffled off this mortal coil and is no more... OK, technically it can't “shuffle off” because it never “shuffled on”, and it really isn't gone - you can try to buy it for parts at an auction soon, but I have to not think about that because it makes me sad and I would rather think of it as having gone off to the farm where it can chase bunny rabbits and chickens...
Fourteen pictures this month for February 14th... you can go back to 2006 to see Harry's birthday pictures (after all, we all only have one birthday...)
I didn't have anything deep to say this month so I searched the web and did I find anything deep to say there? Of course not, it is the web for goodness sake! I did manage to find a site that will search for your birthdate in Pi and tell you that it didn't find it unless you simplify it considerably... by which I mean it couldn't find 021406 or 02142006, but it did determine that 21406 occurs 20091 digits in... Of course, I don't have any real way to verify that...
Wait a minute - if you believe “www.piday.org/million” is actually Pi to a million digits, then I can confirm that 21406 exists once and 021406 and 02142006 don't exist. I can also confirm that no form of my birthday exists, no form of Caroline's birthday exists, and no form of Lucie's birthday exists... I guess that makes Harry 1 in a million! Who says you can't find something deep and meaningful on the web? Oh - that's right. I said that.
In addition to being Harry's birthday, February 14th is widely remembered as the day Matthew Brady (no, not a member of the Brady Bunch) took the first photograph of a president in office. That president was, of course, Donald Trump... no wait - despite what he might claim, it was actually President James Polk...
Polk is considered by many the most effective president of the pre-Civil War era, having met during his four-year term every major domestic and foreign policy goal he had set. After a negotiation fraught with risk of war, he reached a settlement with the United Kingdom over the disputed Oregon Country. Polk achieved a sweeping victory in the Mexican-American War, which resulted in the cession by Mexico of nearly all the American Southwest. He secured a substantial reduction of tariff rates with the Walker tariff of 1846. The same year, he achieved his other major goal, re-establishment of the Independent Treasury system. True to his campaign pledge to serve only one term, Polk left office in 1849 and returned to Tennessee. What a loser... sure, he may have met his goals, averted one war, won another one, reduced tariffs, and re-established the Treasury, but in the end he was just a quitter!
But I digress...
Maybe we should just remember Harry's birthday... Happy Birthday, Harry!
Yes - 362 days later and I'm back to complaining about the difficulties of getting an old Porsche fixed after being in an accident. The worst part of this one being that I had just decided the roads were too slick to keep going to work and was in the process of pulling off the road when I got rear-ended...
Of course January is also the month that a lot of us get older. Funny how the whole year can go by without any aging and then it is January again and suddenly we're faced with the fact that we're that much further from our youth again... Well, you are anyway. I'm living in denial and we don't get older here (or at least that is the way it seems since I'm listening to The Go-Go's as I type this so clearly I'm still in the early 1980s...)
As you can see from the photos - Lucie is starting to practice driving with Caroline (for some reason they don't seem to think Lucie should practice with me) - we celebrated my birthday (or as I discussed with the lab tech at the doctor's office on the day after, we celebrated the anniversary of my birthday because we all really only have one birth day... we just choose to celebrate that annually...) - I went to China again already this year - Aunt Maggie came to visit and we celebrated Caroline's (and Maggie's) birthday - I headed down to New Mexico (you can't tell that from the photos, but I'll be back there again to start February) - we puppy sat for Gill - nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary...
Now I know you are expecting some wacky January facts, but instead I'll just share the wisdom of Elton John...
And we were love's knot after summer
Tied together in the dead of winter
Wrapped up with spring fever in the air
Bound together in the autumn
Every month means a little something
But January is the month that cares
You gotta do it
January is the month that cares
You gotta do it
January is the month that cares
No - I've never heard that song either, but who cares? Oh yeah... January!
As if writing an annual Christmas letter isn't hellish enough, the fine folks at Pinterest are full of their usual great ideas to make you feel even more inadequate than you normally do...
Create a “Holiday Infographic”! Oh boy! A year in review with quantified meaningless facts!
Create a Christmas Poem! There once was an elf from Nantucket...
Write “12 Days of Christmas” letters, including letters from the Reindeer (how are reindeer supposed to write letters?), the Head Elf (that sounds like an inappropriate job title), Mrs. Claus, and Santa himself (hopefully they don't just get drunk, argue, and try to use the kids against each other...)!
Write the letter in the shape of a Christmas tree! Hey, it doesn't matter what you actually say as long as you can make each line the right length!
A top ten list! All you have to do is compete with the professional comedy writers on the late night talk shows... no pressure!
Anyway... Here is my attempt at a Carriker's Year In Review...
Step 1. Select Photo Gallery from the menu bar (but first cut the blue wire... No seriously, first read all the instructions because once you complete step 1 these instructions won't be on the screen any more...)
Step 2. Select January from the 2018 row
Step 3. Enjoy reflecting on our January adventures
Step 4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each month of 2018
Step 5. Select Home from the menu bar to get back here
There you go - 2018 in a nutshell!
See you in 2019!
November has come and gone and another year is almost done...
Because I'm late and have too many pictures to put in the site this month I don't have time to regale you with exciting facts about the month... so I'll steal from #TipsyWriter...
1. The name 'November' comes from the Latin for nine (novem), as it was the ninth month of the Roman calendar.
2. November was called 'Blood Month' by the ancient Saxons because that was the month they sacrificed animals to their gods.
3. Observed during the second week in November, National Split Pea Soup Week celebrates exactly what you'd think it does: crispy fried chicken! No, of course it doesn't. For some reason it celebrates split pea soup...
4. There is no mention of the month of November in any of Shakespeare's plays or sonnets.
5. November has been designated National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting Month.
6. November is National Pomegranate Month in the USA.
Enjoy all the pictures...
Well here we are in October...
Normally I would now provide you with some exciting facts about the month of October, but when I tried to find anything interesting I just found the same kinds of things that I found last year. I did, however, discover:
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
Istanbul is the only city in the world built on two continents.
There are over 640 muscles in the human body. Your tongue is the strongest. The stapedius is the smallest, it is located in the ear.
Shakespeare invented the words flawed, generous and fixture.
Now, if you have no idea what any of that has to do with October, you are not alone... So, to ease your troubled mind, here are a few quick facts that are related to last month:
Andres-Jacques Garnerin made his first successful parachute jump on 10/22/1797.
Crayola brand crayons were first sold on 10/23/1903 - the packs contained red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange, black, and brown, and cost a nickel.
And, of course, 10/24/1929 was Black Thursday - the start of the stock market crash that continued through 10/29/1929. However, 10/19/1987 was far worse with the Dow losing nearly 23% of its value in a single day (and losing another 8% the following week.) At least that makes our current stock market declines seem less dramatic...
On that happy thought - enjoy the pictures...
Oh yeah... what about Halloween? What was Lucie this year?
Nothing.
She didn't start on her costume early enough so Mr Potato Head with a name tag reading “Hello, my name is Richard” stuck to a casual shirt didn't happen. I know it is obvious, but just in case you were wondering what that would have been... Dick Tater in a Polo Shirt... obviously. And now, just in case you didn't get that obvious reference, let me quote The Bobs...
Dictator in a polo shirt... Dictator in a polo shirt...
A backwards society. A non-aligned nation can't afford to buy starch. No chance for dignity in our laundry...
When colonial powers were in charge, we send all the mufti to the riverbank. Pound it on a rock until it all come white. Then run it through the wringer while the women crank...
Dictator in a polo shirt... Dictator in a polo shirt...
The twentieth century brought us refrigerators, dryers, and washers with the built-in agitators. But they all turn communist and kick out the whites. Nothing left but the coloreds and the brights...
Dictator in a polo shirt... Dictator in a polo shirt...
In a bloody coup, the colonials are sent packing. But they take some skills that we seem to be lacking. The power fails and the washers all break down. And the runners bring a message that the rebels are attacking...
Dictator in a polo shirt... Dictator in a polo shirt...
Of the hundred palace guards, most have run away. Of the loyal ones, there are but thirty. They call to me to make a show of strength, but I can't come out when my uniform is dirty...
Dictator in a polo shirt... Dick Tater in a polo shirt!
So much easier than Trick or Treat!
I won't bore you with the details of the first month of Lucie's high school career. By next month she should be running the place...
Normally I would give you some interesting tidbit about the month, but the most interesting thing about September is the 21st night...
Ba de ya, say that you remember
Ba de ya, dancing in September
Ba de ya, never was a cloudy day
Ba duda, ba duda, ba duda, badu
Ba duda, badu, ba duda, badu
As you know a lot of people think that there are four classical elements: Earth, Wind and Fire being three of them... I'm not sure why those guys decided to dump Water... He probably thought “Ba de ya” was a stupid lyric so they moved on without him, but the important thing here is that there aren't actually four elements... there are five. The fifth element was “aether” or “void”. Many people also thought that the Fifth Element probably should have been left in the void and despite becoming something of a cult classic it didn't really do anything for Bruce Willis' career and he had to wait for the Die Hard movies to really take off as an action hero...
Did you believe me? You should know by now that you can't believe everything (anything?) that you read on the internet. Bruce Willis had already made three Die Hard movies before The Fifth Element... and his real breakout role, as everyone knows, was Hudson Hawk (not to be confused with Paul Newman who did the voice for The Fabulous Hudson Hornet...)
And speaking of Paul Newman, he wasn't born in September - he was born on Januray 26th, 1925, but he did die in September... but not on the 21st night. It is hard to say who was the most famous person to die on September 21st... was it Virgil in 19 BC, the Roman poet, Raymond “Boz” Burrell in 2006, the British rock musician from King Crimson and Bad Company, or Bryan Smith in 2000, the man who ran over Stephen King...
And speaking of Stephen King, did you know he was born on September 21st and is actually the inspiration for Earth, Wind and Fire's song, September?
I'm lying, of course... but Stephen King was actually born on September 21st but try not to think about Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Firestarter, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, Misery... when you are going to sleep tonight!
I didn't get my car back by Friday... it was Saturday... two weeks later than the original Friday I was hoping for... Hopefully I won't have anything to say about my car next month...
August turned into quite the busy month for us: we saw Train and Hall & Oates in concert (no one got sick and the date didn't have to be rescheduled) and I had to make a trip to Arizona for work so Lucie and Caroline made a trip to southern Oregon to meet up with Aunt Maggie and enjoy the smoke filled skies due to California and Oregon forest fires. Then we got to enjoy our own smoke filled skies when we had a short lived brush fire right here in Gales Creek. Actually this year has not been good at all fire-wise: the Hillside Bible Church burned to the ground in June, the brush fire burned four structures, and a house right up the street suffered damage in addition to 3 cars in the driveway being destroyed by a fire that is still under investigation...
But enough happiness and good cheer...
Merriam Webster defines “high school” as simply “a school especially in the U.S. usually including grades 9-12 or 10-12”. The urban dictionary has a little more to say, defining “high school” as “a place where everyone acts like their lives are great but are really dead inside” or “all the worlds horrors, all the things and people you despise and dread most, compacted into one building” or “a failed experiment in preparing young people for the adult world. All high schools in the country were built around 1960 and were designed to hold about half as many students as they currently do. High school is also the place where the stress of growing up and the stress of fitting in join forces to destroy even the strongest among us. Most of high school is not spent learning but involves trying to find friends who aren't complete douche bags...” but then it kind of goes into a downhill rant from there... I'm sure Lucie will have a great time!
As you know, August was originally the sixth month in the yearly calendar and thus was known as Sextilis. It was renamed in 8 BC to honor the first Roman Emperor, Augustus. It was also lengthened from 30 days to 31 so that it wouldn't be shorter than July, named for Julius Caesar... Thank goodness we no longer have such petty leaders that focus on trivial things like who has the longest month or the biggest inauguration crowd... In any case, regardless of its name August became the eighth month of the year when we switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, but despite its tremendous popularity since about 5000 BC, it was not until 1998 that we began to celebrate National Goat Cheese Month. A lot of people celebrate simply with a cheese ball, but we like to go out with a big party complete with goat jugglers...
If that isn't your thing then perhaps you'll want to visit New Orleans. The city celebrated its tricentenial this year. In 1718, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, founded the southeastern Louisiana city, naming it after Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, who was Regent of France at the time. Though preparations began earlier, most consider August 25th the true establishment of the city, when hundreds of French colonists arrived to settle in New Orleans and surrounding areas. Too late to celebrate that now, but maybe you can go for Mardi Gras and party on Fat Tuesday on March 5th next year.
Right now though you can enjoy the August pictures on the web site...
We'll start with what everyone really wants to know... yes, the car is now in the shop for the engine (and brakes...) Maybe I'll really have it back in August... maybe even by Friday, but likely not...
This month's exciting fact... Florida has the lowest highest point of any state in the country. It is not Mount Dora. The highest natural point in Florida is Britton Hill at 345 feet. This is a full 103 feet lower than Ebright Azimuth in Delaware. Of course, this month's exciting second fact is that Ebright Azimuth is actually 2 feet lower than the trailer park across the street from Ebright Azimuth so the official highest point in Delaware is actually only the second highest point in Delaware...
What else can we talk about this month? Obviously July 4th is a big deal. As John Adams noted at the time: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” That's right - we're celebrating the wrong day! Why? The Continental Congress voted to declare independence on the 2nd, but they signed the document on the 4th, right? No more likely it was signed on August 2nd...
Just another example of FAKE NEWS! OMG! We probably never actually declared independence - we're really still a British colony!
Three more July 4th tidbits for you...
When was the first time we celebrated July 4th instead of July 2nd? 1777 - that's right - the very next year we started with the wrong date.
When (and where) was the first official public July 4th event? 1783 in Salem, North Carolina as documented by the Moravian Church (there are no government records of an earlier celebration.)
What is the oldest continuous Independence Day celebration? The Bristol Fourth of July Parade in Bristol, Rhode Island held every year since 1785.
Anyway, most of the pictures are actually from the week at Douglas Lake in Tennessee, but enjoy the parade and fireworks first and then see what we did on vacation...
Yes, the answer to the big question is... June 10th was 5th months... In fact, June 22nd was 163 days... but I finally got my car back!
June was clearly about more than that though... What else happened this month?
We went to see James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt. Except that Bonnie didn't make it. No, Bonnie Raitt isn't dead. She's just recovering from something so we didn't get to see her. Instead we got two sets of James Taylor, which was good, but I would like to have seen Bonnie Raitt. Oh well. At least we have a new date to see Bob Seger... That was supposed to be last November. Now it is supposed to be next February...
I went to China again. Of course, part of why I went didn't actually happen so I'll probably be back again this summer... or it will push out far enough that my boss will be back from sabbatical and she'll get to go instead (I was only going because the activity delayed until her sabbatical started - there is a good possibility it will continue to push out... or at least I can hope...)
While I was there Lucie promoted out of Neil Armstrong Middle School. You can see from the pictures that she is moving on with all kinds oy recognitions and awards, but I think she would rather not be moving on at all since she had such a good time at a school that lots of parents dread. Not sure why that is... oh wait... teenagers and hormones... that's right... now I remember why it is that parents dread middle school...
Speaking of dread... I guess there was a little bit of unrest in the rest of the country this month. Good thing I can close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears, and say “la la la” really loudly. Now if only I can do that for another 935 days or so...
Do you know what May 10th was?
May 10th was 4 months without my car...
At this point it is quite likely that June 10th will be 5 months...
What else could I tell you about besides whining about my lack of a car? We saw The Eagles! The concert was delayed about 3 weeks because Don Henley got sick, but at least it was only 3 weeks... We're still waiting for a new date for Bob Seger and Bonnie Raitt won't be joining James Taylor in June... I guess we'll have to stop going to see “old folks” in concert!
This year The Eagles consisted of Don Henley (who as noted above got sick and caused a reschedule), Joe Walsh (who was amazing on guitar but way past his prime on vocals), Timothy B. Schmit (who was on crutches and thus sat for the entire concert), Deacon Frey (who was filling in for his dad who passed away in 2016), and Vince Gill (the self-proclaimed “61 year old new guy”). They managed to play for two and a half hours (as Don Henley put it, “because we can”) and other than leaving out Lucie's favorite, “Disco Strangler” they managed to play just about everything you could think of. Hopefully James Taylor will be as great...
You can tell what else happened this month from the pictures. Aunt Maggie came to visit. Lucie had a solo singing event and did really well (she got the second highest score of all the solo performers - not that anyone is counting.) We remembered Harry again with more plants. It was a beautiful day outside, but that didn't really make it any easier... Then Lucie celebrated Towel Day again and we participated in the Team Up! 5K to help raise money for Forest Grove schools and Lucie had her last school concert for the year...
Finally, I went to Utah for work...
I guess I should start April with a recap of how I did with my final four predictions. Give me a minute to look up what happened since I have no idea...
Loyola will beat Michigan 71-69: I got Michigan's score perfect, but missed Loyola's by 14... so I got that game wrong...
Kansas will beat Villanova 83-79 - I got the 79 perfect, but assigned it to the wrong team and missed the other score by 12... oops again...
Kansas will beat Loyola 81-69 - since I got both of the other two wrong, I didn't even have the right teams for this game, but I came closest on the final scores - I was only off by 2 and 5...
Hence I will not quit my job and start gambling...
I don't really have anything to say about April in general though... I'm still waiting to get my car back. I might get it the week of May 10th, which would be right at 4 months... Hopefully it looks perfect (and drives perfectly) after all that time...
After much searching of the internet I did come up with 8 things on the McDonald's “Secret Menu”:
1. The Poor Man's Big Mac - get a McDouble w/ special sauce and no ketchup
2. The Big Mac N' Cheese - get a Big Mac w/ no meat (why?)
3. Grilled Cheese - get a cheeseburger w/ no burger (again... why?)
4. Monster Mac - get a Big Mac w/ extra patties (up to 8!)
5. Add an Egg - get any burger w/ extra egg
6. Chicken McGriddle - get a McGriddle w/ chicken instead of sausage
7. Fries w/ Big Mac Sauce - but why ruin the fries?
8. Top Secret Dipping Sauces - really? The “Secret Menu” list includes just getting one of the standard dipping sauces? It isn't really a secret that they have Sweet and Sour, Honey Mustard, BBQ, Chipotle BBQ, Spicy Buffalo, Hot Mustard, and Ranch... Just because you didn't know doesn't make it a secret...
Hey at least I didn't go with the story about the cat that walked 12 miles to get back to his family only to have them try to get the cat euthanized... (Don't worry - somebody else took the cat...)
March... Hup, two, three, four...
March Madness... Go Trinity! Oh wait... they don't get to compete... I could never have picked a winner from the original roster (in fact I just had to look up who is in the final four and I can say with some certainty I wouldn't have picked any of them...) Now I'll go out on a limb and say Loyola will beat Michigan 71-69, Kansas will beat Villanova 83-79, and then Kansas vill beat Loyola 81-69. Given that I know nothing about what is going on with any of the teams, I have about as much chance of getting that right as winning the lottery, but you never know...
March For Our Lives... I'm glad to see that America's youth has gotten excited about something, but based on a relatively quick search on the internet (so you know it must be true) mass shootings accounted for only approximately 3% of gun related deaths in 2017 (with fatalities and injuries both rising, while mass shooting incidents and fatalities declined slightly.) Not that all the numbers aren't outrageously high with nearly 1 mass shooting a day in 2017...
Well that took a dark turn... see what happens when I don't have enough pictures for the month?
I guess I can try to lighten the mood with some silly holidays before I go: Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month - Humorists are Artists Month - International Mirth Month - Mad for Plaid Month - National Cheerleading Safety Month - National Kite Month - National Noodle Month - Optimism Month... who makes these things up?
See you when I get back from China...
So another birthday has come and gone for Harry. Most of the world (or at least most of the United States) celebrated another Valentine's Day (meaning the florists, card shops, and jewelers made out like bandits again... But how do bandits make out? Don't they kiss like everyone else? I think I have digressed again...) and most Americans are probably also aware of President's Day and Groundhog Day and probably even Mardi Gras even if they don't remember Fat Tuesday is coming until someone tells them it already happened...
But what about Car Insurance Day, Hula in the Coola Day, Crepe Day, World Play Your Ukulele Day, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, Canadian Maple Syrup Day, No One Eats Alone Day, Tartar Sauce Day, National Hate Florida Day (but if you don't want to pick on our 27th state, you can celebrate Cow Milked While Flying an Airplane Day (and don't ask me what a cow was doing flying an airplane!)) or For Pete's Sake Day? Of course, that is a tiny fraction of the holidays in February... You can find multiple holidays on just about every day of the month (of any month for that matter) so don't worry about going back to work... tell them your religion requires you to recognize everyone's holidays!
I hope you realize that rambling on about silly holidays is just another way for me to not actually say anything important in this space and I think you should recognize the effort I put into not going off on a longer tangent about Florida... I just left it hanging there... (think about it...)
The big news this month, of course, is invisible to you. I finally upgraded my computer, and as everyone knows, “upgrade” means “deal with a bunch of changes and try to make everything work as much like it used to as you can”, and my web development software is quite old so it didn't make the transition which means I had to figure out a new way to make the website look exactly the same to you. I sure hope that worked...
Well here we are again. A brand new year. Of course, it is entirely arbitrary to consider January the beginning of a new year. The Earth just goes around the Sun in a constant cycle and we could pick any point along the way to be the “beginning”. Now this year January 3rd at 5:35am UTC was when the Earth was closest to the Sun, so maybe January is a good month, but really the whole midnight on December 31st is the beginning of a new year thing is still wrong...
Of course, that also means that the Earth is closest to the Sun when it is coldest in the Northern Hemisphere. You know what that means... It is hot as heck in the Southern Hemisphere because they get to be close to Sun and tilted towards it at the same time! Hooray for the Southern Hemisphere! It also means that we just got to have a super blue blood moon! Aren't those noble or socially prominent natural satellites just fabulous?
What else? Well lots of us are born in January and that means...
We are either Capricorns or Aquariuses (Aquarii? Aquarians? Aquariums?) and we share the lucky numbers 4 and 22...
Our birth flowers are either carnations or snowdrops but we all share the garnet as a birthstone...
We're creative problem solvers and we tended to be the most mature and athletic people in our classes... hmm...
We tend to be doctors or accountants... hmm... that doesn't seem to have happened...
But whatever else it might mean, at least we don't call it “Wulfmonath” as the Anglo-Saxons called it... because it was the month hungry wolves came scavenging at people's doors... What would you call it because it was the month self-aggrandizing orangutans brag to civil servants...?
Welcome to 2018.
You know what time of year it is don't you? That's right it! It is holiday letter time!
Normally we avoid sending out a holiday letter like the plague because we don't want to make those less fortunate than we are (and who isn't really?) feel inferior. This year, however, we're throwing caution to the wind and letting our hair down (as well as letting the cards fall where they may...)
This year all started on January 1st just like every other year. Of course, this year started on January 1st, 2017 while every other year has started on January 1st, 2016 or January 1st, 2015 or January 1st, 2014, or January 1st, 2013 or January 1st, 2012 or January 1st, 2011, or January 1st, 2010 or January 1st, 2009 or January 1st, 2008 or January 1st, 2007 or January 1st, 2006 or January 1st, 2005 or January 1st, 2004 or January 1st, 2003 or admit it you stopped reading this sentence awhile ago didn't you? Well, there's no use crying over spilt milk so you might as well just move on now and just be glad that I didn't count back to Pope Gregory XIII's 1578 celebration decree, William the Conqueror's 1066 declaration, or Julius Caesar's 46 BCE edict (though the fact that it has been defined multiple times throughout history would seem to put lie to the expression “the rest is history”)
Well, every cloud apparently has a silver lining and you got a little history lesson. Of course, only clouds back lit by the moon actually have a silver lining so really every cloud doesn't, but I'd hate to beg the question about trite cliches being bogus by pointing out how too many of them appear to be not what they're cracked up to be... Kind of like “when it rains, it pours” except that here in the Northwest it mostly drizzles... Once again though I have digressed and left you waiting for the aforementioned holiday letter.
So much happened this year that I don't even know where to start. Maybe it would be easier just to focus on what didn't happen this year... No Nobel Peace Prize (for that matter no Nobel Prize in chemistry, physics, literature, medicine, or economics either), no Booker Prize, no Academy Award, no BAFTA, no Palme d'Or, no Pulitzer, no Golden Globe, no BRIT, no Grammy, not even a stinking MTV Video Music Award! Damn! I thought we had a good year, but now I feel like crap! Thank you so much for bringing it up!
Just look at the pictures and leave me alone! I'll be over in the corner sulking...
Spoiler alert: look at picture 22 before reading further...
On December 23, 1994, the Republic of Kiribati announced a change of time zone for the Line Islands, to take effect January 1, 1995. This adjustment effectively moved the International Date Line over 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) to the east within Kiribati, placing all of Kiribati on the Asian or western side of the date line, despite the fact that Caroline's longitude of 150 degrees west corresponds to UTC−10 rather than its official time zone of UTC+14. Caroline Island now is at the same time as the Hawaiian Islands (Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time Zone), but one day ahead.
The stated reason for the move was a campaign promise of Kiribati President Teburoro Tito to eliminate the confusion of Kiribati straddling the Date Line and therefore being constantly in two different days. However, Kiribati officials were not reluctant to attempt to capitalize on the nation's new status as owners of the first land to see sunrise in 2000. Other Pacific nations, including Tonga and New Zealand's Chatham Islands, protested the move, objecting that it infringed on their claims to be the first land to see dawn in the year 2000.
However, despite many media and government claims to the contrary, Caroline Island was not the first point of land to see sunrise on January 1, 2000 (local time); that distinction belongs to a point of land between Dibble Glacier and Victor Bay on the coast of East Antarctica where the sun rose 35 minutes earlier. As this point is close to the Antarctic Circle, and the area beyond the Antarctic Circle is affected by the continuous sunlight in December, the definition of the exact point becomes a question of distinguishing between a sunset and an immediate sunrise in view of atmospheric refraction effects.
Happy New Year wherever (when ever?) you are!
Where does the expression, “to boot” come from anyway?
It comes from the Old English bot, meaning compensation; related to the Old Norse bot, meaning remedy; and the Old High German buoza, meaning improvement... but what were the Germans high on?
boot
verb (usually impersonal)
1. (archaic) to be of advantage or use to (a person): what boots it to complain?
noun
2. (obsolete) an advantage
3. (dialect) something given in addition, esp to equalize an exchange: a ten pound boot to settle the bargain
4. to boot, as well; in addition: it's cold and musty, and damp to boot
But see how I totally distracted you from the fact that there aren't many pictures and the web site is late?
And, of course, from here I could wander off into insulting words we should bring back like, “zounderkite” (idiot), “fapdoodle” (someone of little significance), “raggabrash” (someone who is absolutely, completely disorganized), or “muckspout” (someone who curses too much). Or I could go with the list of words you shouldn't use when talking: actually, um, well, so, literally, look, awesome, honestly, seriously, totally, basically, essentially, very, like, for what its worth... Which is just another way to distract from how little I really have to say this month...
If you have nothing better to do at this point, you can always check out www.theuselessweb.com There you might find www.staggeringbeauty.com or www.fallingfalling.com or http://endless.horse Or, if you are really lucky you'll make your way to http://heeeeeeeey.com
(Though http://www.leduchamp.com is Lucie's kind of website... or maybe http://iamawesome.com/)
Maybe next month there will be more to look at here...
I know you are just dying to know how I'm doing on the travel book... Really I know that no one really cares about it but me, but this is my blog, not yours, SO YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY! (bonus points for you if you know what movie I started quoting in the middle of that sentence) Anyway - now the book is 90 pages with almost 10 pages of photo descriptions added at the end and the first pass at the text in the book completed. I might still get it done by Christmas...
Work continues to be work. Things are moving along quickly, though hiring has been more difficult than I had hoped. I'm still only at 2 employees with a 3rd possible and 3 interviews scheduled... As you can see in the pictures, work also involved travel this month with 4 days of traveling for 3 days of working in China. At this point, I probably won't be back to China this year but I'll likely be back in February next year.
Of course, October is about a lot more than work and trying to finish documenting what we did in July! October, from the Latin “Oct” meaning eight, is of course the tenth month of the year... But, it was the eighth month in the old Roman calendar so we're still using that name and clearly Donald hasn't realized yet that the month was named by 1) a leader that came before him and 2) a foreigner or we would have had an executive action by now to change the name... But anyway... October is a big month with the NBA starting up and the MLB winding down with both the NHL and NFL still cranking away.
Also, who could forget National Adopt a Shelter Dog, Arts & Humanities, Bullying Prevention, Cyber Security Awareness, Disability Employment Awareness, Domestic Violence Awareness, Work and Family, Dental Hygiene, Down Syndrome Awareness, Healthy Lung, Infertility Awareness, Lupus Erythematosus, Physical Therapy, Spina Bifida, Pizza, Popcorn Poppin', Park, and Seafood Month... And there was something else that happens in October... oh yeah Happy Birthday, Lucie! Starting her second year of teen-ness, but still a couple years away from driving (thank goodness!)
Enjoy the pictures and come back again for next month's update...
Well, the travel book is progressing and maybe it will be done by Christmas... It turned out at 80 pages of pictures, but now I'm working on the text to go with it so we can remember what we actually saw! And it has gotten a lot slower since going back to work...
Originally I was worried that maybe I wouldn't have enough to do when I went back. That turned out to be foolishly optimistic on my part. Also, my dreams of not being a manager, at least for a little while... right out the window! I've already hired my first employee and am trying to hire more! I should still end up with a group that is at most half the size of my old one, but we'll see how that turns out I guess. On the plus side - I'm not doing what I was doing before!
As you can see in the pictures, we're the proud owners of more rodents. Lu and Ethel were abandoned by their prior owners and we couldn't bare to see them cooped up in the little cage at the pet store so Lucie adopted “the grannies” in hopes that they will live a little longer than average and will enjoy their remaining time in the spacious cage and playpen at our house. They are pretty adorable though, aren't they?
I'm not sure what else to comment on... we weren't hit by any of the three hurricanes, impacted by either of the two major earthquakes, forced to evacuate due to volcanic activity, or personally affected by all the Oregon forest fires (beyond a little difficult breathing and some ash settling on the deck and cars.) Ironically, September was National Preparedness Month...
“This September, National Preparedness Month (NPM) will focus on planning, with an overarching theme 'Disasters Don’t Plan Ahead. You Can.'
We should all take action to prepare! We are all able to help first responders in our community by training how to respond during an emergency and what to do when disaster strikes — where we live, work, and visit. The goal of NPM is to increase the overall number of individuals, families, and communities that engage in preparedness actions at home, work, business, school, and place of worship.”
Though you may have been too busy dealing with an actual disaster (or just following it on the news) to prepare for one during September, but it is never too late to get started. https://www.ready.gov/september
August wasn't as busy as July, but we still had to get Maria back to Chicago and visit Bebe and TC in Florida and have Aunt Maggie come to Portland to keep Caroline company and then get Lucie back to Oregon and watch a Total Solar Eclipse... total solar eclipse... total solar eclipse... Click here to see the entire 2 and a half hours in 27 seconds (plus however long it takes to download...)
If that link didn't open a video in another window for you, try this link instead.
July went by in a hurry...
That's what happens when you try to visit Chicago, Sydney, Cairns, Alice Springs, Yulara, Darwin, Christchurch, Tekapo, Twizel, Queenstown, and Dunedin in a month... And yes, I did say 3400+ pictures, but you only have to see 46 (I started with 31 - one for each day of the month, but I couldn't keep it down to that without cutting out too much.) I'll have to go through them all now and produce a complete trip slide show and/or book, but for now here is a taste of the trip.
And because I'm already late and have to get Maria home and Lucie to see Bebe and TC, no long winded blog this month. Just look at the pictures and stop whining... you're almost as bad as Maria!
June... The cruelest month...
Not really, of course, but it got you to wonder, “Why would he say a thing like that?”
Actually June was a pretty good month. I made the switch from one job to another and even managed to do a little work for my new group (it is actually becoming a group... now there are three of us) while handing off everything from my old group. Of course there are some things to get used to - meeting with China (yes, all of China :-), it is a huge meeting) at 8:00pm - but there have already been some things to be relieved about - apparently now we're (oops... they're) meeting everyday at 8:10am, noon, and 4:00pm to beat everyone (I mean follow up with everyone) about what went wrong overnight or in the last 4 hours. I just don't understand how they think anything is going to get done if everyone is spending all their time preparing to report out on what they're supposed to be doing.
And, my new schedule has thrown Caroline all out of whack since I'm no longer getting up at the same time every day and rushing into work to make sure I know what is going on before 8:10am in case someone needs information for a report out... I know I'm not going to miss that because I already don't...
As you can see in the pictures this month also appears to have been really busy, but in fact almost everything happened right at the end of the month. Lucie did finish school up at the beginning of June but then things were kind of quiet until we went to San Jose to see Don Felder (The Eagles), REO Speedwagon, and Styx - and see Mark and Maggie - and then come right home in time to see Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). I guess we felt like we needed to start warming up for July...
But, we'll get to July next month. In the mean time, enjoy the pictures.
May... You probably don't want another treatise on the month's etymology...
I do actually have news from this month. After almost 22 years in my current job, this month I decided to take a big step and move to another organization. Now, it is a big step, but it isn't that big... I'm not leaving Intel and I'm actually physically moving from my current campus back to the campus I started at all those years ago and I'm moving from my current boss back to my boss two bosses ago... Still, for me it was a very difficult decision to step away from my employees and my responsibilities and move to something all new. Of course, you won't get to read anything about it for awhile since I will be on sabbatical before I really start the new job...
Otherwise, May was the usual month here in Oregon. We had some teaser weather to get our hopes up and now we're back to cold and wet (just the way Lucie likes it.) As you can see in the pictures Lucie observed Star Wars Day (you know... May the 4th be with you...) and Towel Day (May 25th - “A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”) and we all observed Harry Heaven Day.
HHDVI was probably our most and least successful attempt to celebrate Harry's life through planting new growing, living things. We didn't have as much stress this year but that meant there was less frustration and grousing on my part and thus less for Harry to laugh at. I guess I could have faked it, but I think he could tell when I was really upset at something inanimate and that is what really caused him to laugh... I mean it really is pretty silly to be mad at something that can't actually do anything...
Anyway, look at the pictures and share a smile with Harry.
April... What can I possibly write about this month?
April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, the fifth in the early Julian and the first month to have the length of 30 days. Whoa! That is exciting... the first month to have the length of 30 days! I can hardly contain myself! What else?
The Romans gave this month the Latin name Aprilis but the derivation of this name is uncertain. Aprilis had 30 days; Numa Pompilius made it 29 days long; finally Julius Caesar's calendar reform made it again 30 days long. In Ancient Rome, the festival of Cerealia was held for seven days from mid-to-late April, but exact dates are uncertain. Feriae Latinae was also held in April, with the date varying. Other ancient Roman observances include Veneralia (April 1), Megalesia (April 16), Fordicidia (April 15), Parilia (April 21), Vinalia Urbana, Robigalia, and Serapia were celebrated on (April 25). Floralia was held April 27 during the Republican era, so I guess we're back to celebrating that one now... I guess it is no surprise that the Roman empire fell since all they seemed to do was party... and they hadn't even invented golf back then...
What else can I find on the old interwebs? Let's see... everyone knows that April 1st is April Fools Day, but did you know it is Atheist Day, Boomer Bonus Day, International Tatting Day, Library Snap Shot Day, Myles Day, National Fun Day, Poetry & The Creative Mind Day, Reading is Funny Day, Sorry Charlie Day, St. Stupid Day, US Air Force Academy Day, Every Day is Tag Day (1st Saturday), International Pillow Fight Day (1st Saturday), National Love Our Children Day (1st Saturday), and Tangible Karma Day (1st Saturday)...
Look at all that space I've used up without actually saying anything. And you know why, right? Because I don't have anything to say! Another month has flown by. It didn't snow. Easter happened. I fixed the water feature and took two cars in for service. I got out for one bicycle ride. Caroline failed to win the lottery so I went to work. What else is there?
I think that is probably enough rambling for this month. Talk at you later...
March... What can I say about March? If only there were some big sporting event upon which I could comment... It is so maddening because I just know there is something... I feel like it is going to drive me mad... Oh well. I'll get over it.
But you know what else is driving me crazy? Well, yes that is obviously at the top of the list, but I was just referring to the fact that it snowed again in March! Enough to delay the start of school for one more day! It was so upsetting that I didn't take any more pictures until we went to Texas for Spring Break. Yes, I know there is a picture between the snow pictures and Spring Break... Caroline took it, alright?! Give me a break! I can't always take all the pictures!
At least Spring Break was educational. I learned so many new things in Texas this year. I learned that the Columbian Mammoth was about 4 feet taller than the Wooly Mammoth and weighed twice as much (as much as 20,000 pounds.) I also learned that Enchanted Rock is actually a pink granite pluton batholith (and that climbing it in the day time is easier, but hotter, than climbing it at night.) I also learned that oak pollen now exacerbates my allergies just as much as the pollens in Oregon... lucky me!
What else did I learn? I learned that Lyndon Johnson is from Johnson City Texas. That is, of course, a lie. He is from Stonewall Texas, but Stonewall is an even smaller dot on the map than Johnson City, so Johnson City claims him as their own. But that is actually beside the point. The point is we went to Fredericksburg where there is the Admiral Nimitz World War II museum because Chester Nimitz was actually from Fredericksburg... Most people don't go for the museum though. They go for the shopping and the two dozen plus wineries that have sprung up between Johnson City and Fredericksburg.
Anything else? Well, I can recommend getting your passport renewed at the University of Texas at Austin. Other than the parking situation it was just delightful. The people really were very friendly and helpful and we got in and out in a snap. Of course the airfare from Oregon to Texas probably isn't really worth it just to get a passport...
I think that is probably enough rambling for this month. Talk at you later...
I think this month I'll start off with a rant. Do you know what “impulsion” means? Maybe you have a sense of what it means, but do you know what you get when you look it up? Impulsion - the act of impelling, the state of being impelled, an impelling force, and (my favorite) an onward tendency derived from an impulsion. Do you know what that means? Impulsion means an onward tendency derived from an onward tendency derived from an onward tendency derived from an onward tendency derived from an onward tendency derived from an ... How useless is that?
Anywho. This month was a little shorter than last month (just like it is every year) and we didn't do as much. See how I'm setting you up for fewer pictures? That's called lowering expectations... I suspect there are quite a few people working on that about now, but I'll try to keep this focused on the family...
This month we did celebrate Harry's 11th birthday. It gets harder for me each year because it is harder to imagine how he would have changed as we get farther away from 5. Mostly I just think of it as Harry's 5th birthday repeating... Caroline made a great kid's quilt this year and we had 5 dozen stuffed animals to donate to Doernbecher's so hopefully we helped brighten someone's Valentine's Day even though they were stuck in the hospital.
Other than that, Lucie rode again in the B.E.A.T riding show. She just competed against herself, and she's getting better (for example, her circle was actually a circle...) but Morgan doesn't really like to get up and go... Lucie's volunteering at the barn now though and working on Morgan to make sure he's in good shape and can be a good horse for her as well as a therapy horse.
We ended the month going to see Rock of Ages. It was put on by Stumptown Stages in a little theater in Portland and Caroline got us front row seats. That put us about an inch and a half from the actors... Lonny shook my hand at one point, we're pretty sure Stacee Jaxx was singing to Lucie at one point, and Regina shook Caroline's hand when she became mayor (Regina, not Caroline) so we were all sort of IN the musical rather than just attending it... I don't think I'll add it to my resume or anything though.
Looking forward to March...
Well, I did finally figure out a new look for the website. I ended up going old school and creating the pages from scratch so they aren't particularly fancy, but maybe I'll keep tweaking and make it more interesting as I go along... probably not, so get used to this look. :-)
In case it isn't obvious, just click the left and right arrows to scroll the pictures... Or go to the January 2017 gallery page and you can see the thumbnails like the good old days.
What else can I say this month? We just kept getting snow, so there are a lot of those pictures. We had the usual birthdays. This year it was Caroline's turn for a nice round number, while I got a seemingly uninteresting one. But you can look up anything now, and it turns out that 51 is a pentagonal number and a centered pentagonal number (one of only a few), a Perrin number, and it is the 6th Motzkin number... but don't think all Caroline got was a round number... 50 is the smallest number that is the sum of two non-zero square numbers in two distinct ways: 50 = 1^2 + 7^2 = 5^2 + 5^2. It is also the sum of three squares, 50 = 3^2 + 4^2 + 5^2, and the sum of four squares, 50 = 6^2 + 3^2 + 2^2 + 1^2. It is also a Harshad number. So there's that...
At work this month was, of course, review month so I got to write my own review as well as 19 more and evaluate 37 more beyond that. Do I know how to have a good time, or what?
Of course, the real news this month was the swearing in of our new president and the appointment of all his new cabinet members. Hopefully the internet still works so you can actually see the website...
Welcome to 2017.
It is that time again. I know you're thinking, “time for him to ramble on about nothing before I look at the pictures again” but that isn't what I meant. I meant it is time for new year's resolutions! And since it is such a nuisance, I thought I would help you out by coming up with a list for you to choose from...
First off, let's get the bogus ones out of the way...
1) exercise more! Ppfftt! if you already exercise, you'll keep doing it anyway and if you don't, you probably won't start just because it is January 1st...
2) eat better! What a crock! you know you're going to keep eating the same junk you've been eating for the last umpteen years... why beat yourself up over it?
So instead, how about...
3) Set a new record! It doesn't have to be an impressive record... just do something you haven't done before...
4) Pamper yourself! You know you deserve it... do something nice for yourself (not like anyone else in your family is going to do it for you :-) )
5) Help others! You probably also know someone who needs something more than you do... Help them out.
Anyway. Welcome to 2017.
Well, after last month's comments about the upcoming election, I really have nothing to say about the now past election... I guess I can at least say, “Way to go Forest Grove!” (We're going to collect our 3% sales tax on all pot sales in the city, so we got that goin' for us, which is nice...)
Otherwise, this month involved a bit of travel with a business trip to Japan and a Thanksgiving trip to Florida. However, you'll get to see that in the pictures. Which means I should think of something else witty to say here... How about:
Maybe you should just move on to the pictures...
More US presidents have been born in October than any other month. Donald was born in June... Hillary was born in October... guess that's settled then...
In the UK October is the awareness month for Lupus, breast cancer, cyber security, and domestic violence. In the US it is national pizza month, popcorn month, pork month, and sausage month... at least somebody has their priorities straight!
Obviously October is a time to celebrate Halloween and Oktoberfest (and Lucie's birthday!) but it is also a month of important dates for the US, including: Columbus landing in America (October 12, 1492), Sam Houston being inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Texas (October 22, 1836), Nevada becoming the 36th state (October 31, 1864), the US flag being formally raised over Alaska (October 18, 1867), and Harry Truman making the first presidental telecast from the White House (October 5, 1947).
Do you know why I looked all that up for you? Because otherwise I wouldn't have had anything to say! That's right - every month I have this great opportunity to write something profound and I have nothing profound to write. So... you get random facts and me just babbling. But do you know what? You're even worse. Every month you know I'm not going to have anything to write and yet you read whatever I end up putting here in the vain hope that someday it will be important or inspiring or just a little bit funny...
Enjoy the October pictures and November reality and I'll be back in a month...
Another month gone by... Another month without anything to really write about...
This month there wasn't much to show in pictures either. I could have not combined some of them and made it look like there was more going on, but I didn't, and since you get these for free you don't really get to say much about it do you? I mean, I guess you can say as much as you want, but it will probably just annoy whoever is there next to you. Let me know how it works out for you... Or don't.
I could stir things up with a little politics... “Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches as the first prize.” - Saul Bellow
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.” - Ernest Benn
or maybe
“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.” - Anonymous
Surely you didn't think I was actually going to write anything specific about the current election did you? Only one more month to go...
I know... I know... I keep saying I'll do better on this part of the web site... I also said I was going to look at reformatting the web site, and you can see how that has gone. Don't get your hopes up for this part either...
Anyway, this month included traveling to Gulf Shores, Alabama for the Shapard family get together. I would sum up Alabama in August with the word “humid”. Others would probably want to focus on something else, but I think that humid really sums it up pretty well... You can check out all the photos (I didn't create any collage photos this month) to see the fun and frivolity, but just keep 100% humidity in the back of your mind as you do. Oh yes, did I mention that it was humid in Alabama?
Fortunately our travels to and from Alabama were pretty uneventful. The major flooding in Louisiana didn't impact us at all, though it did force those driving back to Texas to change their plans. We got to see the Portland, Atlanta, and Pensacola airports and didn't really have any issues at any of them. Caroline and Lucie also got to see the Mobile airport (at least from the outside) but I didn't go on that trip to pick up Nathan.
This month we also remembered Harry's 1922 days with us by recognizing the 1922 days since he went to Heaven. Though I know it has always been hard for Caroline, she has found ways to express her love for Harry and confront her loss directly. I, on the other hand, have never found a way to do either beyond remembering him through the pictures on this site. Strangely, as I was trying to figure out what to say, this is what started playing:
We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
And time's forever frozen still
And while the whole song is really about a broken romance, I thought that verse was ideally timed...
Watching old videos of Harry and Lucie and then seeing Lucie heading off to seventh grade created quite the discontinuity... as much as we might want to freeze time, it keeps marching forward...
After my abysmal showing last month, I'm trying to get a little ahead in July and get this out before the end of the month...
Obviously, summer is here and you can feel the rhythm of the heat whether you are in Florida, Oregon, Washington, or all the way up in Alaska. It can be kind of draining, but you just have to make the best of the situation. Like I always tell Lucie, “If I ever lose my faith in you I don't know what I would do.” I'd probably just give up completely and have no self control at all. Fortunately, at least here in Oregon, we've had a couple of breaks and more overcast / rainy; or as I like to call them, invisible sun; days in July than normal.
Lucie seems to have had a good time on her Alaska cruise. I say “seems to have had” because, of course, we weren't there as she played her games without frontiers, kissed a moose (at least she didn't shock the monkey), and explored the secret world of Alaska. It is probably for the best though, as her mother might have been driven to tears... after all she is pretty fragile. Anyway... as you can see in the pictures, Lucie got to see a lot of cool stuff. I don't think she got to see the red rain or go dancing with the moonlit knight, but you can't cram everything into one trip...
I do have to give Lucie a reminder to keep calling / texting her Mom (or at least send a message in a bottle) when she goes somewhere though. She did a great job while she was in Florida, but really dropped off during the cruise. I had to tell Caroline, “Don't give up... I'm sure Lucie is just having such great fun with the hounds of winter that she hasn't gotten to the phone. When the big time is done your desert rose will text you again...”
Meantime, we had our own big fun going up to Seattle. We stayed in Central Seattle close to Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, and Solsbury Hill. Walking around and seeing all the different visitors to the city I really felt like an Englishman in New York. Fortunately I was there with Caroline, and every little thing she does is magic... Not that we didn't have a little tension here and there, but love can heal, and even though we're both control freaks we realize that if you love somebody set them free to be themselves and it will all work out.
Finally, having forced this whole little story, I just have to say, “Roxanne, every time I look in your eyes, I think to myself... with every breath you take I just want to be your sledgehammer!” Just be glad the concert wasn't even longer or I would have had more than 25 song titles to fit in there...
So I'm a little late this month... build a bridge and get over it.
Tell you what... I'll throw in a few extra pictures from the beginning of July to make it up to you. And I'll even throw in a few photo shoot pictures of Lucie and friends at the park. And if you act now I'll even throw in a set of Ginsu knives and all you pay is shipping and handling! But maybe I'm getting a little carried away.
As usual, I really don't have too much to say. I could try to turn this into a political blog and comment on Hillary or Donald or the Brexit but it is really all just too depressing to spend any time writing about it all. It was funny going to see “Wait, wait don't tell me!” on the day of the Brexit vote since the count wasn't final when they started recording so they had to guess which way it was going to go and make their jokes but then be prepared to re-record parts of the show if the answer changed... It was interesting to see how they record a “live” show and then fix pieces of it after the fact.
I would like to point out that Caroline has put up with me now for 20 years! I'd say I must be doing something right, but I think it is really more just her willingness to keep working on a project no matter how long it takes... Whatever the reason - I'm very glad she continues to keep me around!
Enjoy all the pictures and I'll try to get back on track next month...
Not that I didn't go to work today too... but it was a short day - only 7 to 5...
So what can I write about this month?
I went to see The Who! It was supposed to be their 50th anniversary tour, and it was supposed to be last year but Roger Daltry suffered a throat infection before reaching Portland so it was rescheduled for this month. For a couple of old guys (only Pete and Roger survive at this point, so they have Ringo Starr's son Zak Starkey on drums, Pino Palladino on bass, and a variety of other muscians providing backup) they did a pretty amazing job.
Work continues to be stressful as we're still working through cutting headcount by 12000 people... Supposedly it will all be decided by the end of June. I guess we'll see.
Harry's Heaven Day was also stressful, as always. I want to remember the good times with Harry and rejoice in bringing new color to our home in his memory, but of course it doesn't just work that way...
I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
I don't want this feeling to go away
We do appreciate everyone who remembers the day with us... Please think of Harry and share a smile.
Well another month has passed by. We went to the Tulip Festival on April 9th and curling on April 30th, and apparently did nothing in between...
Of course that isn't true... We also paid taxes! You can go to thecarrikers/reallyexcitingpictures.not to see the moment by moment excitement that was filling out the forms... Now, Kid, filling out the forms on the group W bench reminds me that we also went to see Arlo Guthrie on April 15th... No pictures for you, but we had a grand time and Lucie got to hear “The Motorcycle Song (The Significance of the Pickle)”, “Coming into Los Angeles”, “The Train They Call the City of New Orleans”, and “Alice's Restaurant” along with lots of stories about the 60s... We also saw Sarah Lee Guthrie (Arlo's daughter) and they sang some of Woody Guthrie's (Arlo's father) songs as well...
Do you know any Woody Guthrie songs? I bet you do... How about “This Land Is Your Land”?
But I'll bet Lucie is the only 12 year old you know that has ever heard of any of these people, and there is an excellent likelihood that she will never meet anyone her age that has actually heard “Alice's Restaurant” performed live by Arlo Guthrie since he rarely performs it in concert (but this was the 50th Anniversary Tour so he had to and we all had a great time singing along... or at least Lucie and I did - I'm not sure Caroline actually sang along :-))
Anyway... No telling what next month will bring, so check out this month's pictures and check back in a month to see what comes next.
I really don't have anything to rant about this month. I'm still trying to figure out an interesting way to change up the website, but I have this thing called a job that seems to use up all my time... Perhaps if all of you out there who really enjoy this website every month pooled your resources and paid me to produce it instead of working... Nah. I could never get by on the quarter... (that one's just for you Bebe :-))
How's that for an old school emoticon? That's right... emoticon... not that emoji crap that everyone throws around these days, but a good old smiley face emoticon! Maybe I'll even throw out one of these ;-) or I could get really crazy and give you a :-{) or a hip little (-:P Who needs those emojis?! And what the heck is a slice of pizza supposed to represent anyway?!
Maybe you should just move on to the pictures now...
As you can see, I still haven't had time to figure out how to do the website differently. You are probably happy about that anyway, because like me you don't understand why companies feel it is necessary to change things every so often when it worked just fine the way it was and don't they understand that they are just annoying you (their loyal customer) in their quest to win new customers by having an ever “cooler” website even though you can no longer find what you were looking for and they've replace the phone number to an actual live human being (that might be able to help you if only you could figure out that accent) with a link to an online “chat” service where you have to try to explain your problem by typing out the whole long story about how you are just looking for that same sweater you found online last week but now you can't get back to that page because the whole site has been changed and all you can find are ugly sweatpants and then after the whole big story is fully explained all you get back is a strange error message that says your chat session has ended and you just know the people back at the so called help desk are just laughing their butts off...
But I digress.
This month was Harry's 10th birthday, and he has now been gone from our lives almost as long as he was with us. I'd say more about that but I've never been good at talking about what he meant to me and I already can't see what I am typing any more so I will just stop and say that we love Harry very much and miss him terribly.
A few other events also happened in February so you can see the pictures of the rats and dogs and horses... oh my! And yes there are no pictures of the horse show, but there is some video if I ever get around to doing something with that... Lucie did well and got 68% on the more challenging test this year.
This month I decided to try something completely new. Actually I tried several new things at once... Lightroom CC to do the basic photo prep, Photoshop CC to do final edits, and WordPress to create the site... I'm sure that all that change is good for me, and I did learn some new things.
Hopefully Lucie wasn't hanging around while I was trying to figure out some of those new things or she probably learned some new things too... Or maybe she's already heard all those words before!
Anyway, for those who are technically sharp, you've already figured out that WordPress didn't work out and I'm still using Expression Web for now, but maybe I'll figure out how to use that “intuitive” web software before next month...
Welcome to 2016.
I didn't take much in the way of pictures this month, at least not before Christmas, so most all of the early pictures are actually from Caroline. Then a lot of the later pictures are collages so I wouldn't (I mean Lucie wouldn't) have to try to come up with 75 captions this month...
We didn't actually travel a lot in December, we just packed a lot into the one trip we did take to Texas. You're probably thinking, “at least they got away from the cold and wet for a few days” but you would be mostly wrong. We did miss the one day of snow, much to Lucie's dismay (but it is snowing today so Lucie is thrilled), but it turned cold the day we arrived in Texas and we got to have thunderstorms and rain and fortunately missed the tornadoes that tore up the city not too far from us.
As you can see from the pictures, we visited the Karls in Fort Worth; then went on to visit family in Austin; celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary, obviously not our own :-); and finish up with New Years Eve and New Years Day with the Crosby-Schmidts.
This year I do plan to change up the website in some way, but I don't know what that will mean yet, so maybe next month will be new and different or maybe not. You'll just have to hold your breath and wait... or is that “don't hold your breath...” Anyway - see you in a month.
Hey! I'm only 5 days late! I ran out of gas. I... I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!
Actually, we just got in very late on Sunday (actually very early on Monday) and I've been on-call since getting back... (in fact, I had to stop this write up and respond to an on-call page. For those of you who are too young to know what a page is, it is now actually a text message, but back in the dark ages we actually had something called a pager on which you could get a short message telling you to call back... but I digress.)
Anyway, we did go on the annual (at least recently annual) Thanksgiving cruise, and thus most of this month's pictures are dedicated to that. Beyond that I don't really have much to say, so just enjoy.
Actually, there is one more thing... You can click here and hopefully see our Thriller Flash Mob!
Well don't get your hopes up.
We aren't really a spooky kind of family. In fact, I'm writing this before we even take very first Halloween picture, so right now I don't have any spooky pictures to show you. I could have had some, but I chose to delete the really scary pictures from California rather post them on the web...
Of course, I didn't go to California. I stayed here and took care of Buttercup. Are there any pictures of that? Of course not! I don't do selfies! Lucie does, however, so enjoy that. You can also enjoy all the “selfies” of the gals in California... Also, it was apparently nice at the beach in California, so you can see Lucie enjoying that too.
Of course, October means Lucie's birthday! This month, however, I jammed all the birtday pictures into only one picture so you can soak in all the excitement at once! A couple days later, she had her “birthday party” at Wings and Waves so you can soak in all that excitement as well... get it “soak” in the excitement... Wings and “Waves”... funny, huh?
That's what I thought.
And to end the month we're trying to catch up on rain fall all in one day - just in time for trick or treating! Yeah! I'm staying home and handing out the candy while Caroline schleps around with Belvedere. You know - Belvedere the cockatrice from Good Mythical Morning... this year's most popular Halloween costume... oh wait, that's Donald Trump...
And clearly this month's title isn't much better...
Nor do I have much to write about. As we approached the end of the month, I thought “Oh no! We don't have any pictures!” So we took some pictures at the dog park. Then I found all the pictures from the State Fair... clearly it made a strong impression on me...
Actually I think it is more likely that I was actively trying to forget the experience of going to the fair with three preteen girls, but you never know...
In any case, there aren't a lot of pictures this month, but sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles, or the ball bounces, or the way the wind is blowing, or even the way the cat jumps, though which way the cat jumps is really a bit different in intent, but what are you going to do about those wacky Aussies anyway?
Last month we introduced, “Isn't that so fun?!”... Is it still fun? Of course it is!
Clearly Comcast did not carry through with disabling the website as it is still up, but that is beside the point as we are here at our new location. Perhaps before the end of the year I will figure out how to take advantage of some new features and force some more technology on everyone. Or perhaps I will just stick with the tried and true format that you see today... Isn't that so fun?!
Otherwise, Lucie returned from Florida and we went to the Intel LTD picnic and Lucie has been making us watch a lot of Good Mythical Morning with Rhett and Link. I'll let you look it up for yourselves if you want to watch it. Besides that, it has just been the usual - work work work... until The Librarians came to town! I didn't get to go star spotting, but Caroline and Lucie got to watch them film (the episode is tentatively set to air on December 20, 2015.)
And now Summer is over again and Lucie will be starting the Sixth Grade already! Time just keeps flying by... maybe I'll take some time to go back through all the pictures on the website... you can too.
I'm going to start this month with a new catch phrase... Isn't that so fun?!
Isn't that so fun?! No, wait.. is that the catch phrase or is it commentary on the use of the catch phrase? I'm so confused... Isn't that so fun?!
And you know what else is fun? Comcast is doing away with this website in the middle of August! Isn't that so fun?! Yes, after almost a dozen years of providing a place for our family photos, they have decided to no longer support personal pages. So, very shortly this site will cease to exist. Isn't that so fun?!
Fortunately I was able to resurrect the site at www.thecarrikers.com before Comcast actually did away with home.comcast.net/~carriker. In theory this will mean all sorts of new possibilities for what the site will be capable of (Isn't that so fun?!) but initially I just hope to get the existing site copied over so nothing is lost...
Well June was certainly an exciting month...
We had the Festival of Flowers, the Children's Parade, CityFair, Fleet Week, the Spring Rose Show, the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade, the Rose Festival Dragon Boat Race, the Rose Festival Milk Carton Boat Race, Portland Beer Week, the Rose City Used Book Fair, the Bourbon and Bacon Fest, the Portland Pride Festival and Parade, and... the list just goes on and on. Of course, we didn't do any of those things.
Caroline did decide that she would go back to work by starting her own Mary Kay franchise because she really likes to pressure people into buying things... no, wait... that's not right. Anyway, she decided to try it so now I just need her to be really good at it so I can quit my job and live a life of luxury... We also did a few more things, but you can see that in the pictures.
And things were equally exciting elsewhere in the world...
The US women moved on to the World Cup finals with a victory over Germany!
The Supreme Court upset many Southerners by defending Texas's right to not put Confederate flags on specialty license plates... only to then have the South finally decide that maybe the Confederate flag might just actually be offensive to many people... Of course, the Supreme Court also kept the Affordable Care Act alive, told Gilbert, Arizona that it couldn't restrict church signs to be smaller than political signs, and declared same sex marriage to be legal in all 50 states.
Greece went bankrupt... and Puerto Rico isn't far behind...
Terrorists attacked France, Kuwait, Somalia, and Tunisia following a massacre in Syria...
But don't worry - if the news has you down, you can come visit us in July... pot is legal starting July 1st :-)
Well at least this month the pictures are from more than two days of the month...
I don't guess I have a whole lot to write about as usual. We've made our travel plans for later in the summer and decided to fix the deck this summer and go see Lyle Lovett this summer and go see The Who this fall and both the Subaru and the Porsche have broken already this Spring so we're doing our best to boost the economy!
What else? We're getting old - Caroline got Shingles and I didn't want her to feel bad about that so I decided to try out Sciatica just so I could whine about something while she was being stoic... At least we have Lucie (and Buttercup and Cream Cheese and Cheesecake...) to keep us from really getting old...
I've made some progress on Caroline's sewing table, but you'll notice no picture yet. I've stalled momentarily now that I've come to the part where I really have to figure out how to support the sewing machine at just the right height so everything is flush with the table top. I'm sure I'll figure it out any day now...
Anyway enjoy the pictures and I'll be back next month.
Once again I don't have a lot to say. Even in pictures this time, most of what I have to “say” is really from just two days this month. Sometimes that happens...
Last month I said I would take a new approach so that this section would be more exciting.
Did it work? Are you excited yet? No? Well then clearly you must be doing something wrong. Take a lesson from Oh and say “Oh no! My hands are in the air like I just do not care!” You can go see “Home” to understand that, or just watch the trailer for it on YouTube if you don't want to go to the movies...
Anyway...
Another month has come and gone. As you can see from the pictures it was jam packed with visitors and travel (and Dad managed to keep himself out of all the pictures.) In addition, we donated Harry's mattresses, and the rest of his bed, to a family that just moved from Africa and is in need of just about everything. Now, though, I have no more excuse for not making progress on Caroline's sewing table as there is plenty of room to set it up in Harry's room / Caroline's sewing room. Maybe I'll write about that in April...
Until then, enjoy this month's pictures!
Once again, I have all this space and nothing to say.
I'm sure there must be some hilarious anecdote that I could share about Lucie or about Buttercup, but I can't remember anything... Maybe I need to work on this throughout the month rather than waiting until the end.
Anyway, it has been another month and we celebrated another Harry Day (Valentine's Day to the rest of the world, and we're probably not going to get everyone to celebrate Elmonzo Valentino, but we'll keep trying) with stuffed animals and a super hero quilt for the kids at Doernbecher's and Lucie rode in a B.E.A.T. horse show.
Otherwise, work has been work, the weather has been really weird, and I have been really slow making progress on Caroline's sewing table. Hopefully I really will be able to finish it before Caroline gets completely fed up. I keep telling her it will be great but I don't think she believes me.
I guess the best I can do is leave you with this from the Old Farmer's Almanac: “Groundhog found fog. New snows and blue toes. Fine and dandy for Valentine candy. Snow spittin'; if you're not mitten-smitten, you'll be frostbitten! By jing-y feels spring-y.”
I did look for a new web site format for 2015, but I didn't find anything that I just had to try, so you get basically the same format again... at least for now.
Once again January is a month of birthdays and Focal at work. This year though we didn't get any visitors, unless you count whatever Buttercup got on her feet...
You can also see that I've joined the NSA and our neighborhood will now be “safer” due to the aerial surveillance that I'll be providing (once I learn to stop crashing so much :-) )
Otherwise, I don't have any big news to start the year, so just look at the pictures...
And another year comes to an end... oh what a fabulous New Years Eve party!
That is, I'm sure someone some where is having a fabulous New Years Eve party. I'm just going to bed early.
Obviously December is all about Christmas, so we have parade, tree, Santa, decoration, and Christmas day pictures for your enjoyment. We also had a short visit from Aunt Maggie. And, of course, the new rats make their appearance this month! So far we have spent about a billion dollars and a zillion hours on their cage and play pen to “rat proof” them because the first thing they did was figure out how to get out of both...
Otherwise, I don't have much to say - we keep trying to come up with the holiday letter but we wouldn't want to brag about our Nobel prize, our new vacation home in Aruba, the friends we made fighting Ebola in West Africa, etc. So, all you get is...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Of course I don't have anything witty to say this month either...
I can, however, copy a bunch of information from the cruise log (stardate...)
We traveled from Port Everglades to Grand Cayman to Roatan to Cozumel to Princess Cays to Port Everglades - a total of 2424 nautical miles (2789 “regular” miles (or 4489 km for the rest of the world)) at an average speed of 20.6 knots.
Saturday 22nd November 2014 The mooring lines were let go at 16:32, and with the help of our thrusters, propulsion and steering (not to mention our impulse engines and warp drive), started with a sharp turn to port inside the exit channel. Once clear the last pair of buoys, we disembarked the local pilot by 17:03 (don't let the door hit you on the way out) and began our voyage towards George Town in Grand Cayman.
Sunday 23rd November 2014 Crossing the Tropic of Cancer in the early morning, we were sailing around the western cape of Cuba. Once the Seal Team departed the ship (was that supposed to be a secret?) we left Cuba behind and continued crossing the Caribbean Sea following a South Easterly course.
Monday 24th November 2014 We let go the starboard anchor at 06:22 and after the captain got through yelling at us we lowered the chain too and then had to dive down and re-attach the sucker. Then we let everyone off to party. Once we got everyone we could find back on board later in the day, we commenced to heaving up the anchor at 15:56 (thank goodness it worked so the captain didn't have to yell at us again) and set a South Westerly course towards Roatan, Honduras.
Tuesday 25th November 2014 After passage inside the narrow channel of the Dixon Cove Bay, we commenced our mooring operation by 09:44. Again, we let everyone off to party and we understand that that Lucie kid spent a lot of time playing with the monkeys but we couldn't let her bring one back on the ship. We also had to kick it into high gear to get out of port and on our way once we dragged everyone off the beach.
Wednesday 26th November 2014 We embarked the local pilot at 06:10, and when he finished puking his guts up, we began making multiple attempts to put into dock. Though we were ready to give up and sail on, the pilot begged us to make one last attempt so he wouldn't have to ride back in that dinky little boat and we managed to get the Ruby Princess alongside at Punta Langosta at 07:55. We then informed all the passengers that though we did get in to dock, pretty much all the excursions were canceled due to the rough waters. Everyone promptly went ashore and got drunk at the first bar they could find. By 16:48 everyone staggered back aboard and we pushed off at 17:18.
Thursday 27th November 2014 We crossed the Tropic of Cancer in the morning again and sailed along the north coast of Cuba so that we could recover the Seal Team and then entered inside the Florida Strait. Oh yeah - and it was Turkey Day so most of the passengers enjoyed Lobster for dinner.
Friday 28th November 2014 After sunrise the Ruby Princess rounded the South Eastern corner of Eleuthera Island and at 08:21 the port anchor was let go. You would of thought we would have learned our lesson at Grand Cayman! We finally started getting people off the ship at 09:09 and everyone who hadn't roasted themselves yet headed out for their last chance to burn themselves up before getting back on board by 16:06 for the last night at sea.
Saturday 29th November 2014 At approximately 06:21 we cranked up the side thrusters and woke everyone up early so that we could have all lines fast and the gangways rigged and ready by 07:00 so that we could make everyone wait in a long line at customs! Ha ha - what a great way to end everyone's vacations!
Of course, I left out all the fun of flying a red eye from Portland to Fort Lauderdale on Spirit Airlines (I don't recommend Spirit or red eyes) and the fun of hanging out in Fort Lauderdale for an extra day because there is no good way to fly back that leaves late enough to get off the cruise ship. And I didn't talk about the shows on the ship or the art auction or the karaoke contest or the marriage game show or the freezing pool or the food or... Let's just say that while I don't recommend the flights, I do recommend Thanksgiving cruises...
I'm sure I should have a lot to say this month... just look at all the pictures.
Unfortunately, I'm already a day late and given technical difficulties, it is now late to boot. Oh well, maybe for November I can come up with something witty to say. Or maybe not.
As you can see this month included some dog training, some partying, some horse back riding, a birthday, a visit from Bebe and TC, some more partying, and Halloween. This year Lucie decided, after some initial frustration with the maneuverability of a big cardboard box costume, to go all out and trick-or-treat until the lights went out, so she got quite the haul this year. Next year she has vowed to do something easier to get around in so who knows what will happen.
Anyway, that's it for tonight... see you next month.
Well...
September already came and went...
I don't have much to say this month, and there aren't too many pictures either...
Well, I'm sure something big will happen in October...
Well, August actually turned out to be a busy month...
We started with the Paws in the Grove. Buttercup, Lucie and Caroline got to spend a few hours goofing off in the park, while I stayed at home and slaved over spreading 2 units of bark dust. Actually, of course, I slaved over watching the Best Buy in Town guys blow the bark dust in this year. It was the best late Father's Day gift ever - they took an hour and a half to do what it normally takes us all day to do, with no back breaking labor on our part. And we really didn't want to do any more shoveling after putting in the dog potty...
Lucie went on the B.E.A.T. trail ride again this year. She went on a longer ride, which was good for her, but since we weren't on horses with her, we had to entertain ourselves by walking some of the trails in the park with Buttercup. It turned out to be a pretty good morning with better weather than the last couple rides when it was a little cool.
I took a couple days off work and forced myself on Caroline's and Lucie's trip to California. We took the scenic route and went to Crater Lake on the way down and up the southern Oregon coast on the way back, so we didn't spend the whole time on I-5. This was the first time we've been to Crater Lake that you could actually get all the way around, but there were still little patches of snow on the ground even in mid-August! In California we hung out with Mark and Maggie and the dogs got to have a big party for a couple days with Buttercup disrupting all their (and her own) routines.
Buttercup also turned 1 this month so we had to have two parties - one in California and one here at home. No, this isn't a spoiled dog - why would you think that?
Gran and Mad Dog then came for a visit. Maybe they'll come every summer now rather than coming when it is cold and wet!
Even though Lucie was gone for a big part of this month, we still have a lot of pictures for July, even if I had to borrow from Bebe and TC (and later from Caroline's iPhone.)
Of course, with Lucie out of the picture there wasn't much to show from Oregon. We did tear up a corner of the yard and put in fake grass so that Buttercup can have a toilet that looks better than the rest of the yard rather than worse, but I didn't take any pictures. Once they blow in the bark dust (Caroline's Father's Day gift - no shoveling of bark dust this summer :-)!) (only the :-) is part of the emoticon - the ! is for excitement and the last ) is just to close the parenthetical statement...) maybe I'll take a picture of the finished product...
We had an excellent 4th of July fireworks show again this year in Forest Grove - the fire department really does a good job, and unlike the downtown Portland or Vancouver fireworks you don't have to show up hours early or spend hours in traffic when it is done. But, this year I didn't take any pictures so you'll just have to imagine them... Boom! Bang! Pop Pop Pop! Wheeeeee! Boom!
Greg and Leiza came for a short visit and everyone went to the coast while I was at work. Lucie also went to the county fair without me this year too. Actually she went without me or Caroline and it was quite the test for both of us to let her go with her friend and some other chaperone... but she made it back no worse for wear...
And that is about it for July...
One of these months I'm going to have a lot to say and everyone will be shocked.
This is not that month.
I didn't think there would really be anything to post this month, but we did have dog trick training with Buttercup and Lucie talked to the City Council and we made our own corn hole game set (if your mind went there, shame on you - if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask...) and the weather has been warmer and drier than usual. That didn't really help the plants we planted last month, but that's the way it goes.
Otherwise, work is work and home is home. Everyone is fine. Lucie will be in Georgia most of next month so we'll be Truffle sitting while she's gone. Hopefully Truffle won't be gone before Lucie gets back...
See you in another month.
My son
I am here
I could not protect you
From the world
My son
I am here
I could only love you
No matter what
My son
I am here
My love unconditional
On this you can rely
My son
I am here
Life can be difficult
And now you must fly
My son
I am here
Changes are painful
I will never forget who you are
Of course, I didn't actually write these words, but adapted them from a poem by Rose Falcone. I thank her for her words because I have so few of my own...
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent... a dream deeply rooted in the American dream - one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed... And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.
What?
Just checking to see if anyone actually read this section.
Anyway, I don't actually have much to say (again) this month. Time keeps flying by and another month is gone. Or, should I say “ah... April... time to pay the taxes.” Yes, it is true that spring time is here and we got to celebrate Easter and this year Bebe and TC came to visit in April, but really what could be more exciting than the annual visit from the IRS? Maybe in May I can poke sharp sticks in my eyes...
But enough ranting from me. Kind of light on the pictures this month. I could have included a few more flowers or pictures of the back of Lucie's head as she found Easter eggs, but that probably wouldn't have done it for you, so you'll have to make do with these.
See you next month.
I could say something about March Madness I guess except that I haven't paid any attention to it what so ever and thus I wouldn't know what to say... 32 teams (is it 32 teams?) - one winner (did someone win yet?) Oh yeah - it is inspiring...
Lucie and Caroline went to Texas. I stayed home with Buttercup and Truffle. They both survived, so it was a success as far as I'm concerned. I also kept Lucie's seedlings alive so what could be better?
Work continues to be work, with the added excitement of tax time. Almost done with that again this year...
What else? I could talk about the weather... or maybe my bunions or sciatica or some other problem that I really don't have but which would further emphasize how I don't really have anything interesting for this month.
This month in sports, the Broncos blew the Super Bowl, the Olympics came and went, and we had our own downhill events on Woodglen with lots and lots of snow. Lots and lots of snow. Did I mention that it snowed?
After digging out from the snow, we celebrated Harry's 8th birthday. It was wonderful that so many people remembered, and we were able to take a lot of plush animals to Doernbecher's to make things a little brighter for the kids there on Valentine's Day. Lucie also went riding on Harry's birthday, though that probably would have been more successful without the Valentine's Day party at school and the donut afterwards...
I managed to make two quick trips to Phoenix this month. I don't know if either was really worth it, but I did get to see the sun, and on the second one, Hertz set me up with a Mercedes GLK350 and the hotel gave me a two bedroom suite! It was great... I drove from the airport to the hotel - went to sleep - got up - left the hotel - drove to work - and drove to the airport. Not like I get those kinds of perks when I can actually use them.
Lucie rode in her first horse show. She didn't actually compete as she was the only one riding in her class, but she seemed to have a good time (no one tried to make her dress funny or anything) and she, and Dixie, did well for their first time riding in front of judges. We'll see if she decides to do it again, or if she just wants to ride for the sake of seeing the barn animals.
And, that seems to be it for this month...
Another month has already slipped by and once again I didn't really notice what was happening. Maybe that's because I turned “old” and my memory is failing... Maybe that's just the way I am...
Obviously there were a lot of Birthdays... Gran, me, Caroline, Maggie, Bebe, Gwen, Grosse Tante Leah... plus the two birthday parties that Lucie attended - swimming and pizza... and I'm probably forgetting others (there goes my memory again...)
We also had a couple of visitors - Maggie and Gwen started and ended the month for us...
Maybe next month I'll have a bit more to talk about since it won't be Focal time at work and I'll actually (hopefully) have time to focus on something else.
I should have something really deep and insightful to say about the passing of another year. I don't.
Nevertheless, I guess I will say something. It was a seemingly short month. We barely got the tree and lights up and then it was time to take them down again. I guess that was indicative of the whole year. Though it wasn't my favorite year at work and the individual days often seemed long, the year seems to have flown by.
So what did happen? The Crosby-Schmidts came to visit, I went to Japan, Bob finally gave up and went to be with Muffin, Caroline and Lucie went to Austin, Truffle had surgery, we spread Harry's ashes at the coast, went to Michigan, saw the airshow, went to the county fair, Lucie went to horse camp, went on a trail ride for B.E.A.T., we saw Lyle Lovett at the zoo, Lucie went to Georgia, we updated the kitchen, Aunt Maggie came to visit, we got a puppy, Gran and Mad Dog came to visit, we went on a Thanksgiving cruise, and Plushie managed to escape and had to be put to sleep after falling down the elevator shaft.
I guess I could have written an impressive Christmas letter if only I could add a little detail to that summary... but I can't so, I'm done now.
Well, last month was all about the puppy, and this month... two measly pictures... What can I say - the novelty wore off pretty fast. OK - now that all the dog lovers are riled up, I guess I'll move on...
You can also see that Gran and Mad Dog came out to visit. They actually did get pretty good weather given that they chose to visit in November, but you can clearly see that going to the Caribbean in November is a better choice than going to Oregon. Nevertheless it was a good visit and Gran got to see Buttercup and go riding with Lucie...
Then you can see that nothing happened the rest of the month.
OK - what really happened is that work got to be a bit too much and I spent all my time there rather than at home right up until it was time to go on our Thanksgiving trip. Actually, we did have one more bit of excitement when the kitchen sink plumbing failed on Thursday night just before we left on Friday for our trip! Yeah! Fortunately, a quick trip to Home Depot and I found the right kind of pipe this time to fix the drain so that it wouldn't come apart again... now I just need to figure out why the garbage disposal is loose... You just can't find good help these days (oh wait - :-( I did the plumbing on the new kitchen)
And, of course, the month ended with a week in the Caribbean. I'll let the photos cover that. Fortunately, we made it home despite having three flights and two tight connections - nothing like running through the Charlotte and Phoenix airports only to find the next flight isn't really on time and that boarding is just getting underway... Beats the alternative of missing the plane though...
As promised, Buttercup came home with us to start the month off with lots of activity. I have to admit that I kind of like her. Not that I'm saying I want to get up in the middle of the night to take her out to go potty... but she's a pretty good puppy and Caroline and Lucie are working hard to make sure she behaves herself. We'll see if there are as many pictures next month...
Unfortunately, this month turned tragic with the death of two little girls. I didn't know Anna or her step-sister Abigail, but Caroline is a friend of Anna's mother, Susan, so she has been helping Susan following the terrible hit-and-run accident in front of their house.
As with other tragedies, though it seems like everything should stop and mourn with those who have lost, the rest of the world keeps moving forward. In our case, that includes Buttercup, who still needs attention and training, and Lucie, who turned 10! (and also still needs attention and training, but that might be a lost cause...) Still, as we go forward, our thoughts are with Anna and Abigail (and their families) and Harry and everyone who has lost a loved one before their time.
But I am better with droll commentary than serious, emotional subjects, so I'm going to stop now...
To wind down the month, first, we celebrated Lucie's birthday at home. French toast for breakfast. Grilled cheese for dinner. She really knows how to live it up... You can see from the pictures that she made out pretty well, though. Cake batter to go with the french toast and cake to go with the grilled cheese (and no pictures, but cupcakes at school too.) Caiti and Melinda came over to share the cake, and Buttercup got in on the party too, so I think Lucie was satisfied with her birthday...
And then we had the actual party. I say “we”, but I should really say “they”. I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't even there. My job was to stay home with Buttercup (until she went to the end of the party to meet all the little girls.) I'm pretty sure I was happiest with that job... But, Lucie had a good time, and that is really the point!
As always, October ended with Halloween festivities. Last year I ended up in Arizona on Halloween so this year I went trick-or-treating with Lucie. I still remember when she didn't want to go far or visit many houses, but this year she made a pretty good haul...
Last month I said maybe I would think of something exciting to write about this month. That didn't happen.
Lucie went back to school. That wasn't that exciting in an of itself, but they are trying to make it exciting by reorganizing the classes after the start of school. We're going to add a 4th grade class by pulling kids out of each of the three existing oversized classes. That would be great if they were adding a teacher, but they aren't. They are moving a 1st grade teacher to 4th grade, a kindergarten teacher to 1st grade, combining four kindergarten classes into three, and hiring a part time kindergarten teacher. The obvious solution, right?
As you can see from the pictures, we are getting a puppy. Her name is Buttercup, and after a little bit of debate and soul searching, Lucie has decided not to rename her. We told Lucie when she came back from Georgia we would start talking about getting a puppy, but that did not mean we were going to get one right away. So, we're getting one right away.
But first, we need to redo the kitchen. OK. That's done.
Start to finish was a little longer than the original plan, but the original plan was only 2 weeks, so it still didn't take too long. Going without a kitchen sink or dishwasher was a bit of a challenge, but paper plates and plastic ware (along with cereal and hot dogs) really eliminate the need for water...
Oh yeah - Aunt Maggie came for a quick visit. They spent time shopping and I spent time finishing the electrical and the plumbing and work... Hopefully they had a good time.
Get ready for next month - Lucie has a birthday and the puppy comes home!
I don't really have much to say this month. We started with a busy weekend, getting in the trail ride to raise a little money for B.E.A.T. (thanks to everyone who contributed) and then seeing Lyle Lovett at the zoo. No, he wasn't an exhibit - we have concerts on the lawn... As usual, he didn't have an opening act - he did have about 15 people in the large band, and he did perform for a couple of hours. This time he even managed to perform all of Caroline's favorites, including L.A. County.
Then it was time to take Lucie to Georgia. We went to the beach, caught a baseball game, attended the theater, and tried to avoid the heat and humidity as much as possible, and then Lucie sent me packing so she could spend a couple weeks in Georgia without her parents. So what did we do to take advantage of her being away? Not too much really...
We caught up on the last season of Dexter (only a few more episodes to go...) We picked out a replacement counter, backsplash, and sink for the kitchen (but it will be a while before construction starts.) And, we did go to a movie, but it was so good that I already forgot what it was...
Maybe we'll find something more exciting for September...
So the first week of July started off with a bang. Actually, it started off hot, and then got down right cold for the bang on July 4th. We didn't end up huddled under blankets for the Forest Grove fireworks, but we would have if we had thought to bring one! I didn't take any pictures so I could actually watch the show this year. The fireworks were pretty good, though this year they didn't set a whole bunch off at once by accident like last year... (At least for now you can see last year's “oops” on YouTube) That meant the show went on longer, but I think a lot of people just wanted it to end so they could go inside and warm up.
As always, lots of work. I've been trying to get away from it on the weekends at least a little bit. Putting some miles in on the bicycle, but sadly it just keeps reminding me that I'm getting older... at least I don't think I walked funny after a long ride when I was younger. Now walking funny is an improvement over not being able to move at all!
We went to see Despicable Me 2. I thought it was pretty funny and I think Lucie really liked it after she got over her initial grump about having to do anything at all with her parents. We also went to see Monsters University this month (getting pretty crazy - two movies in the same month!) It was pretty funny too, but Monsters Inc. was better...
And Lucie went to Horse Lovers Camp. I guess she had a good time, but after the first day she really didn't want to tell me about it. Probably because she already told Caroline about it before I got home, and you know how Lucie doesn't like to do the same things over and over again... wait a minute - she loves doing the same things over and over again! Now I'm hurt that she didn't want to tell me about camp...
After going so crazy on movies earlier this month, we decided to go all out on the last weekend, and we went to the Airshow Friday night and the County Fair on Saturday. And since they were right across the street from each other we got to see part of the airshow again... We had much better seats on Friday though. They sold us tickets for non-existent seats and then had to make some available, so we were right in the middle of the show... worked out pretty well for us :-) Like the 4th, it got cool before the evening ended with more fireworks, but they put on a really good show, so it was worth it. And then a grand time was had by all the next day at the fair. Both Caroline and I were foolish enough to go on the Ring of Fire (aka Circle of Hell) with Lucie right off the bat. After that, things were pretty tame, but I still let Caroline enjoy more of the rides than I did... We won't talk about how much I ended up paying for Lucie's newest stuffed Penguin at the dart toss game, but fortunately Lucie failed to win a live goldfish...
I should probably have a lot to say this month since we went all the way to Michigan...
I haven't gotten nearly enough done... I started another desk. This one will be more traditional than the last one. Or at least it will be if I ever get it done, along with working on the deck and the kitchen counters and maybe putting sprinklers in to the upper end of the lot so we can finally grow something there...
And, yes, we did go to Michigan. Over all, the trip worked out pretty well. We left Portland more or less on time, and we had plenty of time to make our connection in Denver since they shut the whole airport down and sent us underground for the tornado warning. Fortunately, it didn't hit the airport and we were less than an hour late leaving for Chicago. On the way back, we were late leaving Chicago due to a thunderstorm, but our flight out of Denver was even later, so we made it home.
Michigan was great. We had good weather the whole time. We went to the lake, swan feeding, the pool, swan feeding, horse back riding, swan feeding, fishing, swan feeding, strolling through town, swan feeding, and did I mention swan feeding? All in all, it was quite relaxing and I really had no interest in going back to work, but since Caroline refuses to win the lottery...
Hmm... another month has already come and gone. I guess I shouldn't exaggerate and claim the year is half over already (it is obviously only 41.4% over (probably more by the time you actually read this)) but the year does seem to be going by pretty quickly...
May didn't bring any big trips or guests. We did celebrate Mother's Day. I even remembered to get Caroline flowers from me and the kids (though I apparently forgot to let Lucie know of her generosity, which she was quick to point out to Caroline.) Of course, Caroline took care of my mom along with her own so I wouldn't forget (but I did come up with my own card!)
We also took time to remember Harry and celebrate his life. In addition to planting more around the house, this year we went out to the beach and released his ashes in the wind and surf. It wasn't just like a movie... I hope it is what Harry would have wanted, but we just really couldn't spread his ashes at the barn with the horses even if riding really was his favorite thing.
Also, the hammies continue to bring excitement to the day to day... Now they aren't getting along, so we can't keep them together. Another trip to the vet... some anti-biotics... two cages... these $13 hamsters are really racking up the big bucks in terms of on-going expenses.
But, no, we haven't gotten a dog yet. Lucie did get a big book of dog breeds though and is really working on it...
This month started with an exciting trip to Japan. I realize that for many people, this might actually be exciting. For me... not so much. It was actually a nice break from the day to day churn at work (though there seemed to be as many, or more, fires to stomp out when I got back as there were before I left) but overall it was about the same as other trips. When left to fend for myself I was able to find McDonalds, Mr. Donut, and fresh fruits and veggies (yes, really some veggies too) at the grocery. When others tried to take me some place “nice”... I was able to find McDonalds afterwards so I didn't go hungry all night...
Unfortunately, while I was in Japan Bob decided that he had had enough and pretty much stopped eating and drinking. Caroline and Lucie took care of him and kept him going until I could get home and say good-bye, but then we had to take him to the vet and put him to sleep. I'm sure I handled it worse than Caroline or Lucie...
No we didn't get a dog yet.
Once I got back, it was time for Caroline and Lucie to go traveling, so they took a long weekend down in Austin. With the two of them out of the way, I could concentrate and just spend that much more time at work! What fun! I did go crazy on Saturday and clean out the garage instead of working. What can I say? I know how to have a good time.
Before they left for Texas though, I just had to point out that Truffle had a “tumor”. Some quick research (i.e. Google) told Lucie that hamsters rarely get tumors, and that it was most likely a cyst. However, a quick (and relatively expensive) trip to the vet told us that it really was a tumor. Thus another trip to the vet after the trip to Texas for surgery...
What can I say about March...
I really need to start writing stuff down as the month goes along. Otherwise I get to the end and don't know what to write about. Even with the pictures this month, I almost forgot about all the pictures from Cathy, Chris, and Jane's visit (or is that supposed to be Cathy's, Chris's (or just Chris'), and Jane's visit.) But the pictures don't tell the whole story... no pictures from where they went while Lucie was in school and I was at work; no pictures of Voodoo Donuts; no pictures from the restaurant where Lucie hated the too fancy tomato soup and grilled cheese (good thing there is always a McDonald's close at hand); no pictures of Lucie's new favorite game, Apples to Apples...
Also, now we seem to need a special occasion to take pictures. That's probably because Lucie is so charming about it now and neither Caroline nor I really want to be in the picture either...
Anyway... Another month has come and gone. Ninety days... Two thousand one hundred sixty hours... One hundred twenty nine thousand six hundred minutes... Seven million seven hundred seventy six thousand seconds... Sounds like a long time doesn't it? How about only 24.7% of a year? Or maybe 0.2% of a lifetime? Maybe I just need to spend less time on this paragraph!
Next month will start with me spending two weeks in Japan and then Lucie and Caroline will spend a little time in Austin. Hopefully some time in between we'll spend a little time together and maybe take a few pictures for the web site. See you in a month.
Once again, I had every intention to write a scintillating apercu of the Carriker family exploits of the last 28 days... Instead I am forced to look up words in the thesaurus to punch up the writing and try to make the days sound more exciting.
The reality, of course, is that February is a difficult month, and it is hard to celebrate Valentine's Day with Lucie and celebrate Harry's birthday without him. This year, we took some plush animals to be distributed at Doernbechers and visited with Jan and Mira (turns out Mira has a Valentine's birthday too) then took Lucie to school so she wouldn't miss the party - a very tough day for Lucie: visit with people she adores, go to school for lunch, recess, and a party... and then go horseback riding. Of course, who am I to complain - I took the day off from work.
Other than the 14th, the month has really just flown by. I'm spending too much time at work. We've had a few sunny weekend days and Lucie is riding her bike more. I wasn't home to capture the first big crash in pictures, but I was able to twist the handlebars back to where they were supposed to be and Lucie still wants to ride, so it wasn't too bad.
Anyway - that's pretty much it for February - maybe March will result in more pictures.
It probably seems like a slow start to the new year, but I actually had to update a lot of the site just to move from 2012 to 2013...
Of course, you don't care. You just want to see the pictures. So look at them already!
Perhaps next month I'll have more to share...
The end of the year always seems to arrive before you know it. You finally get to Halloween, and then suddenly it is Thanksgiving and then Christmas, and then POOF! the year is gone.
2012 saw a new format for the web site (not that you can really tell from the monthly pages... maybe something new for 2013?) and 255 new pictures capturing snowy days, swimming lessons, Sindy, our first birthday without Harry, Lucie's pierced ears, the rock museum, Spring in Oregon, Lucie and Lauren, a trip to Chicago, Summer in Georgia (and the much cooler Oregon coast), back to school, Halloween prep, a different Thanksgiving in the Caribbean, the arrival of Plushie and Truffle, and Christmas. So much captured on “film”, and so much missed...
I got a collection of essays written by William Gibson for Christmas. In one he writes that “Time moves in one direction, memory in another. We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.” The digital camera and the web had only just begun when he wrote that, and though I am grateful for the digital camera (in fact, the digital everything that allows me to make a living) that has allowed me to try to capture Lucie and Harry's lives, I wonder what Lucie will think one day... Will she be glad that it exists, or will she just want to delete all her Dad's jokes that she doesn't find funny?
Welcome to 2013. Another year begins...
Well, the month didn't start off too exciting. Like most of you, unless you are hanging out in AZ, we “Fell Back” to standard time. I bet most of you actually slept through it, but I got to be on-call and stay awake just in case things blew up at work. They didn't. But now I do get to drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark too, so at least I have that going for me.
Then really very little happened until we got to Thanksgiving week. This year we changed things up and went to the Caribbean to be thankful for the warmth and sun instead of the cold and gray. Lucie was her usual charming self about the possibility of change... “Why can't we just stay home?” Once she got on board (get it - “got on board”) though it was smooth sailing (get it - “smooth sailing”) and the week just flew by. (OK, no more bad plays on words, even if we did have to fly to and from Florida...)
As you can see, lots of pictures from the cruise... Just be glad I didn't post all 449 of them...
Sadly, the end of the trip was not happy. Sindy passed away on Thanksgiving day, and we found out while we were in the airport in Los Angeles waiting for our connection home on Saturday. We are all very sad that she is no longer with us and appreciate all the love and support that everyone has shown Lucie. I went ahead an included a few pictures of Sindy here, but Lucie is working on a more complete Sindy scrapbook.
Fortunately, Bob continues to be with us. The vet informed us that he didn't give them any problems, all his tests came back good, and he didn't throw up once the whole week. I told them that was because they didn't have any carpet in his cage at the vet's office. He threw up three times the first day he was home just to prove me right.
I guess that's probably enough for this month. Enjoy your Christmas shopping and holiday music!
So, other than griping about too much work (and too much sure beats the alternative), this was kind of a busy month. Lucie's friend Lauren was in town briefly, we started to talk about some art options for Lucie, Bebe showed up to surprise Lucie for her birthday, we went to the Roloff Farm to pick out some pumpkins, Lucie actually had her birthday, Gran and Mad Dog came to visit, and we had Halloween... So much to do! And I didn't even talk about cleaning out the water feature (or catching a frog!) Fortunately, the month started off pretty nice before deteriorating into cold rainy Autumn weather.
I also played around with the site a little more this month. Hopefully the pictures on this page work a little more smoothly. If not, you can still go to the Photo Gallery and review this month there.
But, with getting back to school and all his stuff at work, there aren't too many pictures.
We still had a lot of sunshine this month so I got out to the park a few times and Dad got to ride his bike, though I'm being stuborn about riding mine...
Next month should offer more photo ops since it will be my birthday, but maybe I won't cooperate - you'll just have to wait and see!
Dad also included a “bonus picture” on this page that he didn't put on the home page originally. I still don't get it...
Well, I started this little section so I could tell everyone a little more about what we've been up to, but I don't know that I really have that much to share. I did go ahead and “voice” my own captions this month rather than having Lucie do them - hopefully that doesn't throw everyone off.
As you can see from the pictures, we did get out to the coast one weekend. Seaside was actually quite warm and there were a lot of people out at least wading in the water. We went down to Cannon Beach and it was completely different - not sure how a few miles could make such a difference.
Our big trip for the month was to Austin. The trip down was pretty uneventful, except for the rental car and the lost luggage. We got a Prius and I couldn't figure out how to start it, and we didn't get our suitcase until about 1am. Once we got through that, though it was smooth sailing. Not so much for the trip back. The flight out of Austin ended up delayed for several hours so we didn't make the connection in Dallas and ended up getting home way too late...
Anyway - hopefully you enjoy the pictures...
Some things really heated up in July. The weather was not one of those things. Actually, we did have some warm weather just after the 4th - seemed like old times with sunnier skies and higher temperatures. Then the cool, wet weather returned... or maybe that's just the way it seemed with Lucie in Georgia for a couple of weeks.
Of course, when we went to Georgia to get Lucie, we were treated to “lovely” warm weather again, and we just wanted to get out of the heat...
Anyway - lots of pictures this month with the return from Chicago and Bebe coming out to get Lucie and Mom and Dad going to Georgia to bring her back, plus a little bit of something other than “all Lucie all the time...” Maybe next month you'll even get to see Bob (who survived another boarding at the vet (or should I say the vet survived another visit from Bob?))
This month we're going for a whole new look for the site's main page. The monthly page remains largely unchanged. In addition to looking all spiffy and new, it probably has a few bugs, too! (At no extra charge!)
Someone told me that it was Junuary... alledgedly summer is here, but really it is still cold and wet. That is probably a little bit harsh, but maybe not too far off the mark.
Never-the-less, Lucie held her garage sale and the weather worked out with sun and 80-degree weather and she made a tidy sum to donate to B.E.A.T.
Lucie and Caroline also made their way to Chicago at the end of June and left me at home to try to finish the new desk as well as the web site changes.
Enjoy!
