Posted inHome life

Urgent alert for highlighting professionals

Highlighters are a big part of my life. I am utterly unable to read a non-fiction book (and I read a lot of them) without a highlighter in hand. I consider myself a highlighting professional. I’ve test driven many kinds of highlighters over the years. I’ve come to settle on what I consider to be the Porsche 911 of highlighters: the tank style Sanford liquid accent. I always have a few extra around the house to avoid a highlighting emergency. However, a big advantage of the Sanford liquid accent is that you can see how much highlighting fluid is sloshing…
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Posted inEntertainment

2005 Academy Awards highs and lows

Once again we enjoyed being a part of Jim Ramsey’s annual Academy Awards potluck party. Jim hosts this every year, which I guess is why it’s called an annual affair. Some years the competition for the Most Awards Guessed Right prize has gotten pretty heated. We used to argue vehemently over rules, such as whether you had to fill out your guess sheet before the show started, or whether you could make a last second decision just before the envelope was opened. A few years, I recall, some people made their guesses ahead of time, while others were able to…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Images of the Salem Conference Center

Portlanders, you may snicker about the architectural quality of Salem’s brand new conference center, but the community open house today was well attended by wide-eyed capital city residents—me among them. Downtown Salem has seen quite a few store closings the past few years, so the opening of a combined Phoenix Hotel and Salem Conference Center is a welcome step toward rejuvenation of the city core. I began my tour by contemplating the front of the center from across the street. Laurel thinks it looks like a piece of particle board supported by tinker toys. I agree. We read in the…
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Posted inEntertainment

Confessions of a Trail Blazers anti-fan

I’ve found a new way of enjoying the Trail Blazers: root for them to lose. Yes, I’ve become a rabid anti-fan of Oregon’s one and only big-time professional sports franchise. I enjoy the televised games even more than I did when I was a positive-fan. Call me perverse, but there’s a special joy in watching a detested team lose that isn’t there when an admired team wins. It’s sort of like watching NASCAR races just for the wrecks, yet more guilt free—because nobody gets hurt when the Blazers lose. You can save quite a bit of time if you’re an…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Karl Rove, Plato, and anti-AARP ad

This great Bizarro cartoon, "Karl Rove and Plato," was included in yesterday's post. But it deserves to be featured on its own--especially since today The American Spectator neo-cons are following so faithfully in Rove's footsteps with their bizarre anti-AARP ad. (Click on the preceding link to see the ad animation, which I don't seem to have been able to include in the image below.) CNN reported that The American Spectator has pulled their "AARP hates the troops and loves gay marriage" ad because they just wanted to see how liberals would react. Would liberals go crazy or debate social security…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Global warming: the big truth

Our Oregon weather is way too weird. In mid-February I shouldn’t have to water willow cuttings Laurel planted by scooping dribbles of water out of a usually full creek. In mid-February I shouldn’t have to be turning on the sprinkling system to keep our plants from drying out. In mid-February the thermometer outside our front door shouldn’t say 58.6 degrees. But all this is true. So far this month Salem has gotten .43 inches of rain instead of the normal 3.73 inches. The average high for today is 52, not the actual 59. I’ve lived in Oregon for thirty-four years.…
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Posted inSustainability

Sustainable Fairview update

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Sustainable Fairview, the 275 acre sustainable development that is being planned here in Salem on the site of the old Fairview Training Center. Laurel and I are investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA), the group that bought the property from the state in 2002 and since has been planning how to make Fairview into a model mixed-use Green community. Currently, one 30-acre parcel has been sold by SFA to a local company, Sustainable Development LLC. Initially another local developer, Chris Jones, planned to buy this parcel, but that deal fell through. An…
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Posted inHome life

Never expected to find that on a CD

“Where did this CD come from?” Laurel said a few minutes ago. “I saw it sitting next to your CD player in your hospital room,” I told her. “When I packed up your stuff I threw it into the bag.” “I’ve never seen it before. It’s not one of my Successful Surgery CDs. They’re the only ones I took to the hospital.” Ah, a mystery! The CD had no identifying information on it apart from a hospital patient property label, the same as a pre-op nurse put on Laurel’s CD player that she took into surgery with her. I began…
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Posted inHome life

Greetings from Room 2502, Legacy Emanuel Hospital

Laurel’s hysterectomy surgery today was successful, and I am happily blogging the news from her room in the Family Birth Center wing of Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland. Down the hall a bunch of firefighters (subtly identifiable by the “Portland Fire Dept.” on the backs of their jackets) are congratulating a woman who I initially assumed was the wife of a firefighter. Bad sexist Brian! She could, of course, be a firefighter herself. Regardless, there is a certain pleasing symmetry here. One woman is recovering from having her uterus removed from her body in Room 2502, while a few doors…
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Posted inMeasure 37 Neighborhood

Measure 37 hits close to our home

For a lot of people, Measure 37 is a legal abstraction. For us, it means 215 nearby acres of farmland may become a subdivision. These rolling hills along Liberty Road about five miles south of the Salem city limits currently are zoned EFU (exclusive farm use). If the Measure 37 applicants have their way 80 homes will be built and 80 wells will be dug in an area that already is designated as €œgroundwater limited. I call that eventuality AFU (all...up; you can guess the rest of the acronym). Recently we got a phone call from a neighbor who adjoins…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Words, actions, and Mean Kitty

Given all the guilt I expressed in my previous post about whether buying our dog a Mean Kitty toy and Valentine’s Day card was injurious to the Third World, I was happy that Serena enjoyed playing with her new friend this morning. To make myself even happier, I decided to transform my guilt into action. A donation went off to UNICEF. Now I could feel good that we were giving more to needy overseas children than to our spoiled American dog. Then I had to deal with my Third World lack of computers while I was recycling mine guilt. I…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

Yes, Americans do give dogs Valentine’s Day cards

Dear Third World student who is using the Internet to research the question, “Do Americans really give Valentine’s Day cards to their dogs?”: I am pleased to be able to provide you with an answer. Yes. And not only a card, but also a present. Total cost: $2.99 for the card plus $5.49 for the “Mean Kitty” toy equals $8.48. If this is more than the average daily income for workers in your country, I’m sincerely sorry. Really. We Americans don’t realize how good we have it. It bothers me that our dogs have a higher standard of living than…
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Posted inHome life

Why men don’t share their feelings

“How’re you doing?” says Dennis as I walk into the Pacific Martial Arts changing room. Instead of replying with my habitual robotic “Fine, how’re you?” I have a crazy impulse to actually tell him. I’ll share my feelings! “Well, my feet have been tingling for about a week. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow.” Without missing a beat (appropriately: Dennis is a drummer) I hear, “You’ve got a brain tumor. No doubt about it. You’re going to die.” For the rest of our hour and a half training session, whenever I…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

I feel your Google pain

Burnside skateboard park blogger, via Orblogs I noticed your “Google can kiss my …” post where you complained that the Great God Google had dropped you from page 1 to page 23 on a “burnside skatepark” search. I feel your pain, my friend. I’ve also written about how “Google hath forsaken me.” I too have wandered in the search engine wilderness, wondering if I ever would be found again. Hearing of my difficult times, several Oregon bloggers took pity on my poor weblogged soul and linked my site to theirs. Eventually I returned to Google’s good graces, though the reason…
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Posted inMiscellany

I convert to Firefox

Here’s a photo of Serena, our dog, modeling the official Firefox cap that I bought along with Firefox/Thunderbird CDs and manual from the Mozilla store. Serena doesn’t look too happy with Firefox, probably because Laurel and I were screaming “stay, stay!!” at her while I tried to get the right camera angle to show off the logo. But I am. I love the free (if you download it) Firefox web browser. The February 2005 issue of PC World gave it a “Best Bet” award in a battle of the browsers review article. It got 4.5 stars (out of 5) vs.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment

Go Daddy Super Bowl ad too racy for Fox/NFL

What is this country coming to? Fox and the NFL cancelled the second showing of Go Daddy’s Super Bowl ad that featured the buxom woman at a congressional committee hearing whose “wardrobe malfunction” and sexy dance satirized Janet Jackson’s memorable 2004 halftime appearance. I’m a happy GoDaddy.com customer, using them for domain registration and web site hosting. Their customer service is excellent and their sense of humor admirable (I love their logo). Bob Parsons, the Go Daddy CEO, tells the tale of the ad cancellation on his weblog. He’s getting virtually universal support from commenters on his post who, at…
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Posted inHome life

Not hysterical about hysterectomy

After a lot of soul-searching, Laurel has decided to have a hysterectomy. Recalling what I knew about Hippocrates, at first I thought this meant she would never get hysterical again, like she does when I fail to properly clean dirty dog paws before letting Serena into the house or neglect to rinse food residue from the bottom of the kitchen sink into the garbage disposal. But, after whacking me on the side of my head for my patriarchal ignorance, Laurel explained that it isn’t a “wandering uterus” that is creating problems, but a uterus that gives her debilitating menstrual cramps.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Social security: There goes Bush again

In 1980 Ronald Reagan skewered Jimmy Carter’s attack on his Medicare policies with four words: “There you go again.” Somebody—no, everybody—needs to say the same to George Bush, adding on a few words: “There you go again, trying to conjure up a Social Security crisis just like you made up an Iraq weapons of mass destruction crisis.” You can fool us once, but you can’t fool us twice or thrice. I don’t like being lied to. It infuriates me. Understand: I like to listen to opinions that differ from mine. I was more or less happily watching Fox News yesterday…
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Posted inRecreation

I’m out-pararazzi’d

When I opened up the February 7 issue of Us weekly, I understood why People never took up my offer to sell the photo of Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake hiking in Hollywood’s Runyon Canyon that I took January 23 (see “Wide-Eyed on Rodeo Drive”). Apparently celebrity magazines prefer close-up shots like this: To my slightly more distant treatment: Probably long-lens equipped professional paparazzi realize the truth of this “Where celebs really hang out in LA” piece, which presciently says, “At nearby Runyon Canyon Dog Park, you might find William H. Macy taking his pooch for a little fresh air…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Speed up the Second Coming

Laurel and I found the “Christ Is Coming Very Soon!” advertisement in today’s Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper most interesting. We read it carefully, especially the eight compelling reasons why the Second Coming is right around the corner. It struck me that all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, should be doing what we can to hasten Jesus’ return. For the faithful, this will mark the fulfillment of prophecy. For the unfaithful, it will be pretty darn interesting, to say the least—the adventure of a lifetime, if not eternity. Practically speaking, there isn’t much that most of us can do to pump…
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