Posted inNeighborhood

Buy a lakeside home in Spring Lake Estates, near our house

When a house is for sale near us, naturally we hope that it will end up in the hands of someone we'd like to get to know. Ideally, someone liberal, environmental, neighborly, friendly.  So if this describes you, or someone you know who's looking for a home in the country, check out a new listing for 10322 Liberty Road S in rural south Salem (Oregon).  A great feature of this house is that it's right next to Spring Lake. We're several lots away from the lake, but this house is right there. Here's screenshots of part of the Zillow listing.
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Posted inArcimoto

Our Nissan Leaf experience may have a lesson for Arcimoto early adopters

Arcimoto is a Eugene company that's making a cool three-wheeled electric motorcycle billed as a FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle). I was one of the first to plunk down $100 as a pre-order reservation. My #129 place in line means I'm an early adopter. Or at least, a potential one. I'm still undecided about whether I'm going to pay upwards of $12,000 for an Arcimoto. The final design hasn't been revealed yet, nor has the final pricing with options. My experience with being an early adopter of the all-electric Nissan Leaf gives me some pause about jumping headfirst into the Arcimoto…
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Posted inHome life Television

Another DirecTV year with no Pac 12 Networks. Curses!

Since 2012 I've been cursing DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks for not working out a deal to offer us Pac 12 sports fans a way to see ALL of the football games and other events, not just the ones shown on ESPN, Fox, or other channels.  Every year around this time I Google "DirecTV Pac 12 Networks" to see if there's any hope that I'll be able to watch ALL of the Oregon and Oregon State football games this fall.  I put ALL in caps, because early on DirecTV had the annoying habit of telling me that I'd be…
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Posted inGrowing older Humor

Here’s some things to look forward to in old age, young people

I'm 69. When I was a youngster of, oh, 50 or so, I'd look upon the age I am now as so impossibly, horribly, inconceivably old, that I'd shudder at the thought of becoming, cursed be the name, a senior citizen.  So now that I've become what I once dreaded, an old person, I figure it's my duty to point out to young people some of the good things that come with geezer'ness. In no particular order, young un's, because my mind no longer works well enough to encompass the concept of ranking, here's some of the marvelous delights that…
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Posted inArcimoto

Three good reasons why I want an Arcimoto FUV

I've got an early pre-order number, #129, for the Arcimoto FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle), a three-wheeled electric vehicle that's classified as a motorcycle, yet has some desirable car-like features: seat belts, rollover protection, crumple zones, a roof. The title of my previous post from early July, "I've got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety," reflected my generally positive attitude toward this unique vehicle, and also some concerns. Since, I've given more thought to the pros and cons of becoming an Arcimoto owner. I still haven't driven one,  but I've come up with three good reasons why buying an Arcimoto makes sense…
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Posted inHome life Living with a catheter

I’m trying to cultivate my experiencing self, rather than my remembering self

There's nothing wrong with memories, nor with anticipations -- which basically are imaginings of future events which could become memories. If we couldn't remember the past or envision the future, we wouldn't be fully human. I've read about people who have a brain defect that leaves them almost totally in the present, and they can barely function. But as I wrote about yesterday on my Church of the Churchless blog, I'm trying to be more attuned to the present moment.  Partly this is because I've developed a chronic health problem that makes it tough for me to travel. So for…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Investing

Great 2018 investing analysis: “Do facts matter anymore?”

In these Trumpian times it often seems like we live in a post-truth world where reality is whatever someone wants it to be. But investing is one area where facts can be ignored for a while, but eventually always come back with a vengeance. So when I saw that our investment advisor's most recent quarterly musing about how things are going both internationally and here in the United States was titled, "Do facts matter anymore?," I read it more closely than I usually do.  Since I'm pretty sure this analysis only goes to clients, I've blacked out the name of…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

Photos of 2018 Salem Art Fair & Festival

I hugely enjoyed today's Salem Art Fair visit.  Here's photos, and commentary, of what caught my eye (and also my stomach) this afternoon. I share photos of my Art Fair purchase, a coffee mug with an unusual bumpy glaze. The Art Fair is a great $5 bargain, especially since this also pays for entry to evening entertainment. I'm probably returning tomorrow.
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Posted inMeasure 37 Neighborhood

A real estate sign speaks volumes about citizen activism

A few weeks ago a new sign went up along Liberty Road S, just north of Spring Lake Estates, where my wife and I live. It meant a lot to me, for reasons I'll explain. Here's a photo of the land being offered for sale. The property extends beyond the crest of the hill. The acreage suitable for a vineyard is shown in the photograph I took, which includes a shadow of me taking the photo. Back in 2005 I wrote my first blog post about these 217 acres, "Measure 37 hits close to our home." For a lot of…
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Posted inWeb/Tech

July 2018 DirecTV update changes user interface from bad to horrible

A few months ago DirecTV sent out an update to our Genie DVR receiver that sure wasn't an upgrade, because my wife and I found the user interface harder to use than the old version. But now, July 2018, DirecTV has managed to screw up the user interface even more. Last night, June 10, I fired up the receiver to see what was available for us to watch.  It took only a few seconds for me to realize that a bunch of our recordings had disappeared. The menu looked different, also. But there on the left side it said "All…
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Posted inArcimoto Home life

I’ve got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety

I've been following the saga of Arcimoto, a three-wheeled electric FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle) for a long time. So long, I can't remember when I plunked down $100 for a pre-order reservation.  I must have been among the first to do this, since my reservation number is #129, and I believe they total more than 2,700 now. Over the years I've gotten numerous emails from Arcimoto headquarters in Eugene, Oregon, which is just fifty or so miles from where I live, Salem. It seems like production for retail customers like me is always just around the corner, but that corner…
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Posted inBooks

I wish Bill Clinton had collaborated with Daniel Silva, not James Patterson

I'm a big fan of spy/thriller/espionage/solitary killer novels. Yeah, they fall into the category of "popular fiction" rather than literary fiction, but that's because...duh...they're popular.  I read lots of non-fiction because I want to learn something. I read popular fiction because I want to escape into an entertaining alternative world. Recently I've had two books sitting by my bed for nighttime reading: "The President Is Missing," by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, and "The English Spy" by Daniel Silva.  I tried to alternate reading each book on successive nights. But it didn't take long before I read Silva's book every…
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Posted inBooks

If you’re looking for a book design firm, I highly recommend ebookpbook

If you're an author who is looking for a competent firm to get your book self-published in both electronic and print versions, I highly recommend ebookpbook, and an associated entity, Newgen KnowledgeWorks.  Jason Pearce is the guy I worked with after finding ebookpbook listed as a resource on Amazon's CreateSpace web site. For quite a few years CreateSpace offered interior design and cover design services on a fee basis. But fairly recently CreateSpace stopped doing this, so publishing a book via CreateSpace's print on demand process now requires that an author find a way to get interior design and cover…
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Posted inPhilosophy Sports

Deep thoughts about Arkansas’ missed pop-up that cost a World Series championship

OK, I've put my philosophical reputation on the line with the title of this blog post. So I'll buy some time for my mind to come up with the promised deep thoughts by bringing readers of this post up to speed on the thoroughly mind-boggling play that cost the Arkansas baseball team the College World Series championship.  I live in Oregon, not far from Corvallis, the home of the Oregon State University (OSU) Beavers baseball team. So last Wednesday I was rooting for the Beavers to win the second game in the best out of three championship series with the…
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Posted inHome life Sports

Watching the Oregon State baseball team is better than reading a thriller

I've been hugely enjoying watching the Oregon State University (OSU) baseball team wend its way through the loser's bracket of the 2018 College World Series.  Now, I readily admit that I'm a "fair weather" OSU Beavers fan, since every year I only start watching them when the NCAA playoffs start. (I do have a good excuse, though, since I have DirecTV, and the super-irritating pissing match between DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks shows no sign of being resolved. Thus it's only when OSU games show up on ESPN that I can record and watch them.) Back in high school,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of what caught our eye at the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes

Yesterday Laurel and I visited the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes. Here's photos of what appealed to us when we visited seven of the more expensive homes in south Salem.  As much as we enjoyed the "eye-candy" of various architectural features, I end the Adobe Spark web page with these thoughts: So in the end, as happens every year we visit a Tour of Homes, we return home -- our minds filled with visions of what we'd like to have in our house, but also happy to know that what we do have has helped make us happy for the past…
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Posted inFamily

Regrets about the one hour I spent with my father

When Father's Day comes around I don't spend much time reminiscing about memories of my father, since I only spent one hour of face-to-face time with him in my entire life. (These are the only photos I have of my father. Obviously I don't remember these baby moments with him.) I wrote about this disturbing experience in an appropriately-titled blog post, "One hour with my father." Here’s a contrarian Mother’s Day story about the one hour I spent with my father. Note: the one hour, period. This wasn’t the best or worst hour, nor the happiest or saddest hour. It…
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Posted inHumor Living with a catheter

New life goal: be a humorous mindful Taoist stay-at-home

I find many things weird. Most of them reside within my own cranium. After all, that's really the only place weirdness resides -- in a human mind. Like, mine. One of my weirdnesses is that even though I'm an avid blogger, for the past year I've largely avoided writing about the Central Fact of my life since May 2017. Namely, my 68 year-old bladder deciding to call it quits during a visit to central Oregon, which led through a series of increasingly disturbing events to my current state of being an Old Man Who Has to Pee Via a Catheter. …
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health Living with a catheter

Between the black and white of suicide, there’s a gray area

The recent suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have gotten people talking about the problem of taking one's own life. That's good.  But I don't feel like we're talking about an important issue that is almost a taboo topic: the gray area between (1) the black badness of people killing themselves when there are better options available to them, and (2) the white goodness of people taking control of their death when they are suffering and only have a few months or less to live. What I see as a gray in-between area is when a person considers that…
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