Posted inHome life

Baby owl visits us, then freezes like a statue

A few days ago my wife and I were about to get in our car. I was locking the front door when I heard Laurel say, "Brian, look at this. An owl!" It looked like a garden statue, perched in groundcover just off the edge of a stepping stone leading to our carport. At first I was worried that it'd fly off if I aproached it from the front with my iPhone in hand. But no. What we assumed was a baby owl was so "frozen," I never saw it even blink. (Laurel watched it longer than I did and…
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Posted inHome life

We’re glad we sold our Nissan Leaf and bought a Volt

After two weeks with our 2012 Chevy Volt, my wife and I are pleased with our decision to sell our 2011 Nissan Leaf and get an electric car that also runs on gas. (Our reasons for selling the Leaf are detailed here; photos of our Volt and first-day-home impressions are here.) We had our Leaf for about six months. We've only been driving the Chevy Volt for two weeks. But important benefits of the Volt are clear already. "Range anxiety" is gone with the Volt. We never ran out of electricity with the Leaf. Usually we'd get home with plenty…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

How I’m talking myself into buying a Retina MacBook Pro

Without rationalizations, what would my life be? Dreadfully filled with, ugh!, impersonal reality. I've got sound neuroscience on my side here. Ever since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, I've been wrestling with whether I should get one. On the day news of the new laptop was released, I presciently blogged, "New Retina MacBook Pro or MacBook Air? Laptop lust will decide." That's how it's been going the past eight days. Logic and reason lead me one way, emotion and intuition lead me another way. And here's the likely neuroscientific fact: my brain (a redundancy, because "my brain" is me)…
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Posted inHome life

Welcome to our day old car baby, Chevy Volt

Aw, so cute. When I saw her for the first time she was just five miles old. My wife and I immediately bonded with her. Liked her lines. And her soothing feminine Viridian Joule light greenish color.  Here she is after we brought her home yesterday from Salem's Capitol Chevrolet dealership. All on electric power, mostly on the freeway. We then drove into town that evening for a dance lesson and practice. Voltie shifted to gasoline power only for the last mile. Battery range was almost exactly as expected, about 35 miles. We ordered the Volt, so had to wait…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Zu Zu, our new dog, wears flowers in her hair

Finally, an almost-summer-feeling Oregon afternoon. Laurel, me, and our two canine dog pack went for a walk around the neighborhood lake.  A big patch of wildflowers caught my eye. Also, Laurel's.  While I was getting out my iPhone and snapping some shots of the flowers, she was adorning Zu Zu with some daisies. Of course, dog photography being what it is, as soon as we tried to pose Zu Zu she shook violently, then laid down on her back. Which messed up her flower arrangement. Still, it brought back memories of the 60's to see our new dog with flowers…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Crazy Shirts model spotted at Salem dog park!

OK, let's add "Aspiring" at the start of the title for this blog post. Because right now I am not an official model of Crazy Shirts clothing. But after Crazy Shirts executives see today's Salem (Oregon) dog park photo shoot, I expect a modeling contract will be in the mail. (One negative omen, though: Crazy Shirts seems to be age'ist in its current choice of clothing models. On the positive side, there's a dog in this photo of a 2012 photoshoot.) My own photoshoot was spontaneously organized by my wife, who asked for my iPhone after I cajoled Family Dog #2, Zu Zu, to…
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Posted inHome life

Innocent bee swarm…or something more sinister?

Maybe I've read too many mystery novels, and watched too many junky murder movies. But... I'm worried that there's more to this bee swarm than meets the eye. Especially since the swarm is right at eye level, on a branch overhanging a trail that Family Dog #1 and I walk on often. As soon as I drove home yesterday and got out of the car, Laurel excitedly asked me if I had my iPhone with me. "Of course," I said. "Good. There's a bee swarm on the trail to the creek. My phone's battery is dead. I want you to…
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Posted inHome life

Why we sold our Nissan Leaf and bought a Chevy Volt

Goodbye, dear Leaf. I had mixed feelings about seeing our Nissan electric car loaded onto an auto transport trailer a few days ago. The car was on its way to a new owner in eastern Washington. It needed a lift, given the Leaf's 100 mile range. I was happy to have sold the Leaf, since the Chevy Volt that we ordered to replace it is on a train at the moment and should arrive in a few weeks. Yet I enjoyed the Leaf and was sort of sad to see it go. (As described below, my wife felt differently.) After…
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Posted inHome life

Ignoring chainsaw safety tips pays off for stupid me

Sometimes doing a bunch of stupid stuff can add up to something sort of smart, like how multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive result. Yesterday I broke quite a few chainsaw safety rules. But if I hadn't ignored all of them, I probably would have gotten hurt. Chain saw stupidity... let me count the ways. (1) I stood on the top of a folding ladder while using the chainsaw.(2) I held the chainsaw high over my head while cutting.(3) I did the work with nobody else close by. (4) I failed to consider how a branch could snap back after…
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Posted inHome life Travel

“You look like Richard Branson.” Nice compliment.

Though I'm irked at Hawaiian Airlines for dropping its non-stop Portland, Oregon to Maui flight, on our return from Honolulu a few days ago a Hawaiian employee made me feel really good. I'd forked out an extra $70 for two seats in an exit row, where I'd stretched my legs in comparative comfort for the five hours it took to cross the western Pacific. As we started our descent into Portland, a flight attendant sat down in the jumpseat that faces backwards across from the exit row. Looking at me, she said, "I've been thinking for the whole trip that…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Hawaiian Airlines drops non-stop Portland-Maui flights, so we drop Hawaiian

Most likely, yesterday we took our last flight on Hawaiian Airlines. For about twenty years we've flown direct from Portland, Oregon to Maui. In January 2012 Hawaiian dropped non-stop Portland-Maui flights.  So my wife and I are going to drop Hawaiian. We had lots of frequent flyer miles accumulated through our usually-annual flights to Maui, supplemented by our habitual use of a Hawaiian Airlines VISA card, which gave us one mile for every dollar charged. This year we used up almost all of our frequent flyer miles to buy "free" tickets for a flight to Maui that required a plane change in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Thanks to Obama, I’m going to stop saying “that’s so gay!”

Yesterday I was thrilled to learn that President Obama has come out (so to speak) in favor of gay marriage. This is a good move ethically as well as politically.  Homosexuals are people too, Mitt Romney and fellow gay-bashing Republicans. Recognizing the obvious will energize Obama's base, and it won't cost him many votes since homophobes already plan to vote against him. Eugene Robinson ends his column on this subject with: Politically, Obama may have taken a big step toward reclaiming the future. The magic of hope and change that suffused his 2008 campaign has dissipated after 40 grueling months…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Oregon weather breaks my May heart… then heals it

Oregon weather, I'm fed up with you. I've had enough abuse. This afternoon I realized that I can't stand you anymore. Driving around in south Salem, I just had to pull over, grab my iPhone, and document what a crappy companion you've become.  Come on! You're ridiculous! My Mini's thermometer doesn't lie. The warmth between us is gone. You're giving me 43 degrees. That's cold any time. Especially... When the time is 12:50 pm -- middle of the freakin' day! -- on May 4. Spring. In fact, late spring. Yeah, I'd been listening to the "Chill" station on Sirius satellite…
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Posted inHome life Salem

My photographic evidence that the world’s alright

There's a lot wrong with the world. No doubt about that. But I've accumulated some photographic evidence on my iPhone which shows how alright things are also. Along with some fellow Trader Joe's-loving friends, we've been worried about how well the recently-opened Salem, Oregon store is doing. Seems like it isn't very crowded whenever I shop there. But when I glanced into the blue/green glass bin at the D&O Garbage recycling center a few days ago, I thought Alright!  Tossing my own Charles Shaw (Trader Joe's famous $2.49 wine) bottles into the bin, I was struck by how many similarly labeled…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

My iPhone speaker survives toilet water. Here’s how.

I wish I had a better story involving wild sex, drugs, or fighting off a home invasion about how my beloved iPhone 4 ended up in a toilet this morning.  Actually...I'd put the phone on some magazines that were headed to the recycling bin. Forgetting where the phone was after, um, I'd done my (stand-up) business, I grabbed the magazines from a counter and heard a highly disturbing splash as the phone hit the water. Moving as fast as my semi-awake 63 year-old self does that early in the day, I had the phone out of the toilet in just…
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Posted inHome life

Metallic coolness & great benefits: Chase Sapphire Preferred card

Up to now I've taken my credit cards pretty much for granted. They've been pieces of plastic which have simply done their job: paying for stuff I want to buy, and giving me frequent flier miles on Hawaiian or United Airlines. But after Hawaiian dropped it's direct flight from Portland, Oregon to Maui (where we vacation frequently), the luster of our Hawaiian card dimmed dramatically. Even before that happened, I looked around for an awards card that could be used on any airline, for any sort of trip. And settled on the Chase Sapphire VISA card, which I extolled in…
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Posted inHome life

Great deal on used Nissan Leaf — here in Salem, Oregon

Car has been sold. Sorry. Hope you find another used Leaf.  The all-electric Nissan Leaf is a terrific car. It's just turned out to be a less-than-ideal fit for our lifestyle. We live about six miles from the Salem city limits, so we use up twelve miles of range just getting to the edge of town. Plus, our aging dog doesn't seem to like the sloping Leaf hatch compartment (it slopes because of the mid-car battery stack). While that may not seem to be a big deal, you don't know how dogcentric my wife is. Whenever we look at a…
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Posted inHome life

Our trail camera captures…Nursing fawn! Coyotes! Bucks!

See 'em here. Absolutely free. No waiting.  Amazing (well, sort of) sights of animals in the wild, captured by our trail camera, which is ably managed by my wife, Laurel. She moves it around to where she thinks critters on our rural western Oregon property are most likely to do their critter'ing. Got some pretty good shots of...   A fawn nursing. Awwww... So cute.   A buck prowling around in the daytime.   Deer twins. More cuteness.   A raccoon family making a nightime excursion.   A coyote in our lower field.   Another shot of a coyote. A…
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Posted inHome life

Sadly, our adopted dog didn’t work out (too fearful)

There were tears. More than a few. In fact, I'm feeling some start to flow right now as I begin to write about us having to return Pooka to the rescue shelter yesterday.   She was only in our life for three weeks, a young dog with a wonderful personality who my wife and I came to love. It turned out, though, that she didn't work out for us. Too fearful. We were so hopeful that we could give Pooka a good home after we adopted her. She had a rough early life, being taken in by a "Saving Paws" rescue…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Dog adoption update: Oh, no, we’ve got a dingo!

It's Day 2 of our dog adoption saga. Reality is setting in. Pooka is doing fine. Much more relaxed and well-behaved than we expected (aside from just trying to eat a leaf from a houseplant).  However... I'm convinced that the rescue shelter was wrong when they billed her as a Shepherd/Lab mix. Pooka clearly is a dingo! Well, maybe "clearly" is too confident a conclusion.   Check out the evidence, though. This is a dingo.       And this is Pooka, our new dog. A still shot doesn't do credit to her dingoness, since as she skitters around the…
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