Posted inHome life Salem

Photos of rural south Salem’s snow-pocalypse

Who says the pioneer spirit in Oregon died out with the pioneers? It was alive and well today on what many are calling our state's 2012 snow-pocalypse. Though for some reason, many also are not. Hopefully these photos of my personal snow-pocalypse will change the minds of skeptics who doubt the severity of our recent weather emergency. My better judgment said, "Stay inside during this wild storm." My daring heart, along with a forlorn looking family pet, said "Risk your life and go for a dog walk." Given the inclement weather, even our dog, Serena, looked unsure about our chances…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Weight training women, respect egos of older men

Astoundingly, via Google I wasn't able to find a reference to the most important bit of weight training etiquette every buff woman who frequents an athletic club needs to know: Do not, repeat, do not, leave a higher weight on a machine or piece of equipment than the senior citizen men in the weight room can handle themselves. This has bothered me for a long time. Today I learned that I'm not alone. Clearly, the time has come to educate women about proper weight training etiquette -- other than the obvious, like here, here, and here. This afternoon I chatted with…
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Posted inHealth Home life

Do my telomeres look longer? (I’m taking astragalus)

About four years ago I shared my supplements list with a mildly- to un-interested world. Seems like a good time to do it again, since there's been some Big News in the non-prescription nostrums I take every day to keep disability, disease, and death at bay. I've gone from 22 supplements to 19. Gone are two algae oil sources of DHA and EPA, as I've replaced these with Ultimate Omega fish oil. Even though I'm a vegetarian, I decided that consuming fish oil was OK, karma-wise, since there doesn't seem to be an equally good non-animal source of omega-3 fatty acids.…
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Posted inFamily Home life

Our unreal (really!) 2011 Christmas Letter is unveiled

Every year I struggle, for a whole fifteen seconds or so, to come up with a theme for our Christmas Letter -- which we call, with marvelous political correctness, "Holiday Greetings from Laurel and Brian." Once again it was easy to identify a zeitgeist for 2011. Unreal. Such has become our favorite way of handling reality: treat it as illusion.  [Legal disclaimer: this only works with brain-stuff such as emotions, worries, fears, and such. Ignore a red traffic light and your results almost certainly will differ.] So here's our totally unreal 2011 Christmas Letter, a.k.a. Holiday Greetings. Read it and…
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Posted inHome life

Mailing Christmas cards still feels right to me

I'm a techno guy. I've got an iPhone, MacBook Pro, Roku, and Apple TV. Plus two blogs and Facebook/Twitter accounts. But today I mailed the last of my Christmas cards. Yes, mailed.  As in where you pick up a card and envelope from a box, write your name and maybe some personal thoughts on the card, fold over a photo-filled Holiday Letter that you and your wife composed, place it inside the card, put the card inside the envelope, seal the envelope with a lick of your tongue, write the address of the person you're sending it to as legibly as…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

I return my Kindle Fire — after one day

Within half an hour of the earliest time it was possible to order a Kindle Fire on Amazon's web site, my one-click reservation had been made. Within three hours of opening up the Kindle box after UPS delivered it yesterday, I'd decided to return the pseudo-tablet. Which I did this afternoon. I'm sorry Amazon, but Apple has spoiled me. I have a MacBook Pro laptop that I love. I have an iPhone 4 that I love. My wife has an iPad 2 that I sort of love, my limited affection for it perhaps being more a matter of our passing…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Help with my .XXX site market research

Until today I'd never considered becoming a purveyor of XXX material. But I just got an email from my domain name registrar, Dotster, informing me of how important it is to have a .XXX presence now that this top-level domain is available. Registering a .XXX domain enables you to keep control of your online brand. Landrush is open to members of the Sponsored Community or individuals who qualify to become members. General Availability is open to everyone regardless of whether you are an adult industry professional or simply looking to protect your web presence. Well, I don't exactly understand what…
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Posted inHealth Home life

Why I decided to still get a PSA test

I'm a believer in scientific research. I worked as a health planner for over ten years. I wrote a well-received analysis, "Quality of life in allocating health care resources." I understand that much medical care is wasteful, unneeded, and ineffective. Nonetheless, at my annual physical last week this 63 year old guy still decided to get a PSA test, which is used to detect prostate cancer. Only problem is, the test isn't very effective. In October the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended against getting the test, in most cases.  Healthy men should no longer receive a P.S.A. blood test to screen…
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Posted inHome life

Coffee measuring rule: use 2 tablespoons per 6 ounces

I love coffee. I've made it every day for many years. But recently I learned that I've been making it wrong. Too weak. Damn you, Mr. Coffee! Obeying the instructions on my Mr. Coffee drip machine, I've been dutifully using three tablespoons of ground coffee per 20 ounces of water (four 5 ounce cups, which to me -- and lots of other people these caffeinated days -- actually is one cup of coffee, a "Venti" in Starbucks terminology). But that's just .15 tablespoons of coffee per ounce of water, whereas the Holy Commandment of coffee making is to use two…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Getting smarter from doing something stupid

Our electronic air cleaner and I have a rocky relationship. It's down in our crawlspace, attached to our heat pump duct work. Every three months or so I vacuum the air cleaner's removable filters, which requires taking its door off. And more often than I'd like to admit -- but since this is a self-revealing blog, I'll admit it -- I have a tough time getting the door back on.  The door has metal flanges that fit behind its metal enclosure. A diagram on the door shows how it's supposed to fit over the enclosure, after which two gizmos are…
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Posted inHome life

Les Schwab in south Salem helps me get un-lug nutty

Les Schwab (the tire center) and I have a long relationship, all positive so far. Sure, we part company on the "Free Beef" deal -- how about some free tofu? -- and we've got different views on a proposed Oregon studded tire ban, but I really like the Les Schwab commitment to customer service. There's quite a few stories on the Internet about how a Les Schwab employee went above and beyond the call of duty to help someone with a tire problem. Mine isn't as dramatic as most, but I still want to share how my lug nut problem…
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Posted inHome life

How I sold our 2007 Prius: what worked, and what didn’t

Yesterday I sold our 2007 Prius Touring for a fair price: $16,000. The buyer was happy, and I'm happy. So now that I've had the vast experience of one recent private party used car sale, I'll share my tips for car-selling in this Internet age. In short: AutoTrader good, Craigslist bad. I only got two serious inquiries about the car, both through AutoTrader. My Craigslist ad mostly resulted in email messages that said: "Location? I can pick it up," along with "How much are you asking for this car ?? Ive been wanting to buy one like this so if…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Will our dog fit in a Nissan Leaf?

I have many unanswered questions.I'm still trying to learn the meaning of life, what will happen to me after I die, and why the Kardashian sisters are famous (I do have a guess: they're famous for being famous). But today I focused on a query assigned to me by Laurel, my wife. "WIll our dog, Serena, comfortably fit into the Nissan Leaf electric car that we're poised to buy? We'd made a stab at answering this question during our first test drive, learning that the $250 cargo floor organizer included by the manufacturer on the car earmarked for us produces…
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Posted inHome life

What I learned from a cut phone line

Life has a way of teaching me lessons, even though I have no idea who the instructor is. I mean, who the hell is this guy called "Life" anyway? Everybody talks about him, but I've never seen the dude. Well, whoever or whatever LIfe is, here's what I learned today: don't assume; keep your cool; be positive about people until you can't help being negative. This was a pretty weird experience, now that I think about it in the calm of a pleasantly cool September Oregon evening, blogging on our deck while listening to nearby crickets cricketing and distant owls…
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Posted inHome life

Buy our 2007 Prius! Just 36,500 miles on it!

[Our car has been sold. Sorry, would-be Prius buyers. Disappointingly, the couple who bought the car learned about it via an AutoTrader listing, not this blog post. We ended up selling it for $16,000, which is about what I expected to get -- once I realized that nobody was going to pay $1 million for a 2007 Prius Touring, unless it was made of gold.] I've never wanted to be a real-life car salesman, but it's kind of fun to play one in a blog post... BUY, BUY, BUY! -- THIS CAR WON'T BE IN OUR DRIVEWAY FOR LONG!Wow, a…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Why we didn’t buy our Leaf from Salem Nissan

Us bloggers believe in giving businesses praise when praise is due, and also publicizing buying turn-offs. So here's how I just replied to an email from Salem (Oregon) Nissan. I'd gotten a message from Salem Nissan asking if we were still in the market for a car that included this request: If you are no longer looking or would like to be removed from my follow-up list, please send a quick note to let me know. I did just that, saying "We're buying a Leaf from the Corvallis Nissan dealer, so you can take us off your follow-up list." When…
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Posted inHome life Sustainability

We test drive a Nissan Leaf. How dog friendly is it?

So there we are today, looking over a blue 2011 Nissan Leaf, all 100% electric and high techy, wondering if we should go ahead and buy the car after putting down a $500 deposit on it upon learning from Russ Goodyear at Corvallis' Jack Scoville Nissan that a Leaf could be ours much sooner than expected, owing, I believe, to someone cancelling an order for this car. Russ is ready to show us its technological marvels, and let us take our first test drive, but first Laurel needed to closely inspect the car's dog friendliness. How comfortably and safely would…
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Posted inHome life

Warning: corn is more dangerous than it looks

Ears of corn. They seem so natural, so innocent, all wrapped up in their tight green leafy kimonos, begging to be stripped naked and devoured with lustful buttery zeal. (Guess I've been watching too much Stephen Colbert "cornography.") But when you get them home... watch out. Yesterday I found out how dangerous corn can be. I don't want anyone else to suffer needlessly like I did, so I'm getting my story out onto the Internet in hopes of saving other innocent victims from what I've gone through. I stopped at a farm stand where I've been buying fruit all summer.…
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Posted inHome life

In praise of a certain insanity

"This is insane... this is insane... this is insane." That was my mental mantra in the early afternoon today, after I'd been using my DR Field Mower for about an hour on our toughest patch of untamed tall grass, brush, and an ungodly number of trees that Laurel and I planted years ago in the midst of the grass and brush, each of which requires maneuvering the heavy walk-behind mower around it. Like I've said before, it's hell. Also, heaven. There’s a point when my mowing hell turns to heaven. It’s when my shirt is soaked through with sweat, the…
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Posted inHome life

My wife rescues a gopher snake caught in netting

I don't like snakes. So when I saw my wife standing outside on our deck, knocking excitedly on our locked sliding glass door, yelling "I need some manicure scissors to save a snake," I was pretty damn impressed with her animal-compassion. I rushed to a bathroom drawer and found the scissors. Later I heard another knock. And saw... Wow. Now I was super-impressed. I've never even touched a snake, much less held a large one up in the air. This iPhone photo doesn't do justice to the size of the gopher snake. Here's how Laurel described her snake adventure in…
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