Posted inHome life

Feed Me!

Here’s a photo of one of the newest members of our non-Homo sapiens extended family: a big-mouthed robin chick expectantly waiting for Mom, Dad, or anyone else able to regurgitate robin food and poke it down his/her throat. My digital camera in hand, Laurel snuck up to the nest that is, um, nestled about five feet up an evergreen tree next to our house. In doing so she broke the Do Don’t Disturb The Robins! rule that was so seriously enforced by she herself all last weekend, during both a Friday night potluck and the whole rest of the time…
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Posted inHome life

Weapon of mass field mouse dispersion

I look a lot happier in this photo than I really am. Smiling at a camera is an ingrained reflex, even when I’m tired, dirty, covered with burrs, and wondering “Why the hell did we ever decide to live on five country acres?” Most of the time I love our land. That time excludes the four hours or so a year it takes me to mow down areas of tall grass with my trusty DR Field and Brush Mower, which I like a lot. What I don’t like is wrestling the mower around to miss the umpteen jillion (approximately) small…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Pampered pet, humbled husband

First, yesterday’s post about our dog’s overheating may have alarmed the many admirers of Serena the Wonder Dog, the Hines Family Animal Companion (we eschew calling her our “pet,” this being terribly Homo sapiens-centric, though the verb form of this word accurately describes how we spend much of every evening). Hopefully this photo that I snapped this morning when I went in to the dog room to wake her up will reassure anyone concerned about her welfare. Serena has an entire futon on which to sleep in her amazingly cute contorted dog postures. This is her famous “straight arm” pose,…
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Posted inDogs Entertainment Home life

“Fahrenheit 9/11” heats up audience (and our dog)

In our never-ending marital “told you so!” competition, my wife beat me two to one last night. We went to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” at Movieland in downtown Salem, and as the 7:45 pm showing time grew near I told Laurel that we should leave earlier than usual, since the movie was proving to be hugely popular among die-hard liberals—who, like almost everyone, love to be exposed to communications that confirm existing strongly held beliefs. Drawing myself up to the full height of my Alpha Male Head of Household Kingly Dominant position in our relationship, about 6:45 I emphatically decreed with…
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Posted inHome life

Reason #836,492 why Microsoft sucks

Using Microsoft Office reminds me of being married to my ex-wife during our final unhappy years together. It’s all I’ve got for the moment, but I just have to believe that there is something much better which would really meet my needs. Today it was Outlook 2003 that drove me to imagine the hell that rightfully awaits Microsoft programmers (or, more justly, the executives for whom they work). I dutifully have upgraded to Outlook 2003 from 2002, hearing that the integrated spam filter alone is worth the price. Yes, it is a nice spam filter, better than the stand-alone product…
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Posted inHome life

We visit an exotic land, the Pearl District

Rural south Salem is just sixty miles or so away from Portland’s Pearl District, but we felt as if we had journeyed to a foreign exotic land, so marvelous were the sights seen there. Not so marvelous, though, was the unfamiliar manner in which we learned Portlanders drive, on Friday afternoons at least. Rather than use their cars to move from one place to another, as is done in Salem, drawing near to Portland we observed thousands of them lined up neatly on the southbound freeway, seemingly motionless. We could not understand why so many Portlanders would choose to assemble…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

How Reagan almost broke up our relationship

On Air America today (“the left side of the dial”) I heard the super liberal Randi Rhodes admit that she had voted for Ronald Reagan. “Once,” she said, noting that Reagan was appealing because he was so positive in a time of negativity. This reminded me of how Reagan almost broke up the nascent relationship between Laurel and me. Nascent, because this was just our second date, so there wouldn’t have been much to break up at that time. But looking back at our fourteen years of marriage, it would have been a shame if a little thing like voting…
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Posted inHome life

Amazing what a big stud can make my wife like

Okay, a potential stud, according to Thoroughbred Times.com. Regardless, Smarty Jones got Laurel to do some things I never believed I’d see her do. Like, ask “Where is the sports page?” this past week and then actually read the section that heretofore had as much interest to her as the classifieds. Also, sit down in front in the TV this afternoon and watch a sporting event, the Belmont Stakes. Of course, today there is no joy in Hinesville, for Smarty Jones pooped out on the backstretch. But we enjoyed our brief excursion into the land of horseracing, which probably was…
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Posted inHome life Neighborhood

WildBlue satellite internet, my backup to Lucy Liu

My conversation with a Qwest DSL supervisor yesterday went just about as horribly as I expected. When I asked why the 70 or so homes in our quasi-rural neighborhood just five miles from the Salem city limits, and two miles from the nearest existing DSL “crossbox,” couldn’t get DSL, he evaded the question. “We’d have to go through too many gyrations,” he said irritatingly. “So this is something we’re just not going to do.” Well, thank you very much, Mr. Public Utility representative. Your dedication to bringing much-needed utilities to the public is underwhelming. To work out my frustration I…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

Running so fast to become motionless

In my soon-to-be-published book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus, I quote Marsilio Ficino, a fifteenth-century devotee of Plato—who wrote about the folly of men who seek to find rest through motion: “Because of their ceaseless longing for what is to come, they do not enjoy what is present. Although movement has to be stilled for there to be rest; yet those men are forever beginning new and different movements, in order that they may one day come to rest.” All too true. The older I get, the more I realize how much time I’ve wasted in circuitous efforts to be…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

A fresh techno-fantasy

I’m writing this on my new best friend: a too-wonderful-for-words emachines M6809 laptop. “Emey” (pronounced ee-mey), as he wants to be called, is going to change my life in two ways, one shallowly technological, the other deeply philosophical. At least, that’s the spin I’m putting on Emey’s purchase with my wife, Laurel, who could buy a heck of a lot of $10 fused glass earrings on Ebay for Emey’s $1,390 Best Buy cost ($1,640 - $250 in rebates). On the technological side, I don’t think there is a better price/performance deal on any laptop, though Emey’s sibling, the M6805, is…
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Posted inHome life

How to get in tune with the cosmos for $59

Meditation? Tai chi? Prayer? Bible study? Nature walks? Yoga? Nyahhhh…too much trouble, too time-consuming, too unreliable. For my money ($59 at Costco, to be exact) the best way to get in tune with the cosmos is Casio’s Tough Solar G-Shock Atomic watch. I picked one up at the Costco store in Bend last Sunday and ever since have been feeling much more grounded to the rhythm of those amazing cesium atoms in Boulder, Colorado. This is my second atomic watch. Since Casio makes such reliable watches, and watch batteries seem to last for years and years now, I suspect that…
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Posted inBooks Home life Philosophy

I’ve become the person I warned myself about

Partway through my martial arts class last night the head instructor, Master Allen, showed us some alternative moves in a kata that we had been practicing—it’s called Kanku Dai in Japanese, Kong San Goon in Korean. He said, “There is no one Way. There always is more than one Way. Anyone who believes there is one Way is limiting himself.” Music to my ears, now. But it would have been heresy to my ears, then, during the nine years I was studying traditional Shotokan karate. In Shotokan karate there is one way to perform a kata: the sensei’s way, the…
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Posted inHome life

Shocked!—I discover my wife’s late-night Internet lusting

As soon as I walked softly over to Laurel’s desk and peered over her shoulder at the computer screen I knew that my life had changed irrevocably. Understand, this shocking revelation wasn’t a complete surprise. Looking back, I clearly should have seen it coming. But every husband thinks that somehow it won’t happen to him, that his wife will be able to resist the temptations that so many other women succumb to, now that the Internet makes it possible to establish connections in cyberspace that previously you’d have to engage in face-to-face. Look, I’m no Internet virgin myself. So I…
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Posted inHome life Philosophy

Kona coffee and the meaning of life

Does Kona coffee hold the key to the meaning of life? I certainly hope so. For the past few days, starting on Maui and continuing here at home in Oregon, I’ve been working my way through an eight ounce bag of 100% Kona coffee, which Mark Twain praised as “having a richer flavor than any other.” I wholeheartedly agree. This is the best coffee I’ve ever had, the only downside to Kona coffee being it’s $20 + price per pound. But, you get what you pay for. And part of what I’m paying for here is an aid to finding…
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Posted inHome life

Most dangerous Greek philosophy author?

click to enlarge I just finished a grueling three-hour black belt test, and for some reason what pops into my mind is…Could I now be one of the most dangerous authors who write about Greek philosophy? Here’s a hot-off-the-digital-camera photo of Mike, me, and Dave, trying to hold each other up after the testing was over and belts awarded. It’s been a long, hard, grind. About nine years in traditional Shotokan karate, where I made it up to a brown belt rank, and now over three years in a mixed-style school of Wu Shu Tao, which we translate as “way…
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Posted inHome life

Surreal mattress selecting at Sleep Country

The big moment finally arrived for Laurel yesterday—our Sleep Country 30 day try-the-mattress-and-see-if-you-like-it period ended. Laurel knew that she didn’t like the Spring Air mattress after the second night, but Sleep Country wanted us to live with it for a full month, just to be sure that we weren’t having some sort of slumber time spat that would blow over after a while. Well, it didn’t, so there we were back at the Sleep Country store on (ugh!) Lancaster Drive, sales slip in hand, ready and eager to exercise our mattress exchange rights. The salesman from whom we had bought…
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Posted inHome life

Newspaper likes Laurel more than me

Yes, yesterday the Salem Statesman-Journal published a letter to the editor from Laurel about land use issues, putting it smack dab in the middle of the main Opinion page, so the signature “Laurel Hines” leapt out at you. By contrast, ten days ago my own letter about gay marriage was relegated to the bottom of the second Opinion page. Oh, well. I get to use this weblog to trumpet my own horn, so it is fair that the newspaper gave a more prominent position to Laurel. All this recent letter-writing got me to thinking about how we’ve become more active…
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Posted inHome life

14th anniversary–take that, Dr. Laura!

It's our 14th anniversary today. We had the smarts to get married on St. Patrick's Day in 1990, which means that as soon as I start seeing mention of green beer in the newspaper or on TV a small still voice in my head starts speaking... “Anniversary, anniversary, anniversary.” The photo above shows two people who had known each other for about eight months before they got married. And I proposed to Laurel after only about three or four months. The exact date is lost to my memory, probably in part for psychic protection reasons, because the proposal was embarrassingly…
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Posted inEntertainment Home life

Larry David would be proud of me

Tonight is this season’s last episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a must-see for Laurel and me ever since a friend, Randy, recommended this HBO show to us. Randy, quite reasonably, told me once that he is Larry David, personality-wise. However, I, starting from a lower rung on the in-your-face-take-me-as-I-am ladder, am only now—after several seasons—finally starting to feel that I am becoming Larry David. One could argue, of course, whether this is a good thing. If you don’t watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” or if your home is a cultural HBO wasteland bereft of this show, the “Sopranos,” and “Six Feet…
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