This is why it is not too late to dump McShame and throw the weight of the Republican Party behind Doctor Ron Paul, the only sane choice.

McCain has no TRUE supporters, only the media moguls who are eager for dramatis personae to stock their made-up, limp-wrist, slap-fests and the brainwashed schmucks who sit in front of (insert name of (irrelevant) NeoCon Media Station here).

The Republicans could still have a Republican President in the elections of 2008, but unfortunately, the GOP is no longer made up of men who hold true "conservative" principles.

It is dead.

This afternoon, after Mass at the Cathedral, I made pancakes while the rest of my family slept.

As soon as I can get the Internet to confirm whether green potatoes are poisonous, I will proceed to cook some French-fried (Belgian-fried?) potatoes for supper...

Yeah, so I've got the coolest Sigg bottle around...

Long story short, has anyone else noticed that no matter what you put into Pandora,it ALWAYS gets back to R.E.M.?

What's with that??!

Catching the full, glass bottle of cream as it free-falls towards the floor from the top shelf in the fridge...

...with a carton of eggs.

-- Gene Logsdon, Living at Nature's Pace


Think about it. How many examples of mass consolidation that you know of actually boost efficiency?

Centralized schooling...Nope.

Centralized farming...Nope.

Centralized banking...Nope.

The most efficient school system? Kids walk to school themselves. Schools collect kids from within a walking-distance radius.

This bus-ing them all over the place for hours and hours is not efficient.

Hmm...

Why do people think that socialism is progressive?

It isn't.

It's going backwards.

I had a longer post prepared, about how's it's a terrible idea to RAISE TAXES during an economic downturn and why "decapitation" taxes aimed at the ultra-wealthy are a suicidal move for an economy, but anyone with any grain of fiscal sense can see that.

So I thought I'd spare you the rant.

Now, THERE'S a compelling argument for "outlawing" guns. See how effective anti-gun legislation is?

Wow! That's mad, that's cool -- that's science!

Now, if they could just get it to do that WITHOUT the computer at all...

Hot damn! Now, that's what I'm talking about...

The best is in the second video, where the guy sits down at the other guy's computer -- and when the blonde lady waits in line... until the "Agent" starts packing up...

Law-abiding citizens carrying guns make YOU safer.

Taking away their guns makes YOU vulnerable. Because the criminals still have guns.

It's simple, really.

This is kind of an odd idea, and perhaps morbid, but I submit it to you, gentle readers for consideration: the virtual cemetery.

As you can see in my links on the right, I know a few bloggers who have died, and I think it is wonderful that their sites have been left up, for their families, loved ones, and children to read.

I hope that the deceased will live on in memory and online. It would be cool to have a more official way of doing (and funding) this than just having the surviving family members deciding willy-nilly what to do with the site.

Maybe another TLD (top level domain), like .morgue?

I dunno, I think that'd be cool.

I used to look at lights left on and say "somewhere, there's a coal plant burning."

That's still largely true, for America, and it's still true that the intermittent "power crises" of the last few years in California could have been averted by malls turning off their lights at night, BUT. For my little apartment, a light left burning means that somewhere, a picturesque windmill is lazily turning, or a non-destructive, salmon-friendly, side canal (NOT a dammed up river), has a small turbine winding away.

Of course, we hardly use any power here, but according to Pacific Power, we saved the equivalent of ~700 driving miles of automobile pollution (that would have been put out by conventional power plants) in 2007.

We're so eco-friendly around here.

(a nexus of thought destined eventually for a complete work or essay)


- It works. Not necessarily for everyone, but then again penicillin doesn't for every bacteria, either.

- It works on animals. What does that say about the claims of critics that has a placebo, or psychological effect, only? It debunks those claims.

- Studies. Statistics and studies are commonly misconstrued. Correlations are shown as causal, and coincidence is shown as correlation. These things need to be looked into. How can you do a double-blind, test-group controlled study on a large enough to be meaningful when the medical method requires initial patient consultations of two to four hours minimum, as well as dietary and lifestyle analysis? Depending on who you talk to, there are numerous substances and activities that can invalidate the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. So these studies need to be looked in to.

- In addition to animal cures, there are also child, even neo-natal remedies that are effective. Also, sometimes one remedy will not be effective, but another will immediately help. Each condition may have 10 or more variants or remedy options, and the selection of each depends on many circumstances, ALL of the symptoms and emotions involved and the character of the patient. The mere similitude of diagnosis requisite for a meaningful study would be hard to achieve, which leads to skepticism if it ever has been.

- It's true that the potentizing METHOD of homeopathy has only been around a few hundred years (note: LONGER than many mainstream allopathic methods that are accepted blindly, and without questioning their (sometimes notable) side effects). BUT. The basic remedy of the plants and substances involved (witch hazel for hemorrhoids) are practically timeless. Humans have used those medicinal plants into prehistoric times.

- There is a clear medical agenda for anti-homeopathy. Since the industrialization and profitization of the health "industry," there is a clear division between the profit-seekers and the ones that still remember Hippocrates.

The simplest summation of the "danger" of homeopathy to this model (and specifically the mega-powerful pharmaceutical companies) is that you cannot patent natural substances, while you CAN patent artificial mimicry of them.

And the ability to patent means control, royalties, etc, etc, profit. So the pharmaceutical companies have ZERO (greed-based) motivation to tell you that a simple herbal, naturally available, you-can-grow-it-in-your-window, FREE (or nearly) remedy is efficacious. Rather, they will spend billions on convincing you that you must BUY their extravagantly priced, extravagantly marketed product for your malady.

- It was illegal until the 70's to advertise for pharmaceuticals

- I had the opportunity to discuss homeopathy with a scientist-professor-researcher in Belgium. She had not yet observed successful homeopathic treatments, but was very conscious of the possibility of it working. I was surprised because many of the critical essays I have read point out the chemical processes in dilution as a barrier, and they definitely are a barrier to the West's way of thinking, especially if you think that science has answered 99% of man's questions. However, this Belgian (actually Flemish) scientist brought up the very good point that pheromones work on much the same principle, with much the same lack of understanding by modern medicine and science. Pheromones act even when they exist in such a minute and spread-out way in many cases as to be undetectable by any means we as yet have available. Homeopathy works in much the same way chemically.

National Reviews 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century...

Not sure I agree with all the picks, or order, but there are some good ones on there.

Next, I'm heading over to PaperBackSwap...

Today I moved the Genius Tech Blog from its original home, hanging off of my corporate site to its new home:

It is running off of a 'loaner' theme right now, but eventually I'll get it minced, diced, skinned, flayed, and back to normal.

Also, I'm going to start posting my tech rants and 'feelings' there, as well as more hardware-ish reviews -- I'll probably still put the more formal stuff there, but I'll be channeling that into the forthcoming newsletter.

There are big plans in the works, children.

So I spend the day coding and working with computers, which are heavy left-side-of-the-brain activities.

Then when it comes to cooking dinner, I have to suddenly switch to my creative side, the right side of the brain.

(Nevermore explained this all to me on the phone yesterday.)

And it can be traumatic.

However, I am resolved to make a few changes in my cooking practices.

First, I'm going to stop asking advice. While occasionally I will forage for specific answers (do I sautee the parsnips longer than the bell peppers, or the other way around?) I am just going to make up and figure out everything.

While this may spell out a few meals of unsavory character for my family in the near future, it will make me a better cook.

Plus, I intend to shake the cooking "rules" and recipes off in order to make a complete transition from left to right side of the brain.

I cooked mussels today, for supper, and now I need to borrow a pressure washer to clean up.

The kitchen floor is inches deep in bits of red onion, garlic shell, and unidentified and unidentifiable particulate matter.

I'm only about one meal behind in doing the dishes though, despite the plethora of assorted cookware I managed to soil during my harried dinner prep.

We bought three pounds of (Washington-grown, farm-raised) mussels from New Seasons. Cooked half of them today, and I'll probably try a different recipe (spicy red sauce?) for the next batch tomorrow.

Now, this is funny 'cause it's true...

I didn't know that iron-on patches were so easy to apply. Had I known that, I would have been decorating my clothes with suchlike for some time hence.

Anyways, my train of thought must have gone something like this:

iron-on patches==ironing==chore==impossible

But now that I know that it is really easy, I may have to visit Purple Moon and make another purchase.

There's some pretty funny shiznit over here...

(to an outside Baby. I'm already old hat to the 9-month long "fire and forget" kind of fatherhood to an inside Baby.)

Little Baby Mark spent most of today* sleeping on me or wrapped up in his little moby wrap nestled up against my shirtless front, while I bustled about the house and worked on the computer.

He also watched his first Family Guy today -- actually not really, he slept on top of my while TSG and I watched it. He has not been corrupted yet.

His alert times have gotten longer, and he has also gotten a little fussy in the last few days. He thrives on excitement -- if nothing is going on, he gets bored.

He loves lights, white walls, ceilings, bouncing...

* Actually he probably logged equal hours EATING.

PaperBackSwap.com

This is a dangerous, dangerous website.

(If you do sign up, say I referred you! Donzilla. Not sure what happens, but...)

I joined up there (membership is free) and the premise is that you list your books, other people list theirs, and you pay shipping for any books that you send out. That's it!

I just went down my wishlist at Powells and a ton of the books I want are now going to be mailed to me, by perfect strangers, at their expense. Wow.

I am going through my library, pruning out books to trade, books that I have read once but don't need on my shelf.

...Our Perfect Baby...

Fascinating stuff. The concept of "ideographs" has always intrigued me.

Well, our party plan backfired again.

This time, we thought we'd use up our disposable napkins, disposable cups, reduce our stock of wine even further, and so forth.

Nope.

We end up, post-waffle-party, with two unopened bottles of bubbly, mountains of disposable napkins, and piles of plastic forks.

Durn.

However, the party itself was a smashing success. When we surveyed the crowd (of close to fifty) at the Cathedral, we didn't know how we were going to fit them all into our apartment.

Thankfully, only about half could make it, so we weren't in violation of the Fire Marshall's code.

Our apartment has a 20-amp fuse, so we were able to run a couple of the 1000-watt waffle irons at the same time, and they were manned by an experienced and heroic few in the kitchen.

Waffles galore poured out into the maze of folks and kids, together with strawberries, homemade whipped cream, and all the toppings you could desire.

(I hear Trish has pictures.)

Today was beautiful outside.

It reached nearly 60 degrees, was sunny, and pleasant. Very mild but nice.

Yesterday I bought $17 worth of butter. I'd never done that before.

Because we are having a waffle party tomorrow, after BABY's Baptism.

I love it, I love it.

day nine of fatherhood

Baby used up the last of the EIGHTY (80) diapers provided by the diaper service. This was unprecedented. Daddy (that's me!) made an emergency run out to Woodstock to pick up 40 more to get us through the weekend until Monday morning, at 6:45 am when a nice gentleman brings us more clean ones in exchange for the soiled mountain.

day eight of fatherhood

The last remnants of Mark's umbilical cord fell off (do you know how many attempts it took to get the spelling right on "umbilical"?).

Baby Mark is napping with TSG.

He is making little motions with his bottom lip -- dreaming about eating.

Then a frown passes over his brow. His face contorts as if he is going to scream.

A second later, a smile takes over, uncurling his lips on the left side, and moving across his face.

He make an involuntary whoop like a wheel that needs grease, sighs, and goes back to regular breaths...

I walked my Mom back to the hotel where she is staying tonight. She has been with us since the birth, an invisible Angel cleaning up endless dishes and doing countless loads of laundry and preparing meal after meal, only to vanish again when we nap, her only request and reward: a few minutes of holding her Beloved Grandson...

Anyways, I don't know how we can thank her.

Mark grows each day -- today the midwife who visited to check in on him weighed him at 9 pounds 2 ounces, significantly up from his birth weight, and at only six days old.

He is beginning to smile, he laughs in his sleep. His sneezes no longer scare him, but he is still irritated by the hiccups.

He is precious, amazing, beautiful.

His neck looks like a little turtle's, and, when hungry, he will open his mouth like a baby bird, and wait for food to land in it.

He likes being cuddled and held, and he prefers his arms out and loose, where he can flap them about and possibly chew on his fingers. Today he gestured toward the torchiere, trying to grasp it. He is fascinated by candles, and he turns his head toward voices.

He makes a snuffling, rooting noise, sounding for all the world like a little piglet when he is hungry, and especially when he is hungry and hears his mother's voice.

I firmly believe in having a monthly flower budget.

Although, once we have our farm, that will not be necessary.

Our little apartment is aswarm with flowers, some that TSG and I bought on the day we went to the acupuncturist (who played a pivotal role in bringing Baby Mark into this world) and many others from loving devotees who had them sent or delivered them to our hospital room...

I was having these same thoughts in Mass today...the Sermon on the Mount, you know...

MARK ISIDORE TURRENTINE

1/30/2008 12:02 pm
8 pounds 13.4 ounces
21 inches long

We LOVE him.

Our new family returned home today. There are more pictures on Trish's blog. I will offload the pictures we took and post them soon!

We are all doing well.

To-Do List:
x get an email address for Mark
- send baptism evite out to all
- post pictures

Here's my financial rationale for FLEXcar (cause some of my friends are balking at the $7/hr sticker price):

It's all about true costs.

First, one of the main advantages of fractional car ownership is that you can SAVE money by not using the car.

Here's our monthly recurring costs, whether we use the car or not, for ONE* car:

Registration: $4/month
Insurance: $60/month
AAA: $10/month
Maintenance**: $100/month***

Total: $174.00

Already that's enough FLEXCar money to use a car every other day for an hour or two.


Here's our scalar costs:

Gas: $3/hr

If we assume a per-gallon price of $3.00 and a gas consumption of 30 mpg, and figure that on short trips, we may average 30 miles / hour while using the Flexcar... That's 1 gallon / hour. Which is $3.00. Our $7/hr price has just gone down to $4/hr.

On longer trips, we may average 60 mph, therefore 2 gallons / hr, therefore our extrapolated Flexcar price is $1/hr. Wow.

At $4/hr, our previous monthly car budget (generously estimated <$200) gives us almost 2 hours of car usage every day -- along with all the other benefits not conveyed by sticker price: never having to go to the dealer, never spending one minute even THINKING about car repairs, many car options.

(These figures also do not take into account the buy-down system: if you pre-pay/commit to a certain amount of dollar usage every month, your per-hour rates go down. Also, to off-set longer use, there is a per-day rate, and a per-week rate, both substantially less than the per-hour rate.)


- - - - - - -

*With a Flexcar there is no penalty nor increased fixed costs for operating multiple cars per household. Since we pay by use, we do not have to double the insurance, registration, maintenance, etc costs in order two have the use of two cars simultaneously. Similarly for use of a pickup, minivan, sports can (Mini Cooper, anyone?).


**There is a Catch-22 of maintenance repairs precluding use but prevention of use enabling postponement of repairs: however, for all practical purposes, maintenance is a non-avoidable recurring cost if you wish to have use of the vehicle at all. Repairs increase according to some exponential equation as use of the car increases, however, again, for all practical purposes, the costs can be distributed as an average monthly cost.


***A friend of my just bought a 15-year old Volvo, with all the paper work.

The average cost per month for repairs was ~$100. According to AAA, that's WAY below average, but whatever.

Yes, you may not spend anything for several months in a row, but then you have a transmission repair that costs $1500. That's 15 months worth of $100. So it averages out.

(Of course, Click and Clack have published the incontrovertible reasoning of why you should NEVER buy a new car, but that's for a different post.)

Assuming you could get this (very low) monthly average of $100, I propose that it STILL makes senses to use a car-sharing service, such as FLEXcar.

UPDATE: FLEXCars are now being converted to Zipcars. They merged.

I don't care what the situations are or the the drugs involved -- THIS IS CRAZY:

And this is supposed to be a technically, medically advanced civilization we are living in?

No Baby yet.

We have, and I kid you not, his first FOUR outfits picked out. AND his snowsuit is hanging on our coat rack by the door. Together with his BLUE hat.

TSG said today that maybe Baby is waiting because HE doesn't WANT to wear his Airplane-suit first.

But I LIKE airplanes!!!

-- My Wife, to me recently

Saturday was a shopping day.

I gracious offered to chauffeur my Wife around, with the caveat that I was not going to enter any of the stores -- I was going to work on the car.

So that's what we did. She went inside and competed against vast hordes of sale-crazed ladies, digging through enormous piles of boots-on-sale, while I quietly worked on the car, in a parking lot 2.5 miles from the store -- because there were so many hordes of people that drove there.

Here's my list of accomplishments:

- I mounted the cup-holder (made of wire and with designs of sunflowers) with a custom bracket to the dash area in front of the passenger seat

- I covered some bare wires, briefly searched for the fault in the turn signal lines, and then just installed an auto-reset circuit breaker instead. Turn signals now work

- I ripped out the 120-volt led that I thought would do a better job of dash illumination than it did and replace it with two, red 12-lamps. Now the dash is lit up at night. Spectacular.

I just brushed my teeth with TWO toothbrushes. At the SAME time.

If THAT doesn't blow your mind, I don't know what will.

The Baby's still inside, gentle readers.

We thought he was coming on Tuesday, but then the last 3 ladies in the birth class all had their babies on that day (we came to find out yesterday).

So there were definitely birth vibes in the air then -- we felt it too.

We saw the midwife yesterday, for one of the routine checkups we are now having every week. They say that Baby is primed and ready, and weighing in at a healthy 7 or 7.5 pounds.

We are relaxing, trying to stay rested and healthy, and ready for him to come.

C'mon BABY!

Now if this Doctor would run for President...

Things we spend money on habitually:
- Powells
- Burgerville

Things we spend money on daily:
- parking

Things I'd rather spend the parking money on:
- FLEXCar

Things we have done a good job of eliminating from our daily expenses:
- Lattes

Wow, after an afternoon and evening of night snowboarding yesterday I can barely move today.

Up until halfway through the run last night we were all gung-ho about going again today.

Conditions were good at Mt Hood Meadows, despite it being night-skiing. The snow was forgiving, still powdering in some places, not too icy, and not-too packed down by the day skiers. Also, it was a lot less crowded than it was during the day, judging by the stopped traffic that was descending the mountain as we were ascending about 4pm.

And, with our Safeway club cards that we applied for and got yesterday afternoon, it was only $15/person. You can't beat that!

I'm reading this guy's book.

It's funny, almost uncanny, how I've already adopted his principles...

...just figuring them out from some innate sense.

Rock on.

So tomorrow we grab a rig and hit the slopes.

A couple of us stop by safeway first to drop off safeway club card apps (linked to our airline miles) to save an additional $10.

Can you believe it? 6 hours of boarding for $15... that's a GREAT deal.

I'm sure I'll be terribly sore tomorrow, but it's worth it.

Tonight I met one transient, three of our neighbors, and four of Portland's finest, including one fellow that I went to high school with.

I'll fill you in with the story later. I'm going to bed.

Every time I hear this song on Pandora I think of this guy (blog now defunct).

Springtime has brought back the flocks of birds which play by our door...

And also the red-breasted robins (a pack of about 15) who eat copious amounts of red berries and then sit in the tree above my car and eventually "deposit" the undigested remains of the berries all over my car...

You gotta love "nature." Get some "nature" in your life before it's too late.

We're about to have a kid.

That's going to be a WHOLE LOT of nature, especially given the amount of diapers the diaper man dropped off, and the diaper pail.

Which is why we may go the EC route. We know lots of people who are doing it, and we met a 9 month old who is completely potty-trained, and zero-stress.

Well, we saw the first flowers of Spring yesterday here in Portland...

...so we are declaring the long, cold, hard Winter over.

Our apartment has run amok with loads of laundry, piles of baby clothes, and bags of diapers -- all in preparation for the child's imminent arrival.

As soon as we clean the floor, we will set up the birth tub.

Well, our upstairs neighbors are having their baby.

The guy ran by me this afternoon, and said "Tonight might be the night" as he went past. Sure enough, maybe half an hour later off he zipped with his grimacing wife in the passenger seat.


We picked up our birth tub and birth kit today, so all we have to do is clear the quilting stuff out of the baby's cradle and print out "birthday posters" alerting our neighbors -- so they don't call 911.

It feels like the birth is getting closer and closer -- first our friends in California had their baby, then the ladies in our birth class, one by one, then our upstairs neighbor -- next, it will be us!

We are excited!

We've been reading in the birth books (some of the more hippy ones) about the role the father plays, and how his strength and assurance can be very helpful, so I am gearing up for that.

Wish us luck, and keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

I saw two people out jogging in the cold, clear evening.

How much you wanna bet that (a) that's the product of a "New Year's Resolution" and (b) that they won't be out there doing that February 3rd. Hunh?

I got to vocab level 42 and 4160 grains of rice.

What can YOU do?

Had those girls been armed, in all statistical likelihood, they would not have been killed.

Banning firearms only makes it more difficult for LAW ABIDING citizens to defend themselves.

It has no effect on the levels of criminal possession.

Banning LEGAL gun ownership only serves to increase violence and crime, as has been conclusively PROVEN time and again.

Washington, D.C., is a case in point. London, U.K., is another.

Get real.

Get the facts.

Gun control laws are "feel-good" laws that make the country much more dangerous.

Just remember there are only three things a plumber needs to know:

1) Payday's Friday


2) Water Runs Downhill

and

3)


Don't put your fingers in your mouth.

(But seriously, Eric, don't lose any fingers...)

Well, we joined Flexcar.

That makes us the proud owners of 226 cars in the Portland Area.

I read over the rules, assessed the costs, weighed the pluses and minuses, and decided that my Wife and should both join (we can give you a referral number if you want to join, too).

There are a lot of rules, and fees for not following the rules, but most of the things are common sense, so it shouldn't bother us too much. Like if you let the car get towed, the Flexcar folks will charge you a fee for their time spent recovering the car, plus the costs of tow retrieval. Duh.

The basics? Car, gas, insurance, are all included in one basic hourly rate, after a ~$30/year membership. They pay for all maintenance, repairs, and so on.

Cars are parked all over our city (and other cities in the US) and can be reserved for round-trips ahead of time, or at a moment's notice, either online or through a phone menu.

Yesterday I grabbed "our" new Odyssey mini-van and scooted off to Mount Hood with all the members of my family who are visiting us right now. After a play day in the falling and freshly-fallen snow, we headed out to Yankton for an evening of fun and dining at Camp Andersen (with their entire clan).

BUT. Because we are Flexers, we don't have to be marked with the mini-van stigma. Tomorrow, we drive the Mini Cooper. Tuesday? Maybe we'll tool around in the convertible.

It's awesome.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!


It snowed all morning here, and we watched the flakes come down in between cramming various dishes into the oven, many at the same time -- mashed potatoes, ham, pumpkin pie, and I cranked out Stumptown lattes on the stove from our all-manual espresso drink process.

We got a late start on the day after returning from Midnight mass and pre-Mass caroling at 2am -- we didn't turn in until after eating most of a batch of cinnamon-raisin buns.

Gifts were opened this morning, and wrapping paper was strewn across the floor.

Baby Boy got the most gifts of all, including a large, soft, blue piece of winter gear which I immediately dubbed 'the manatee costume' on account of its proportions.

The days are getting longer.

RR spent the weekend, and today, since my Wife has entered the 9th month of pregnancy, I pitched in, and whilst she was reclining on the couch, made biscuits and gravy (With RR).

The biscuits came out well, despite there being 13 massive ones instead of 20 normal-sized ones, especially since I had never done it by myself before.

RR expertly crafted the gravy, too, so it came out as well...

AND I managed to sneakily obtain a Christmas present for My Wife, which was harder then you might think -- we are attached at the hip.

I ordered a replacement lens for the right front of the Silver Bullet, so that, too sits under our tree.

Speaking of our tree -- I will have to post pictures. It is a cute, small pinus nigra -- Austrian pine, or European Black pine. Totally not shaped like a traditional Christmas tree, about two feet tall, and an interesting challenge to decorate (because of the odd limbs).

Also, though we have PLENTY of ornaments for this tree, we have no lights -- everything we saw in the stores are coated with lead, and made in China. Neither attribute is desirable or acceptable.

So, I will just make my own.

My, have we been busy.

Yesterday we dropped off our Scrabble game at Church, for the community Christmas tree. It will go to some needy family, and no doubt satiate their desire for wordy battling.

I ordered our replacement game (the 'folio' edition, where the squares snap in, the board folds, etc).

As we walked out to go to the Church to drop off the previous, there, outside the door was our knew arrival.

Until, we hoped the box, and knew that SOMETHING HAD GONE HORRIBLY ARY.



Instead of our expected, compact version of Scrabble with which we could pacify our ravenous addiction to the game (we played until 2am the other night), was this, this, HIDEOUS MONSTROSITY of flashing lights and idiotic noises, ADD-causing crap-in-a-box.

That's ME! I can spot a cherry Volvo from MILES away, just ask my Wife! I sing out every time I see one...

Check out Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem.

Used to work with Salamander Crossing... Just played in Oregon, we missed 'em.

No iTunes Plus though, and no mp3 on CDBaby, so I dunno what I'm gonna do...

I don't understand

(a) why people have it

and

(b) if you do have it, and that's the game you want to play, why you wouldn't keep doing 0%, 12-month balance transfers until banks like Chase stop sending you promos and drop you like a hot rock...

Sheesh. Don't buy it if you can't pay cash for it.

(We'll talk about houses and real estate later.)

Seriously.

This was posted on the wall at People's...

Since we are giving our Scrabble board to charity this Christmas, I thought I'd better copy down the "high scores" from the inside of the box.

(Don't worry, we already have another, more compact set en route.)

Well, well, well...

This morning I ate Goji berries and hemp seeds for breakfast... Packaged in granola made by Peace Cereal... I'm still not sure what "10% of profits go to peace" means, but, hey...

And I ordered another case of their Raspberry Ginger crisp.

(And a new case of mate just arrived...)

AND we got twelve ounces of Stumptown Coffee's Hair Bender blend. And it is TASTY.

So that's the food report...

I've got a pro-Ron Paul website up over at Ron Paul PDX and I'm looking for fellow Ron Paul-ers to help staff it...

But seriously, this is pretty cool stuff...

I just discovered Echo Helstrom -- I love these guys!!!

And yes, I just bought both their albums*, one from CD Baby, and one from here (iTunes).


*DRM-free MP3 downloads.

I LOVE this stuff, I can't help it... Wow...

Well, the Nob Hill Bar and Grill was the first place that TSG and I ate together after I moved to Portland, during the Summer just before we got married.

So I use Firefox as my primary browser. Actually, I have four browsers open most times, simultaneously using them for varied purposes, usually as the strengths of each one dictate...

However, Firefox has the issue discussed here... which led me to the official bug report, which offered this extension as a solution.

And it works much better now, thank you, with that extension installed.

I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.11 on OS 10.4.11.

We went to see these guys live last night at the Clinton Corner Cafe... they ROCKED.

Seems like they knew everyone in the crowd, seems like "Pagan Tuesdays" have been going on for a while. Everybody was coming up to the mike to help out singing, and one guy switched off on the bass for a while. They even had a rendition of "Silent Night" on the saw, and the token blonde babe who played the washboard (okay, she had good backup vocals, too -- AND played the Kazoo).

We'll check 'em out again when they play at the White Eagle on the 20th.