Blogging

I have been reading a lot of blogs recently. It has inspired me to make a concerted effort to actually have a blog going. A couple of buddies at work blog much more often than I do , and post pictures ( Phil and Mike ). Also have stumbled across a few more blogs that I have been 'lurking' on, and they are pretty consistent in blogging almost daily. I won't make that kind of commitment to myself, but will be more diligent.

Using my PC right now as my wife and daughter are on the computer (playing Tala's new Nancy Drew Mystery) where my photo's are stored. Later, when they are done, I will post some recent photos.

I finally got a decent Tri-pod. I was supposed to pick one out for my birthday in October, but never completed my recearch to decide exactly which one I wanted. Between October and Christmas, I did some more research and finally decided. We went to Spokane to look in person at them at Huppins, with the idea that we might come home and get a better price on-line. We found what we wanted, and my wife convinced me to go ahead and get it instead of waiting to get it in the mail. They didn't have one in the Store to sell, so they offered to let us pick it up from their warehouse in Idaho, on our way home. This was great for us, as we got to pay Idaho sales tax (6%) instead of Spokane tax (8.5%)! Had to wait to use it until I 'opened' it on Xmas morning, but it was just as good. We ended up getting a Manfrotto tri-pod and ball-head. I've taken a few pictures from it, but will use it more soon. Thanks Dear!!

More later when I get to the other PC....

Oh yeah I have a Blog!!

As per usual, I blogged regularly for a few weeks, then got out of the habit, and it has been a couple of months... Bad Dave!

Some exciting news at least for me. Signed up for WildBlue Satellite for Internet. Have been on Dial-up for about 10 years, and finally have a better option. I like it a lot, though my wife continues to say 'I don't see a difference'. It is at least 8 times faster and sometimes as much as 10 times faster (based on download speeds)!! The other problem is that when snow collects on the dish, reception decreases (or ceases). Then again when I park the car and it snows, I need to clean off the windshield to drive, guess it is similar.

On a bigger scale, the recent National elections are showed a trend to rationality in the electorate that we have been missing for the last 6 years at least, and last 12 years in total. The Democratic Party has taken back control of the House and Senate, and a large majority of the Governorships. Perhaps we can start un-doing the last 6 years of un-checked errors and horrible decisions by King George and his minions.

Some Photos I took this weekend

Well I had a pretty productive weekend taking pictures. Good light (almost to good) and some interesting subjects. 

Camera Issues part 2

When was the last time a sequel was better than the original?
Give up?
Well a few weeks ago that I was having camera issues and needed to send it in for some cleaning. Got it back and not only is it clean and taking good pictures again, but Canon did the Cleaning as a warranty repair!! Can it get any better? I also have some good friends visiting, and had the opportunity to test the camera out at the Ross Creek Cedars in Montana! I think they came out great. I will post some as soon as I get a chance.
Whoo hoo!!

Hypocrisy in the White House

Again the Pretender in office has made a fool of himself, and a mockery of the position that he holds. He has finally deigned to appear at the annual NAACP convention. For the first 5 years he refused to attend for any reason, the only sitting President who has refused to attend. I can't find any 'excuse' that he may have given. Now that his approval ratings are in the dumper he is trying to make up for past slights.

One of his statements according to AP:
“For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party.”
Why doesn't he (and his party) understand the need to earn respect from the African American community. They need to be more than talk about wanting to be on their side, and actually do things that will help the community. Where do they stand on:

1. Minimum wage improvements - Against
2. Lower taxes for lower income people - Against
3. Health care - Against
4. Intelligence - Obviously they are Against

There also is the interesting point being made in many places that this is the first NAACP convention since Katrina, and thcoincidencece that he, his administration and Republicans in general dropped the ball there. As well as what aid they have provided has been disproportionately to white and rich communities. Draw your own conclusions.

Camera Issues

Finally capitulated and sent my digital camera in for a professional service/cleaning. I have been having trouble with dust and 'cloudiness' on certain pictures that I have taken. I know that it is on the mirror or sensor, because it didn't matter which lens was on the camera body, the problems were in the same place on my captures. I have tried in vain to clean it myself, and nothing has worked. If I take pictures that are fully filled with subject matter that is varied in colors, the problem is mitigated pretty well. However I take lots of landscapes with the sky very prominent, and they look like there is a wave crossing the sky, with dark specs in the waves (ugly!!!).
So off to Canon it went, hope to hear from them on Monday or Tuesday as to what the cleaning will set me back. They look over the camera and send a confirmation email to let you know how much it will cost, then you approve it.
They say once you confirm it, you should get the camera back in 7 days under normal conditions. Let's hope it does!!

Rolling Stone Magazine

The last few issues of Rolling Stone have been just fantastic. They continue to run stories that the corporate right wing media (nearly all television, radio and newspaper media) are unwilling or unable to run. Point in case the issue that just arrived in my mailbox. Excellent interview/article with Al Gore winner of the 2000 presidential election (I know Gore didn't take office, just got more votes than the pretender in office, of course a few weeks back another issue touched on another 'election victory for the pretender' .) But back to Al, he shows the convincing evidence of Global warming and its impact on the world. And how our Oil President is ignoring a real threat to the US, while he pursues the imagined threat of Saddam (yes he was/is a horrible guy who the world is better off with him being out of power, but the same could be said about the current US Prez). I have not yet seen the documentary ( An Inconvenient Truth ) that Al Gore starred in, but will as soon as it becomes available.

Celtic Nots

Went to Downtown, to watch hear the Summer Concert in the Park presented by POAC this afternoon. Heard a great group The Celtic Nots . I have heard of them on the local NPR station KPBX , and had heard a few snippets of their music, but never really heard them before. Let me tell you they are very good. Got to hear them perform for about an hour, and it was great fun. The weather is very HOT right now, but we were able to be mostly in the shade, and sitting still, so bearable. Hope the rest of the series is just as good!

Mark Cuban

For a long time I have been 'following' Mark Cuban, and been fascinated with him and his outlook on live. He is a no BS type of guy who just lays it out there for you. I have no idea what he is really like, but he seems to be straight forward and open to two way intelligent discussion. I have been reading his blog for a while now and try to check it every day. Especially interesting the last month or so as his Mavericks got into the NBA Finals.

Stolen from the web:

"[President Bush,] you were in Baghdad for six hours. You weren't even in the real Baghdad. You were in the Green Zone. That's like going to the Olive Garden and saying you've been to Italy."
---Jon Stewart

Stupidity in Politics

Well our feared (by thinking people anyway) has done it yet again! Asking for a Constitutional 'Marriage' Amendment. One rational is supposedly that currently Married people will re-think their decision to marry there spouse, now that some other people will be able to get married. So I am happily married, but somehow if we 'allow' 2 men or 2 women to marry each other I will need to re-evaluate my marriage in case I want to get divorced???
Another 'conviction' for this is that marriage is for procreation.. I guess that means that people in their 50's or 60's and beyond don't need to be married either, since they are past their childbearing age. Couples unable to bear children should also re-think their current marital status.
How intelligent are these arguments? What can be any rational reason to prevent 2 people from making a life long commitment to each other? Why do we as a society want to tell people who they should love?

additionally:

"The Republican leadership is asking us to spend time writing bigotry into the Constitution," said Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2003. "A vote for it is a vote against civil unions, against domestic partnership, against all other efforts for states to treat gays and lesbians fairly under the law."

In response, Hatch fumed: "Does he really want to suggest that over half of the United States Senate is a crew of bigots?"

well YES!

Another Weekend!!

Home at last with the Family. Seemed like a long week at work, but the weekend is here!
Just kicking back, going to do some lawn work in preparation for the summer, hope we don't get too much rain. Well again, listened to the weather people and shouldn't have. I should have gone on instinct. I told my wife last night, we should go on a photo excursion this morning early, before the sun got up too high. Then watched the news and they said we were going to have rain this morning. Of course no rain.... So now we only have tomorrow for an early morning trip, and no doubt it will rain, you can never win.
On my way into work all this week, I have been observing a wide range of ducks, geese and other birds, coming back for the summer. At home we have been watching the Gold Finches change from Winter Drab-Olive back to Summer Yellow. Haven't seen the Bald Eagles for a few days, but this week started seeing the Ospreys. Last night, we were treated to a loud chorus from the Frogs in the stream near our house. Spring has sprung!!!

Beer Drinking in Sandpoint

Laughing Dog Brewery!!

If you aren't lucky enough to live in North Idaho, here is another thing you are missing!! They are a local Brewery that started up in the last year or so, and they make Great Beer. At the afore-mentioned party we had a number of their brews, and they were all fantastic. We especially like the Pale Ale and India Pale Ale. The Hot Chihuahua is very good, but a word of warning, don't try a slice of Lime in the bottle (ala' Corona) , it turns the pleasant after taste from hot chile to hot fire!! The Sweet Stout is tasty though my wife doesn't go for the darker beers. I have only had the Creme Ale once but had a very delectable taste, too.

So next time you are in the mood for a good beer try Laughing Dog!!!

PARTY

My wife and I had a bunch of friends from my work over last night for a dinner and beer. We had a great time, hopefully they all did too. Lots of food, lots of beer and margaritas, and good conversation. They are a great bunch of people, who are fun to be with, and know how to have a good time.
Of course we have lots of food left over, so we will be having Mexican food for a while! We love Mexican food, Burritos Tacos and Tostados!!!

Ole`!

Sunny Weekend

Looks like we are in for a couple of sunny days up here in North Idaho. This week we had 2 storm fronts come through. On the first one, we got about 6 inches and the second dropped another 3 or 4 inches. Somehow they cancelled school the first day and not the second, who knows why.

Time to go blonde again today! The gal who does my wife's hair has been doing mine too for about a year now. She is a funny lady with a great sense of humor. She is also very good with hair. We have been experimenting to get the right shade, and now she has it locked in. Though this time she was trying to talk me into using hair 'wax' to make short spikes on the top of my head!! I told Cynthia she could experiment tomorrow to see what it looks like. more later.....

Vacation Days

Well over a month since my last blog, HORRIBLE!

Finally taking a few minutes....

Burning a few vacation days the last 2 weeks. Where I work changed the vacation policy a while back and I have/had too much saved up. So now I am coming down to the wire to use them up. So 1 day last week, 1 day this week (and I kept it secret from my wife both times!!) Sure surprised her when I returned home last week, just to spend the whole day with her. This week we were out late at my mother in law's for an Oscar bash!! Many bottles of Champagne mysteriously disappeared! Then this morning as we woke up late she was shocked to see me still home, she wondered if I forgot to set the alarm, then realized I had her again!! SURPRISE!! Another day alone together!!!

May have to work a little harder the next time to work it out.

Got Tagged on a Four!

Four
Four jobs I've had

1. · Drug Dealer (1-1)
   
2. · Snack counter clerk
3. · Hardware store clerk
4. · A little of everything at a place called Coldwater Creek

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. · Great Escape
2. · High Fidelity
3. · Conan the Barbarian (original only)
4. · Pirates of the Caribbean

Four places I've lived

1. · Cape Elizabeth, Maine
2. · Atlanta, Georgia
3. · Wausau, Wisconsin
4. · Kansas, City Kansas

Four TV shows I love

1. · Lost
2. · Boston Legal/The Practice
3. · Six Feet Under
4. · Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Four places I've vacationed

1. · New Hampshire
2. · Maine
3. · Oregon/Washington Coast
4. · Canada

Four of my favorite dishes

1. · Burrito’s
2. · Taco/Tostado/Nacho’s
3. · Lasagna
4. · Spaghetti

Four sites I visit daily

1. · ESPN
2. · MSNBC
3. · My Yahoo
4. · Blogger

Four places I would rather be right now

1. · At home with my Family!
2. · Outdoors taking some photos
3. · Just hanging out with my wife
4. · On a movie and dinner date

Bloggers I am tagging (Your turn to fill this form out and pass it on to ?)

NightHawk


1-1 footnote - OK I worked in a warehouse shipping pharaceuticals for WarnerLambert
1-2 footnote - I skipped a few things I would list as my 4 , because I didn't want to copy previous bloggers ( Mike Phil Cassie )

January Sunshine

Well OK, I live in North Idaho, and we have had Rain (or Snow or both every day for the last 28 days). And though the sun was out for a bit of time today, I don’t think it counts, as we got Rain first, then Sun, then Snow, then rain. Do you see the pattern here??

We started with about the first 20 days of December never getting above 32 degrees. We had snow here and there, but no major accumulation. Then we warmed up, and started getting rain (and snow mixed in) so slush and mush all around.

Then last week we had another snow/rain/frozen rain storm, and about 20,000 people in our area lost there power. We did too, though we were without power for nearly 2 days. Lost the power during the night and woke to a dark house, and no way to use water (we have a spring fed well), think no toilet, no COFFEE, no shower, etc.. Dutifully called the power company and they took our information. We wait and wait…..

That evening, I come home early and bring Taco Bell to a starving wife and daughter!! Call the power company again and leave our information, and wait and wait.

Call back again and talk to a real person, she says don’t worry all the crews are out and they expect to get everyone back on, but they can’t promise anyone that they really will get their power.

We go to bed, and expect to get up to power. We are awoken at 3 am by the phone, ‘are you glad we got your power on?’ Well no, since we still don’t have power…..grrrr…. and thanks for waking us up to find that out!!! ‘ Oh you don’t, well sorry, the crews have all gone home to sleep (we are ok with this as most have no doubt been working in the cold and dark for nearly 24 hours “hey don’t fall asleep while working on MY power”), so don’t expect your power in the next few hours.’

So another morning NO COFFEE, no shower, no toilet (though it is raining so much, I can put a bucket outside under the corner of the house, it is filled up in about 20 minutes, and now just bring it in and ‘flush’ the toilet!)

Later in the morning and afternoon try to convince my wife to come to town and wait out the power company from the friendly confines of her mother’s house. She will have none of it… Finally around 3 pm, I call my wife back and conference in my mother-in-law and convince my wife that town is the place to be (when necessary always bring in the big guns “your Mom is on my side”). She is convinced, and of course within about an hour the power comes back on, so my wife ‘gets’ to stay home after all.

Now it is time to access the damage, nearly everything on the door to both freezer’s is soft and will need to be thrown out. Milk and other perishables need to go. Other items like Ice Cream and frozen juice also have gone soft (for how long who knows). Being the frugal person that she is, my wife wants to keep as much as possible. I say better safe than sorry. Is that $3 box of Veggie burgers worth 24 (or 48) hour food poisoning!! I say no way. Of course it is not just one or 2 boxes, but really which is worse: Throwing out something that potentially Might be OK or keeping it and finding out it Wasn’t OK and spending a long few hours praying to or sitting on the porcelain chariot!!!!!

I think my descriptions of the possible outcomes finally swayed her, (of course joking that they might give us all Gonneria broke the tension, and got a couple of laughs, too)! So Costco, Safeway, Yokes and Walmart all got a few extra sales this week from us. On the bright side, our fuel bill should be lower this month, 2 less days of usage!!!

Happy(?) New Year (calendar anyway)

Well another calendar year bites the dust! and Boy did 2005 bite! It was a crappy year in so many ways; it is hard to count them all.

(For anyone offended by the truth, or sensitive to ranting skip the next 2 paragraphs)

Our feared leader has shown time and time again just how ignorant, incompetent and immoral he and his compatriots can be. From continued bad decisions in Iraq, to how we are perceived in the world because of them, to horrible decisions related to Katrina, Rita and disaster relief in the Gulf area. More recently the revelation of the invasion of privacy to anyone 'they' deem necessary to 'listen in on', with no prior court approval (do you feel safer?)! What is next, opening your mail, instead of just running it through a scanner? Will they start to tell us what we can think too?
Of course the ONLY good thing to say about GW is that he is still breathing, can you imagine how much worse it would be if Cheney was in a higher seat of power than he is currently? (and you can only wonder what kind of person he would pick for his VP.... and with the current Congressional makeup we might end up with Bozo the Clown: oh wait that is an improvement and they wouldn't want that!)
Supreme Court Nominations (both the resigned and the accepted), the Economy, the Environment and the plain old arrogant bluster of nearly everything that comes from his mouth.

Enough of the ranting!!

On the positive side my Family and I are all Healthy and Happy. We live in a wonderful community! We are able to spend time together and make plans together. We traveled to New England this summer and had an excellent time at a family reunion. Recently I have had the opportunity to take some vacation time and just kick back with my wife and daughter and enjoy life and their company.

We continue to try to make the world a better place in how we live, and how we raise our daughter. We try to help people when able and support the environment and animals in many ways. We are trying to live smaller and use fewer resources. Planning for the future and hoping that more people can get in step with progress in creating a Better, Peaceful United World!!

So with that thought I will say HAPPY NEW YEAR, and try to do YOUR part in creating a better Tomorrow!!!

GrizDave