CHRISTMAS LETTER

To our family and friends for whom we do not have a current mailing address:

CHRISTMAS 2008 ON THE NORTHWEST COAST
You know that it has been a difficult year when your surgeon is in your speed dial and your vehicle can find its own way to the local pharmacy. We are very thankful that Julie’s cancer has an extremely small statistical chance of recurrence and that she is gradually gaining some of her pre-surgery strength back. According to the anesthesiologist, because Julie had so many surgeries over a short time, her recovery time for memory and strength could be a year or more. Apparently the drugs these days are better than those of yore, but can play all sorts of tricks on the body.

The drug induced memory lapses open up all sorts of possibilities for me to gain advantage in our relationship, something I have rarely, if ever, experienced. For instance, I could have acquired more motorized and/or floating toys and she would have believed me when I told her that we shopped together for them. I did not do this which shows great strength of character on my part. I could have taken a solo fishing trip to Belize and then waxed poetic about our romantic walks on the uninhabited beaches. More strength shown by me-self. I did not do this either. Wow, what a great guy I am.

Julie is well, if a little distracted at times, and is back at the boutique a couple of days a week to get her “girl time” fix and golfing whenever possible. This is her new sport and I am told if you go with her you must be a sport to relinquish any thoughts of decorum or golf etiquette. Her group is the one laughing all of the time.

We did take a month long road trip through California, a good chunk of Arizona and parachuted into Albuquerque for the wedding of our Niece and to meet up with our recently unemployed daughter. Alisha finished her time in New Orleans as a Habitat for Humanity volunteer and we took the opportunity to meet her in Albuquerque for a caravan back to Oregon. Alisha’s little hatchback vehicle was packed solid to the ceiling, with a flexible bag type container strapped to the roof. I was impressed that she had not added significantly to her possessions while away for almost two years; impressed until I learned that the U.S. Postal Service was covering for her, with Julie’s help. She and Julie drove the car to Tucson, where we resumed our visit with the family, and I had the pleasure of driving Alisha’s car the next leg to Santa Barbara. I was looking for 3 cubic inches at a time to rearrange the interior load so that my knees would not be hitting the turn signal arm and to give me a small visual path to the right side mirror. I have faith in a lot of things, but blind lane changes are not included in the list, especially through Los Angeles. Julie and Alisha took the convertible road rocket and all I saw was their dust. Somehow I must sharpen my negotiating skills to get the upper hand in these matters.

Back Home in June: As you may know our home on the lake is very small, a fact which is especially true when the number one daughter moves in for a while. We are not used to having Alisha’s personal items scattered about since she moved out in 1999 to attend ASU, but we managed OK. Alisha is not, oh, how shall I put this, neat. At one point I got in the shower and found no less than 9 types of soap wedged in every conceivable crevice of the two shower caddies. I use one. What all of the others are for I have no idea and cannot imagine that one would get cleaner using several at a time, so I’m guessing that that is not the real purpose. If you know, please write me privately because the girls are not telling me. Alisha moved back to Portland as quickly as possible, but not before helping me pound a few nails of our own around the homestead. I think she was showing off because she is very good at construction. She is now trying to get into various graduate degree programs after taking the GRE a week or so ago. The ones in foreign lands or far away places are especially interesting to her. Surprise, surprise.

Eric’s move to Bend, Oregon has been a mixed bag. Finding meaningful employment has been like chasing the salmon downstream as the carcasses wash over the waterfalls and return to the sea. Economic conditions deteriorated rapidly in Bend as homebuilding shut down in mid-stride. When the economy goes south many people take that as a queue to return to academia for enlightenment and to beef up their credentials, and apparently both of our offspring are of like mind. Eric is taking on-line business classes and is enrolled for spring at Central Oregon Community College for Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). Being an EMT is something he has talked about since he was about sixteen and it is great to see Eric pursue this path. It seems to us that Eric has had sufficient on the job training in crisis management, both during his stint in New Orleans ten years ago and during the coffee roaster years, and has always remained cool and focused when the adrenaline flow increases, so this pursuit of study toward an EMT certificate should be a really good fit for him.

Eric has also continued his interest in music, and since his house has a built-in extra room for all of his recording gear, he may be able to spend some time working at it without competing with Sponge Bob Square Pants on the television. He has a fine voice, something he did not inherit directly from his parents, and we hope that he finds a place to showcase it someday.

Eric’s S.O., Rachel, has found a position with a non-shouting attorney group that she really enjoys (as compared to the previous Napoleon complex boss in the same profession). An S.O. in today’s world is a “Significant Other”. This is a perplexing term for me as it does not really have the ring of romance. Eric prefers “fiancé’”, but I think there should be a major push to come up with new terminology and then legislate its exclusive usage. This would keep numerous statehouses occupied and away from the real mischief our elected folks prefer to rain down upon our heads and wallets.

Lane, Rachel’s son, is a delight and at four years old is beginning to get a sense of humor about the oblique things only a four year old would spend any time thinking about. He can deadpan with the best – no smile, nothing, nada – just a straight face so that you think that his question might be sincere. Then he nails you.

Deaven is living in Portland now with Mom, Fae, and growing new neural connections by the bucket load. After being raised by Eric almost exclusively for the past eight years they believe that this move is best for her and we do not disagree (which would be useless anyway), but we miss the more frequent visits with her.

While we have toyed with the idea of selling everything and moving to California somewhere near San Luis Obispo for a lifestyle makeover, macro economic events (and stupidity of business leaders) overtook everything and may have eliminated that possibility for the foreseeable future. We’ll see. The pull South is fairly strong because of our vague memories of dry days and blue skies.

No sé el futuro, sino la esperanza de estar allí.
(I do not know the future, but hope to be there.)
I am just trying to get in the mood for our upcoming two month, plus, trip to Sonora.

Fleas, (Feliz Navidad),


Lee & Julie

A Dogs World

Small World

A friend of ours here in Florence, Oregon, Hal Weiner, each year is instrumental in producing the Winter Folk Festival in January. The thrust of the event is to put on concerts at the Florence Events Center for the areas school children and expose them to folk music. The auditorium seats 457 for the main concerts and the flat floor is used all weekend for vendors and a more-or-less continuous concert of folk talent from the region. This has turned into a great event and we have been involved by donating the use of the big beach house vacation rental to house the headline group. Of course there is an adult concert on Saturday night which is sold out each year. This year Tom Paxton is numero uno, and Barry McGuire (Eve of Destruction) and John York (former member of the Birds) are numero dos. They will all be staying at our house and for this we get to enjoy some good music and have some satisfaction that we helped bring folk music to the kids here.

Hal Weiner, for a time, was a member of the Goldcoast Singers who opened for Bud & Travis several times in L.A. and San Francisco. It’s a small world. I ran into Hal yesterday as we were both buying a belt at the local Fred Meyer store (not many options here) and spoke to him about the upcoming concert and he reminisced for a time about those days of being a broke student in L.A. and trying to make a few extra dollars by playing music. And he reminded me that the founding members of the Goldcoast Singers wrote and performed the irreverent song Plastic Jesus. The song was not meant to antagonize those of faith, but to point out the hypocrisy of selling trinkets in the name of God. There are many other versions of this song and a little controversy over its origin, but I believe that these are the original lyrics.

Plastic Jesus
By the Goldcoast Singers, 1962
Ed Rush, and George Cromarty

I don't care if it rains or freezes

's long as I've got my Plastic Jesus

Glued to the dashboard of my car.

You can buy Him phosphorescent

Glows in the dark, He's Pink and Pleasant,

Take Him with you when you're traveling far.

You can buy a Sweet Madonna

Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a

Pedestal of abalone shell.

Goin' ninety, I'm not wary

'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary,

Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell.

(All together now!)

I don't care if it rains or freezes
's long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car

Minus 13 Degrees F

We were in Bend, Oregon this past weekend for the last of Julie’s work for reconstruction (Do I hear a Halleluiah?) and it was a year and two days since her first surgery. She was just amazed that it was finally over and that she will not need to see the Doc for a year.

We stayed with our friends Steve & Carolyn because our house is rented out until May and we enjoyed their company and a celebration of Carolyn’s birthday on Monday. It was bitterly cold and ranged only between zero and plus 8 degrees Fahrenheit for the last three days there. On our drive back to the coast yesterday it was -13 degrees F as we passed through Sisters, Oregon and just plain cold the entire way. Of course I am not complaining because we were in a nice warm 4 X 4 Suburban, with studded snow tires and did not need to get out of the truck for anything. It was just a very slow trip. From Eugene all of the way through the Coast Range it was ice on the road and even at the beach there is still snow on the ground.

This is very unusual for the coast because we only see snow every few years and it does not stay on the ground for several days as we are experiencing now. This weather has prompted me to begin packing in earnest for the trip to Mexico even through it is a month away. We do not want to forget our favorite pair of sandals. It will be good to not be cold!

Oregonians at a Disadvantage

Governor Rod Blagojevich, Illinois (soon to be Ex-gov.)

If we had known how much of a disadvantage it would be to move to Oregon we would have made a different choice eight years ago. If we had chosen Illinois instead of the West Coast we could have bid on the Senate seat vacated by Barak Obama. Oregon is a fairly progressive state, but I have not seen any seats in the U.S. Congress for sale recently, although I have not checked EBay. I guess if there was anything to bid on in Oregon it would be plastered on the Internet because we are so progressive here.

Feeling left out here in the Northwest, we are going to petition our legislature to apply for extra Federal assistance to compensate for the lack of opportunity here. This would go a long way toward supplementing the Federal payments we receive for the timber we do not cut because of all of the restrictions Congress has placed on such ventures. I gotta say that Senator Edmonson sounds mighty fine to me and would make my family really proud, especially if we did not have to bother with actually getting any votes. Just paying a lump sum for the privilege would probably be a whole lot cheaper than actually campaigning and all of the other stuff you gotta do for it in normal circumstances.

But we will just settle for some money in the old pocketbook direct from the U.S, Treasury, as compensation for our disadvantage. This is an especially good idea because then we would not have to worry about the FBI or spending any time in a cell if people did not like the alternative of purchasing a Senate seat. We have a quorum? All those in favor.........

Hit by Lightening

We do not get a lot of lightening on the Oregon coast, but I am not counting on statistics alone to counter those that may pray for the occasional bolt to strike me on the top of my head out of a clear blue sky for what I am about to commit to print. The longer my years, the more I think about higher purpose and the struggles of humankind to understand our universe and our place within it. Call it what you will, but “woo-woo” moments come even to those of us who count more on science than faith to bookmark our place in the world. One such moment struck me recently while preparing to shower.

It began by thinking about how my older brother and I were blessed with extremely heavy beards at a very early age and how what I thought was really cool at 18 years of age has turned to poop after 40 years of continuous scraping of my face with various torture implements. I was recently appalled at how much facial hair was evident after I cleaned my reading glasses and looked in the mirror. I had not shaved in about 36 hours, my eyebrows resembled Andy Rooney’s, and my moustache was more like a late summer garden full of weeds than the picture my mind painted. Much of my time is my own now, as opposed to belonging to an employer, and most days I do not care much about style and appearances and simply go about my daily business oblivious to others concerns about looking like a hobo. If I have grungy work to do on the house or in the garage I am not going to wear a suit. Same with shaving. If I do not plan on having to “go to town” and see someone my wife might know who would report back to her about my deteriorated condition, I will not shave sometimes. This is happening more and more as I find that my beard is becoming even more of a forest than I ever thought possible. The EPA has proposed setting aside some of the territory on my chin for Spotted Owls to increase their chances at species survival. The current technologies available to cut or yank these hairs from my epidermis are woefully inadequate for the expanded diameters and diminished spacing between the follicles.

So, this got me to thinking, after shaving, cutting and combing. While showering, for some unknown reason, phrases of The Lord’s Prayer began misfiring through my grey matter and I began reconstructing the lines to my own design – which just happened to have something to do with facial hair. I do not mean to insult anyone and bring placard carriers to my front door, predicting doom or worse for me and those of like mind. This is simply one of my diversions from everyday concerns. I know this will not stop the hand wringing by some or the earnest prayer for my wayward soul, but to me it is just a bit o’ fun. And my brother will understand.

The Lord’s Prayer – Completely Changed

Our Father, which art in the supermarket shaving aisle
Hallowed by thy trademark brands
Thy delivery trucks come
Thy will be done with safety blades, in earth as it is, hopefully, in heaven
Give us this day our daily beard
And forgive us our no-shave days, as we forgive them that evolve to peach fuzz
And lead us not into temptation of hormone therapy
But deliver us from evil electric razors
For thine is the patented kingdom, and the three head electric power hair plucker, and the smooth skin glory, for ever and ever. Amen

Taunt Your Friends

This is not the solution, Gary!

This 9 piece puzzle spent a great amount of time on our card table last week, providing many hours of fun, but no solution. Several non-working theories were advanced and tried, each with its unique premise. Nada.

Gary especially wanted to solve this thing, so I thought I would just toss this into the blog as sort of an unfinished business thing to taunt those of us who cared enough to give it a shot. If you have not tried this puzzle it is worth a few bucks to own one yourself. If you happen to solve it, please LET ME KNOW THE SOLUTION. Armed with a good result I could create all kinds of grief.

Oh Fudge! Holiday Spirit Again.

Last week was a busy one and one of the highlights was Deaven spending the entire time with us in Florence. This gave Julie and Deaven a chance to bake their traditional chocolate chip cookies, brownies and fudge and deliver them to merchant friends along Bay Street in Old Town. The photograph was taken as they were leaving the house - notice that the top is down. We had a week of great weather, with the only rain being on T-Day.

Roman & Mayan Roads

My friends currently located South of the U.S. border are amazed at the condition of the public roads and the functioning of the transportation system and its buses. Many of the older city streets are cobblestone or brick and these surfaces produce a slightly irregular ride compared to the high speed system we are used to driving on here in the USA, at least our newer urban roads.

We still have many brick and stone roads in older American cities that have been paved over with asphalt so we do not really notice them. The Egyptians, Romans, Mayans and other cultures used rock pavements of various sorts to improve transportation and these are not dissimilar to those still found in parts of the world today, including Mexico. The challenge to producers of buses is immense when one considers how diverse a range of roadways they must traverse in a lifetime that can approach thirty or forty years. I thought it might be useful for me to show the s/v Faith crew the important parts of the life cycle of the these buses they are riding since I have both access to a high speed Internet connection, time and with my background in geology in the construction materials business, a perspective they may appreciate.

This is a picture of the bus Sandy and Patty used yesterday in PV.

After being crushed it is shredded to reduce its volume for transportation.

The metal is melted......

.....and poured into forms.






Some of this metal is used to make these shock absorbers.




And some is used to make these heavy duty springs.

These are what they do not install on the buses and taxis that use cobblestone streets because they would not last 5 minutes. A solid piece of I-beam is simply welded into that space where a suspension system would normally be located. This is simply ingenious!

An actual photograph of a Puerto Vallarta cobblestone street.

Notice that there is no vehicular traffic. This is due to the fact that every vehicle in the region is in a shop having its suspension system re-welded. The health benefits of walking are not lost on the population and there is no cry from the public to pave over the street system with smooth surface.

Too Bright to Eat

As we prepare for the annual feast, let us be thankful for cooperative birds.

Fireplace for those next 200 Rainy Days

While I have been continuing to work on the maintenance of rental properties, I thought it would be nice to do something for our own casita so I am installing a fireplace where the TV used to be located.

Of course this work meant that we just had to acquire a 52 inch LCD HD TV to fit above the fireplace. We blame this need for a bigger screen on age.

I have yet to install the mantel, which I am building out of some of the Western Red Cedar milled from the trees we dropped when we built the big garage. And the hearth still needs to be added, but this is the sort of project that is best for our rainy days. It has probably rained a few more inches since my last entry on the subject and the ocean is churned up with a 16 foot swell and winds gusting to about 45 mph. We can clearly hear individual waves at night from two miles away when we are starting to drift off to sleep, as long as the wind is not blowing too strongly.

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see my self portrait as well - if you look closely.

Arizona Rainfall Total

There is a reason we live on a lake. It rains here, a lot. A whole lot. When we made the decision to move to the Northwest after our sixteen year Phoenix imprisonment, the choice was in part because we did not want to live with air conditioning eight months out of the year. But one of the deciding factors was that it is so green here. Green in so many shades and hues that for this desert rat it was an awakening. Water falling from the sky in great quantities has such a transforming affect upon the landscape and it was something outside of all of my other living experiences, even way beyond anything I experienced on the Gulf Coast. There are so many lakes, streams and rivers here that no single map of Oregon adequately shows all of the water flowing across the landscape. When I have been by any of our local rivers, fishing or just observing, I usually think of the dessicated surface of Arizona and how nature distributes its largess so unevenly. The normal daily flow of the Columbia River is almost identical to the flow volume of the Salt River through Phoenix during a 100 year flood event - about 200,000 cubic feet per second. Of course the drainage areas are not comparable, but that is in part due to the great water flow itself cutting into the land and capturing its territory.

I started out this post preparing to just report to my Arizona cousin that we have had 6.53 inches of rain since Halloween and that the timing of the recent visit could not have been better. That amount of rain is only about an inch shy of the average annual rainfall for Phoenix, if my memory is still functioning. I have been constructing a fireplace in our living room and one of the only items that is outside of my ability is the connection of the chimney to the existing roof, which happens to be some sort of petrochemical membrane that requires a hot glue and completely dry surface to bond the parts together. At the present rate of precipitation it may be next June before the fireplace is usable because we will not be able to complete the chimney hook-up.

Last night Julie and I were watching yet another post mortem on the election when a sudden, loud sound made us both jump up, wondering what sort of container had fallen from one of the kitchen shelves, shattering on the floor. It sounded like a 20 pound glass jar of dry macaroni breaking. It turned out that the plastic trash bag temporarily covering the cap-less chimney had reached its elastic limit. Apparently, a Glad 55 gallon yard debris bags, stretched tightly over a 10.5 inch diameter opening can only hold about a gallon of water before the pull of gravity exceeds the strength of the molecular bonds of the thin plastic. In an instantaneous dump water going down a metal chimney sounds amazingly like dry macaroni hitting the floor. I learn something new every day.

Again, this rambling is entirely within the limits I set for myself with this blog. Almost nothing is off limits, as long as my granddaughter may view it, and switching directions is encouraged.

McBama or O'Cain - You Choose

No matter what your selection might be my personal choice would be that you vote. Period. The above bumper sticker (for $4.99 on cafepress.com) is cutsie, but not true with its declaration that "they're all the same". Call me a cynic.

This is an historic election and time will tell whether or not the direction of this country, especially in the global perception, plays out well for us.

Regardless of who is at the helm after the votes are tallied, they will be facing a huge Federal budget defecit and record amounts of borrowing by the government, which will affect the agenda of the country for years to come. I was curious about who is purchasing all of the debt obligations we are offering to the world and got sidetracked without finding the answer. Did you know that there is a Bureau of the Public Debt within the Treasury Department?

This is interesting stuff, which is why I found myself sidetracked for too long, and it is something I will have to get back to so that I can understand how our sales of debt to other governments may affect the decisions of our government in the future.

Anyway, to my friends and family I just wanted to let you know that I wonder about this sort of stuff, in a rambling sort of way, and that every chance I get I cast my vote as an upstanding member of the Repmocratic Party. In Oregon we have this great mail-in voting system, which actually allows us to gather up an armfull of pro and con stuff on the issues and candidates, sit down at the kitchen table with it and sort out out how we feel about all of it. It is the best system I have ever participated in and it is hard to understand why it is not universally adopted. More rambling. Oops.

TMI

This is a good example of Too Much Information - leading to ineffective advertising. But I think that they may be onto something! Each municipality should pass an ordinance requiring that political signage be placed in a single location, rather than cluttering up the entire landscape.

Vote here if you agree:

chuckthepoliticiansout.com

Vote here if you disagree:

iamanidiot.org

(These are not real links to anything)

Ode to the Lost Brother

Or Slippin’ Away

The oldest by date
Nary a spate
Between the siblings, except
When discussing those adept
At the art of leisure
I’ll sail away, says he the oldest
When in reality they slip, and sip
Mostly
Southerly warm
A literal and littoral swarm
All mast
The message in the bottle reads
Back in a year
Or more
When will we hear? Oh, dear
Brother of mine
It’s a fine
Endeavour

Orca in San Carlos - high pucker factor

I was looking around a San Carlos, Sonora forum web site that I check on periodically and found a post with photographs that I thought was amazing. Here is the post without embellishment:

"On our way out today we cuaght up with a big male killer whale, it was getting rwlly close to our prop and was aparently just playing with our wake, then he moved over to Catch-22's wake and I was able to get a few pictures from our boat...We heard on the radio of other boats finding a big pod of orcas close to San Pedro island.Awesom experience again.

We caught 3 dorado, released 2 of them that were small and kept a 15 pounder, hooked and lost a marlin.Fernando
Last edited on Fri Oct 3rd, 2008 06:40 pm by PQ Almada"

Holy cow, man, get a grip!

The episode in Middletown, Ohio involving the arrest of an intoxicated woman in a cow suit threatens to take on a life of its own, with the potential to outlive even the legend of Mrs Oleary's cow of Chicago fame.

Mr. Biesbolfan's original blog query regarding the authenticity of the mug shot may have turned into a real barn burner of its own. Completely udder-estimating the moovment afoot (or "ahoof) by the Middleton P.D. to ban cow suits entirely, Mr. Biesbolfan has left all reason in the pasture and pursued wordplay in the extreme. His admonition to "Don't have a cow man!", and "we're mooving on", may have soured the entire bucket of milk.

So I ask you to be udderstanding while we try to heard the tail end of this post toward a cud-clusion, without guilt about the diversion from more serious matters. Hay! I just remembered, in my research I found the perfect gift for Cubs biesbol fans worldwide............

(IF THIS SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE ON THE OUTSIDE OF AN INSIDE JOKE YOU ARE CORRECT. UNLESS YOU SUBSCRIBE TO must heart dogs AND READ ITS COMMENTS YOU WILL NOT HAVE A CLUE!)

Viral Time Warp

These are images of a cold virus and right now I am certain that they are in every possible part of my body. My relationship with our living room couch has expanded exponentially for each of the last 6 days I have spent prone on it slipping in and out of a semi-coherent state. I just wanted to look them up and see how they would appear if my Superman vision ever kicks in.

Julie and I are supposed to leave for Bend tomorrow so that we may attend a Friday night dinner and silent auction benefit for the St. Joseph Hospital Cancer Center. Right now that is not at the top of my list of things to do, but since I have had this bug for about six days it should have run its course by the time we need to leave. It is probably a good sign that I have any interest whatsoever in posting here even though I will probably slip off into my daily coma soon.

This past week has been fairly humorless except for the few fun things I have found on TV or on fellow blogger's sites - such as Aroma Therapy Candles by Mr. Biesbolfan. As my outlook improves I am certain that humor will slide back into its rightful place among the cobwebs currently occupying much of my cranial space.

Bullwinkle on E-mail

Martin: Don't you guys know about faxes?

Lewis: Yeah, don't you know about E-mail?

Bullwinkle: Sure. A fax is a little red critter that hunts geese and chickens. Half of them are males, and the other half are "E-males".

Martin: No, it's a way of transmitting computer-generated information across great distances in the blink of an eye!

Bullwinkle: Well I was close.

(These last few blog posts got me thinking about quotes in general, so I found one that I thought would be of interest)

Humpty Dumpty Rule

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

Lewis Carroll

It has been subtly pointed out that I keep forgetting to attribute quotes and other material properly, or worse yet misquoting entirely! This is not entirely true. I prefer to allow myself the freedom to run amok with words, wildly forging ahead and thinking about matters of scholarly value later. I am no scholar.

This is what should be called the Humpty Dumpty Rule, if you place any value in the "teachings" of Lewis Carroll. Take that, academia!

Swim Upstream!

777 DOES NOT MEAN A WINNER TODAY

Whenever I have been confronted with a bad day on Wall Street and the talking heads in the newsrooms are yelling at one another in exaggerated squeaky voices, I have gone to the graph of the Dow that begins in 1930 for perspective.

Yes I lost some money today, if I was going to sell something, but since I am not a seller when everyone is screaming that the sky is falling then perhaps I will be all right in the longer view.

The other perspective to take is when everyone is rushing past you saying, "Run, run, as fast as you can," perhaps you would do better to run toward them so that you get through the bad stuff faster. Be a buyer if you can. When stocks get hit hard by fear, rather than fundamentals, there are always some undervalued company that will reap rewards during a rebound.

I am not saying that I have not been concerned, only that when the stock market is falling precipitously that is probably not the best time to sell. What if you do sell, then what do you do next?

What is especially interesting is that this current condition is also tied to what Congress may or may not do. Double yikes! Since when has the making of political sausage been a healthy thing to watch. Not only are we getting national indigestion, we may not be able to eat anything after witnessing this scene. Personally, I could use a good diet, but I would rather not be forced into it by our national leaders during an election year. Oh, this could go on, and on, and on..........

Go to Scotland - Billy Connolly

Golf

Just too good to not share. If you have never seen this get some Kleenex and heart attack meds handy.

Florence - Rods N Rhodies Event

We had an Old Town Florence gathering of Hot Rods this last weekend and, although I am not a great fan of 500 H.P. vehicles, I do like to see the precise restoration work and remnants of old technologies.

At the end of the first day of the show the cars all fire up and cruise back and forth on Bay Street for about an hour, adding to both greenhouse gasses and the trade deficit, aka imported oil. This is great fun and the spectators hoot and yell especially at the convertibles because they can actually hear comments from the crowd over the exhaust noise from these monster engines.

Toward the end of the cruise I decided to head home and when I was getting the DeLorean out of the parking lot next to Bay Street a friend was retrieving a jacket from her car (Connie) and we decided to sneak into the lineup of the cruise. We made it down the street for 1/2 lap but were kicked out at the turn around point and I had to take alleys back to drop Connie back at the Grape Leaf. The Grape Leaf, as the name implies, has something to do with grape juice, but that is another story. It is a great spot from which to enjoy the festivities of Old Town.

This is a great weekend of fun and I spent nearly all of it hanging out and walking the street, revisiting the best examples........... here are just a few pics:

I have to kill some time while I am roasting my bi-weekly coffee supply and since I know many people with both dogs and excess computer paraphernalia I thought I would spend some time searching for uses of old discs.

This is by far the best example of what to do with your old data discs, and all of those old programs from a decade ago hiding in a box in your closet. ( I know there are others aside from me that have saved the 1996 version of a game they will never play again)

Anyway, the dog on Must Heart Dogs looks like a perfect candidate for this sort of fun - just a goofy looking very distant ancestor of the wolf.

Bend Hospital ---- again

This a NASA composite photograph of night time Earth.

We are in Bend again for another surgery for Julie and it went well, although neither of us has developed a better technique for dealing with the pre-surgery stress. Alisha came down from Portland to help out and lend emotional support. Both are needed.

This should be the last surgery and we are thankful for the prospect of being able to conduct our daily lives without looking so much at the recuperation times between surgeries, and the uncertainty of predictions regarding potential results.

Although we will be back East of the Cascades in two weeks for the removal of some sutures and a check up, that is no big deal when compared to surgery and we will use part of that visit to spend a little time with the family here. Deaven is back now after a full summer in Guam and Portland and starting 3rd Grade in two days. She is wanting to make cookies with Grammy soon.

More DeLorean Work -- Radiator Replacement

This is an account of my experience replacing the original radiator in the DeLorean. I write this so that other DeLorean owners may stumble upon it and save themselves some grief and a little time, assuming that like me you are not a mechanic by profession.
First, it is helpful to have the shop manual and to have read it and make sure that you know where all of the attachment points are located. Secondly, it is very useful to grow a third arm before getting under the car. It would be equally beneficial if your new arm was sufficiently long to get you in the running as a First Round Draft choice for the NBA - say 4 feet long would be good if you have an option. When the manual says “Manoeuvre the radiator assembly sufficiently to gain access to and release nut securing each top support strut to radiator assembly”, this is where you use the extra arm to reach the top of the radiator while keeping the whole assembly balanced.
If you are like me, do not have a car lift installed in your garage and must rely on ramps and floor jacks, then be prepared for significant contortion to reach the top bolts removing and replacing the assembly. Go ahead and remove the top support brackets from the frame as well, since you will need the freedom to wiggle them around a bit during the re-installation. I am getting a little old, to the point where most days I start out with sore body parts and go downhill further as the day progresses, so these gyrations are noticeable the next day when I try to get all of my appendages working together in unison.
I found that before removing the radiator from between the condenser and fan housing that zip-ties were very useful in supporting these pieces and giving me a little extra room to “manoeuvre”, or maneuver if you prefer. I also keep a supply of Ziploc® baggies on hand along with a permanent marker to label them and put the small parts in them, even if I only expect to take a short time to do the job. When I unexpectedly get called away from the project and return to it days later this makes it much easier to get re-started with assembly. Less thinking and more action saves time.
Before starting I made sure that I had all of the new radiator hoses and new clamps on hand because this is a really, really good time to replace them. The old hoses were a bit crisp, although it was the radiator itself that was leaking and started this project in the first place. (Take a look at the photo of the old radiator. The (plastic!) side tank had small fractures running down it.)
My replacement radiator was a little thicker than the original and this caused the radiator air duct to not fit at the top left side when being reinstalled. The plastic contacted the top fitting of the condenser and needed to be cut away slightly. This would have been much easier to do before everything was back in its place. I have included a photograph of this area in case you run into the same difficulty.
Overall, this is a moderately difficult job only because some of the attachments are a little difficult to reach. I also installed a new stainless steel coolant bottle because the original was looking a little too weak for the long haul. It took me the better part of a day to complete by myself and several glasses of wine aided the recuperation and added to the satisfaction of completing a job for which I have had no training whatsoever. Keeping the DeLorean in shape to drive all of the time is very satisfying, and I do drive it as much as possible, rain or shine. This is no garage queen.

This shows the little cut-out that I had to make to reinstall the radiator air duct.

My typical working environment. Not shown are my creeper and the 4x thickness of carpet padding that I use when I need to lay on my back and get some leverage.

The new radiator is thicker, having more cooling capacity, but the extra width caused a bit of an issue during the installation.






























As you can see, the original plastic radiator had given its all and was dribbling fluid at every chance.

Big Waves on the Oregon Coast

This is a little video that I put on youtube a few months ago and it gets about 200 views a day. And yes, I know that it is not an absolutely accurate depiction because the distance to the lighthouse is farther than some of the wave footage. So what. It is just a fun attempt to guage the height of a big swell and I had fun putting it together.

We get huge waves every Winter and I just happened to catch a good offshore breeze that was holding up the form. Whoopee!

(I do not know this person.)

Yesterday I was in a Home Depot picking up a few things for projects around the Bend house when I had a customer service experience that would NOT be part of the training regimen of any company. It could have been part of the new book “How to collect unemployment without even trying hard”, or “Quick methods for getting on the public dole”.
I had found everything I needed by myself except a quart of paint. For this I needed help. The gentleman behind the paint counter was working on a mixture for another customer and as she wandered off to get a few items he made no effort to acknowledge me standing patiently a few feet from him. Then he started a conversation with another employee about 30 feet away concerning an issue about who was going to cover his lunch period. This went on for several minutes during which time the other customer returned to the counter awaiting her can of paint, which by now was in the shaker being mixed. Still no acknowledgement of customers at the counter while the lunch discussion continued.
One would think that when the paint mixer machine finished its business and stopped making noise that the counter employee would put aside his gastronomical concerns and at least finish the one transaction he had started, but nooooooo. Instead he began wandering slowly out from behind the counter, away from his customers, toward the other employee, who by this time was suggesting that he take his lunch a little early because it was unlikely that he was going to get coverage for lunch at the normal time. By now the employees were a good 50 feet away, but their conversation was clearly audible because the store had few customers. It was beginning to dawn on me that this award winning employee was intending to just leave us standing at the counter. The lady next to me gave me a quizzical look, as though I might help her understand what had transpired while she grazed her way around the paint section acquiring more things for her project, sans paint.
At about this moment the employee picked up speed in his move away from us and, yes, he was going to go away and eat at this very moment, and I had already heard that no one was available to cover his counter. The exit was hastened and then completed. Not another employee in sight. My adjacent and bewildered co-customer looked at me again as though saying WTF (?), to which I replied, “Customer service is dead”, and I left.
As I have grown older I have found more often that this is a nearly typical encounter when I am trying my best to give money to big retailers. To compensate for this trend, I try first to give my money to small operators who appreciate my business and try to be helpful. It is sad, really, that environments in retail exist where this is permissible, or at least tolerated through neglect. As long as there is a paycheck at the end of the day for the uncaring employee then this sort of thing will continue and, heaven forbid, perhaps become more prevalent. Yikes!

Transitory Sidewalk Images

These are pastels on asphalt at the Santa Barbara Mission.
Amazing!