Friday early evening

Friday, early evening. It’s warm, wet and raining. We’re catching up on the rainfall for the month here on the last day. We’ve gotten 1.28” today bringing the monthly rainfall total up to 1.31”. Not a lot of rain before today. This is going to green up the grass nicely!

I’m about half way through a head cold (hopefully). It started with the twinge in the back of the throat Tuesday morning. I used some of my 400+ hours of sick time yesterday, came home for some chicken soup (that someone else made for me) and had a nice nap. Boy was my head stuffed up when I got up! It’s been draining ever since. (Nice visual, huh? Maybe a little too much information?) I went into work today for a few hours to process some paperwork. I warned people by putting “Enter at your own risk” on the whiteboard at the entrance to my room. Very few people ventured past the candy bowl just inside the door.

Tomorrow we’re heading to the other side of town to visit with R, P’s brother and drop off early birthday greetings for Eric who turns 10 on Tuesday. Double Digits!!

R and Pat L. are going back to Virginia next month to attend a memorial service for her son, one of the Navy Seals who died in the helicopter crash in Afghanistan. P will be house sitting while they’re gone and more importantly, taking care of R’s dog, Hanna, a Bassett hound in its teens and set in her ways. P will be getting instruction on how to anticipate, interpret, and fulfill all Hanna’s needs and wants. This dog is not spoiled!

R is retired now and has just enough time on his hands to go fishing every once in while….

Here is his new boat for navigating the Willamette and the Columbia Rivers.





As you can clearly see, it is almost big enough.

Saturday night, around the kitchen table.....

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 1418947

This will be a little different than the penny ante poker we play but it's sure to be fun.

Pencil wizardry

There is some one in Brazil who has too many pencils and way, WAY, WAY too much time on his hands. Check it out:

http://ueba.com.br/forums/index.php?showtopic=19022&hl

Thanks to whoever it is that runs this web site for finding it. I think he has too much time on his hands too!

Labor Day, 2005

We cleaned up around the house yesterday, chopping down the larger weeds on the far side of the house. That’s the side no one ever sees and it hasn’t been painted in years. It’s been so long that it’s still brown while the rest of the house is grey. There was a large shed up against the house when we changed the house color. The shed got painted with the new color, but we couldn’t get to the side of the house then. And somehow, in the two or three years since the shed came down and got recycled, we’ve never found the time to paint that wall. I guess it’s time now.

I had to fix the gutter along that side of the house; it was sagging a bit, needed to be nailed back in place. That led to cleaning out the gutters. It’s been a while since that’s been done too. There are trees close to three of the four corners of the house. Scott helped put some mesh material in the gutters to act as a  leaf guard for the coming fall season. Not an easy task, sitting on the edge of the roof, leaning over to finagle a piece of nylon mesh so it stays in the gutter. I think I’ll have that grit from the shingles embedded in my hands for weeks. And it gets down right warm up there when the sun is shining. At one point I moved from one section of the roof, over a peak to the far corner. I startled a couple of squirrels who were just coming from the tree onto the roof. They froze and gave me a look like “What the heck are YOU doing up here?” before scampering back into the tree and disappearing. I got a laugh from their expressions. I was that last thing they expected to see.

So, one of the tasks for this fine Labor Day will be to trim the tree branches back from the house, at least so they aren’t aiming their leaves at the gutters. If we get organized in time, we just may prime the side of the house, cover up the brown and get it ready for a new, grey coat of paint sometime in the near future. And the lawn needs mowing.

Regardless of whatever else does or does not get done today, we will be burning some meat over an open flame. Barbeque! A nice pork tenderloin is marinating in the “secret” sauce as we speak.

The end of summer ritual.


School starts tomorrow.

Blogger for Word, Test II

So, it appears to work!

Now, how does it handle pictures and links to other sites on the web?



This is a picture of the obsolete and mothballed Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. All those buildings beside the cooling tower are empty and chained shut. This plant has been shut down for years. As you might expect in a hardcore liberal enclave like the Portland area, there were quite a few demonstrations on this road in the past. It is a very nice park all around the place and there was even a company picnic going on in one area.



These geese were very interested in us when I got out to take the picture of the cooling tower but once they found out we didn’t have anything to eat and only wanted to take their picture they gave us a few choice “honks” and headed back to the shade. Indignant, as only water fowl can be….


So, it appears that inserting pictures is even easier that with the original Blogger tools. Now we have to take more pictures….

And as for a web link… lets try this: http://www.playsam.com/eng/index.htm a web site of nicely designed toys for kids of all ages.

Update----
AARRRGGGggggggggg!!!!!!

It DOESN'T support uploading pictures to Blogger "at this time"!
Drat!

I had to go back, log into Blogger and edit the posting to insert the pictures above. At least I could do it, I suppose....

Ok, Rome wasn't built in a day.

The web link insertion and upload worked though!

Testing Blogger for Word

This is a test of the Blogger for Word add-on for Microsoft Word. If this works as advertised I should be able to write a blog entry while I’m using Word and post it to my blog on the web with little to no trouble.

Here goes the first test!