Area Dog Unfamiliar with the Concept of Personal Space

Accuweather Starts Teasing Early this Year

As I noted last year, Accuweather likes to dangle out a sweet carrot (cake?) of heat relief in the form of its Extended Forecast.  This year they are getting right to it.  We’re only four days into this year’s string of century temps, and we get this:

First, I know I should never believe a forecast that’s almost a month out.  Second, I know I have no right to bitch since we had such a nice Spring.  And third, if you’re playing The Cheap Bastard's Weather Game, then drink up and you’re welcome.

Still No Cure for Cancer

From this article, a robot that will beat you 100% of the time in Rock/Paper/Scissors.  I have tasked The Jester to take this as a personal challenge.

Happy Birthday The Summer of Steve

 

Whelp.  That was a fast five years.

It was five years ago today that my life changed.  I took a voluntary layoff from Nortel and started blogging. What followed was hours of self-absorbed observations of both the ordinary and mundane, as well as lots and lots of pictures of adorable marmots.

So what have we learned?

 

• Everyone around me that I don’t actually know is either a douchenozzle or an asshat.
• The Pacific Northwest is awesome and it’s a mystery why I didn’t move there 4 1/2 years ago.
• Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
• With beer, red wine and scotch, one need never go thirsty.
• Blogging once a day is hard.  Podcasting once every two years is almost impossible.
• It’s worth traveling 5300 miles for a pig sandwich.
• When you play the game of thrones, you’re gonna see a lot of titties.
• Cavemen apparently ate a shit tonne of coconut.
• I could literally eat my weight in Pacific oysters.  Literally.
• Don’t fuck with Heisenberg, Omar, Nucky or Tywin Lannister.
• You do have to make the last out of a World Series game in order to be awarded the trophy.
• The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.  Both 1990s and 1890s.
• She didn’t really say that.
• Tip of the Day:  Don’t smash your face.
• Solitude is the great dagger of  the Lonely Moules Boy.
• The four worst things in the world:  Moving, The Holocaust, Pancreatic Cancer and pediatric AIDS, in that precise order.
• Here’s the Church.  Here’s the steeple.  Open the door and just eat all the people.
• A certain area husky is painfully photogenic.
• Don’t attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shiffley
• If loving Yu is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
• Duck fat rules
• The Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world.
• M as in Mancy
• Don’t play black jack in Oklahoma.  But if you do, don’t be a pussy and play one $100 hand.
• Don’t believe JT.  The Westvleteren is fantastic.  But he was oh so right about Schweine Janes.
• Charcuterie and red wine can resolve almost any disagreement.
• Never underestimate the healing power of laughter.
• The Tioga Pass road is a national treasure. – the Sonora Pass road, even more so.

 

In no Particular Order, the Top 10 Events of the Past Five Years

1. Biking through Paris at night
2. Making snow-angels in the Sierra Nevadas in July
3. A deer (Norman Skeese) walking up to me in Olympic National Park
4. Pub crawl in Pittsburgh
5. Flying kites on the Columbian River in Hood River OR
6. Getting lost for an hour in Sequoia National Park
7. U Fleku
8. Biking down the Mosel valley.
9. Van Morrison in the Hollywood Bowl
10. Floating in the Mediterranean

Thank you for all who helped make this happen.

And now for another five years.

Okrapalooza

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And drinks at St. Ann's afterward.

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A Bird Story

I was sitting out on my back patio, enjoying a relatively temperate mid-June evening, when all of a sudden a bird zoomed by my right ear and attempted to fly through my back door* .  The little critter bounced off the door and rolled into some nearby ground cover.  Stunned and convulsing**, I wondered if I should do the humane thing and crush its skull in.

After a bit, it settled down and just sat on the ground, breathing heavy.  I got a glove and picked him off the ground and put it where Zoe couldn’t get at it.

Here it is.

Adorable, no?  I think it’s a baby cardinal.  But how could anyone possibly know that for sure?

It was about this time I started hearing a racket from the tree above me.  Lots of loud tweeting^^^ and this fellow zipping back and forth across my backyard airspace as if looking to feed that delicious worm he has in his mouth to his only little baby.

Now this part might sound mean.  But I wanted to see if the little guy could still fly.  So I picked him up and kinda tossed him into the air.  He managed a short flight to my gutters, where he stayed for a few more minutes. 

A little bit later he was gone, hopefully munching on that worm that dad brought home.

 

*the back door of my house, let’s try to be serious, people

** The bird was stunned and convulsing, not me.

^^^Social media is huge with the feathered folk

Area Blogger Inexplicably Popular in Arizona

I guess that means I need to have a Five Year Anniversary Relaunch Party later this month.

Stay tuned.