Diane101 said she wanted a late night diary and she wanted it from someone new.
Hmmm…. I’m new here.
I’m far from new on the net. I’ve been hanging around myDD for a long time and been kicking around on the net next to forever. I’m on the West Coast, and I’m a night owl.
Looks like all the prerequisites for a day-ender to me.
Don’t expect any miracles on the “coding front” from me at first. I’ve been playing with computers for 30 years and managed not to learn how to code anything. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
What shall I kick off with?
How about something very near and dear to the hear of those who like things kicked…
The Legend of Timber Jim.
“Timber Jim (aka Jim Serrill) has been synonymous with the Portland Timbers since he first brought his chainsaw to a Timbers game in 1978. When the Timbers re-emerged in 2001, it was only natural that Timber Jim would be there, arriving in spectacular fashion for the first game on May 11, 2001 on a Harley Davidson, and wearing a leather jacket.
Timber Jim continues to thrill the crowds at PGE Park, with the Timbers now in their fourth season since returning in 2001. He still excites the crowd with his cheers, still cuts of a piece of the log for each goal, and he can still be seen swinging from the rafters or atop the pole at PGE Park. For Timbers fans who have enjoyed watching soccer at PGE Park (nee Civic Stadium) for the past 30 years, Timber Jim is as much a part of the framework of the stadum as the metal rafters and the MAC balcony. It simply wouldn’t be the same without him….”
Nothing can warm the heart like the love a man can have for his team and his chainsaw, huh?
So blab already.
But his chainsaw is much bigger than mine. 😀
I however, put mine to more serious use today. With snow predicted for later in the day, I thought a bit of firewood would come in handy. So, with the help of my Stihl 028AV (and my Mazda 1.3 litre car to haul the cut wood up the hill), I’m now unlikely to freeze to death for the next few days.
Barkeep: A warm cup of tea please, and don’t spare the honey.
“Big Gus” is the world’s largest working chainsaw. It is powered by a Chevrolet 350-cubic-inch V-8, the same legendary engine used to power many muscle cars of the 1960s.
http://www.phatpage.org/photo/biggus.html
It only “works” if it does something useful. 😉
Besides, it would never fit in the back of my little Mazda – my dog barely fits as it is.
Nice pic, but we do try to keep them under 400 px,on this site, they can really widen a thread and be hard to load for dial up. Also best to post in comment if they are the least bit big.
Since you are new I thought I would let you know that…Thanks…
Well good for you, for taking up the request.
Maybe you can drum up some business and if you want to change the name to the FBC, go ahead…..
I don’t recall meeting you exactly before, so maybe you would want to tell me a little about you…
Oh I just checked and you are new, soooooo new 1958 I think….
Well definity you have to say more now and welcome to Booman Tribune….
About me. Hmmm… Former radio broadcaster. Disabled by a random act of violence close to 15 years ago. Been active in politics all my life. Ran around the country as a jr. staffer for Hart in ’84. One of the early people hanging out over at the Dean Nation blog and a very early online organizer for Dean as well.
Disabilities put kind of an upper limit on how much I can dedicate to a campaign now. There’s no such thing as part-time political organizer schedules of any significant responsibility. If I try to do any more, I fall asleep where I’m sitting/standing. It’s just a limitation I had to accept.
So… just doing my little bit where I can.
Now that was my man, I think he would’ve been the absolute best, and the freak’n Reaganites knew it, so he was one of the first to be slammed with the new NeoCon style of politics, before we even knew what the hell they were.
The so-called affair, slammed the door shut on him, and I really liked what the man had to say, he was straight forward, something unheard of in politics.
I like his attitude towards the middle east as well. I remember an interview with him, and when asked about his views on this he said: “they have most of the money, and oil, and they’ve been fighting with each other since the begining of time, so let’s put a chain link fence around them, and when it’s over, walk in and pick up the peices” Now THAT is the right attitude ; )
Any-who, glad to see someone that even remembers Hart….KUDOS
Welcome to the Boo’s ; )
great cafe…thanks
Hart may have actually been more brilliant on policy matters than Bill Clinton. What Hart did not have was Clinton’s ability to communicate his ideas. Hart tended to write out his policy ideas and then hold up the manuscript for the cameras. That might have worked for James Madison, but the American people just aren’t very literate anymore. When voters were presented with the possibility of actually having to do homework, they just tossed back confused responses from fast food commercials.
Yes… Donna Rice was a GOP operative. Hart was the one who challenged the Miami Herald and the rest of the media to follow him around, though. Some of us wondered whether that challenge might have indicated Hart was the self-sabotaging type. However, I was a still pretty young (had turned 21 on the campaign trail in ’84), so my insights were probably kind of limited at the time.
Hart’s still a brilliant guy. Progressives will probably be mining his writing for ideas for the next century.
I wasn’t ignoring your question about how our rainwater catchment system works. I was just waiting until we both were around at the same time. And here we both are!
I just went outside to check on the ducks, and the duck pond, and found this romantic duo.
Since I’m trying to create a photographic record everything that lives on our property (oh look, it’s snowing, pardon me while I cover the firewood), I interrupted their tryst long enough to get a picture.
Back with a description of the water system shortly.
Does the top frog look like a fake marine frog to you?
I didn’t notice anything particularly “marine” about him, but he did have a very glazed look in his eyes.
I think this is a pair of Southern Smooth Froglets: http://frogs.org.au/frogs/species/Geocrinia/laevis/
that “The Brothers Grimm” with Heath Ledger and Matt Damon is opening end of the month, and looks very promising; there’s a scene where one of the guys has to kiss a frog (some sort of enchantment, I think), and is less than enthusiastic.
Got to hit the bed very soon; the spouse and I are in turn-over-a-new-leaf mode. Someone else will have to keep the midnight lamps lit…
BTW, that little fella on the top is the male, and he’s gonna hold on until she lays her eggs, which may be some time from now.
Back to the water stuff.
We have a pretty simple system. There are two large metal cisterns next to the house, and one cistern each for our two large sheds. The rain water runs down gutters and downspouts to the nearest water tank. When there’s enough water in the catchment tanks to make it worth my while to hook up the electric pump, I pump the water uphill to our header tank – which gives us about 6psi of water pressure.
I’ll probably have the system a bit more automatic someday, and involving less garden hoses, but for now our rainwater catch supplies about half our yearly water usage (the other half we get delivered, 3000 gal per delivery, by a nice local fella named Sam).
I think I figured out that my partner and I are using around 45 gal/each/day.
In order to keep our usage so low, we reuse most of our water. For example:
My parner takes her shower with the plug in the tub. I then top up that water to take a bath. After I get out of the tub, I bucket the water from the tub into the clothes washer. Then I put a bucket under the outflow from the clothes washer to catch water to put in the toilet tank. Which means water gets used as much as 4 times before it leaves the house. And most of what leaves the house ends up on the veggie garden, or in the case of septic water, on a stand of native trees.
I’ve been streamlining and refining the process since we moved-in last October, and am redoing much of the decrepit plumbing to make the tasks simpler.
Oh, and we just qualified for “Land for Wildlife” designation two weeks ago. One of the women who came out for the evaluation of our property was an orchid expert, and found a ton of native orchids (which we didn’t know where there, because they are not in flower yet). So, expect to see a lot of orchid pictures over the next several months as I try to document the lot.
Very interesting….
We used to attach a hose to our washing machine, with cold water wash, and biodegradable soap run that right into a drip system in the garden…Something I rec. and the plants thrived…
I think I am going to look into such a system for our house, well the least we could do is catch the rainwater in a barrel and we have some big ones here on the property…Of course we only get rain in the late winter and early spring, for the most part, in my particular area, socal..but still…and it could be a good ‘survival thing’ to add to my list.
BTW Keres have you taken a look at my new site…Please do and please join, it is just getting started, but I think you will like it there.
When a colleague’s kids were preschoolers she was watching them play leap frog. One of them paused before completing the jump and called out – “Look Mommy! We’re mating!”
(Mom rolls eyes. Prays they don’t repeat this in front of Grandma.)
n/t
Cool you did this, afs. Plunging right in is good.
I love your soccer photo. I admit I stopped following soccer of any kind once my son stopped playing it. But I’ll never forget the very first game of the Kansas City Wizards. Gorgeous night. Beautiful game. Happy people. It was the first time I had ever watched a pro game live and for the first time I saw the flow and the dance and I really understand why it’s called “the beautiful game.” It was thrilling.
Want a link to English Premier League fantasy footy?”
http://fantasy.premierleague.com/
How about two?
http://uk.premiership.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
I was at the recent match in which our A-League Portland Timbers actually tied English Premier League side Sunderland. I was in that first generation of kids who started playing soccer in the 70’s after Pele brought soccer to the US in the 70’s. After the NASL folded, I never thought I’d see a US team be able to stay on the same field as an EPL team. You’ve never seen a more thrilling 0-0 draw than the one we had in Portland that night.
Thanks, lol, I’ll pass those onto my son.
I envy you that thrilling game! My son started playing when he was 6 or 7, which would have been around l989-90, and we felt like pioneers then, so I can only imagine what it must have been like for you. On the one hand, great that you got to play at all, but on the other hand. . .no fields, no fans, no stores with supplies, no nothin’. Were there high school teams then? Premier League? Anything?
We had an actual soccer stadium with lights and cheerleaders and refreshment stands, can you imagine? Small crowds, of course, unless we were competing for a championship. Some of my very happiest memories are of Sunday mornings on the field and of driving carloads of boys to tournaments. The Sunday Church of Soccer I used to call it. I get such a pang when I drive by them now!
My son stopped playing after high school (and after two state championships with his premier league team) and he misses it sooo much.
Where I grew up, I didn’t have no stadiums. No fans. No public high school teams until my senior year of high school. Just barely enough kids for a few teams in local YMCA leagues playing in the back lot of a junior high school. The refs were parents of players at the private high schools. The coaches were mostly college kids. T-shirts with iron on numbers for jerseys. The only reward was the occasional private high school scholarship.
I actually got offered a scholarship to a local private military high school. I passed. Hell would have frozen over before I would have allowed my hair to be buzz cut back in the mid-70’s. Now, it’s my normal hair style.
I played some intramural soccer in college. Almost no American kids playing in those leagues. It was basically all foreign students. That was a humbling experience. They ate me for lunch.
Funny about the hair.
I know what you mean about playing against non-Americans. My son was lucky and got to go to England twice, with motley, thrown-together American teams, to play against international teams. He has shared your experience of being lunchmeat. Winning one game was a BIG triumph.