tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60355132009-07-03T20:59:08.080-07:00Corgis Yoshi and Trek have their very own training diary (See the links section). This is for everything else.Ellennoreply@blogger.comBlogger316125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-55276166764325971332009-07-03T15:14:00.000-07:002009-07-03T15:32:43.563-07:00

CNN Breaking News tells me that Sarah Palin is resigning as Alaska's governor, and already there is speculation that she's considering a run for the presidency in 2012.If I stop and listen, I can hear a the murmur of liberal pundits, writers, humorists and bloggers throughout the land saying with one voice:. Run Sarah RunHer running as the running mate of a competent contender is what

Ellennoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-57124240451455171522009-07-03T12:48:00.000-07:002009-07-03T15:11:52.990-07:00

I am so bummed. One of my tomato plants is clearly dying and I have to decide whether to take it out to save the other one or try and nurse it till the tomatoes ripen (more than a month to go).Here are my two plants. They've been doing well for the entire time: Then right after a heat wave it started showing wilted leaves, so I thought it needed more water (many of the plants showed some

Ellennoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-74888017707357455692009-07-02T09:04:00.000-07:002009-07-02T09:43:21.869-07:00

New restaurants in Alameda are fond of littering our doorway with menus. One that just appeared is a new combination Chinese-Vietnmese place. Now I love a lot of the non-beef Vietnamese food as they often use very fresh vegtables and the noodles are delicious. Having it be combined with Chinese food which is so often famously bad for you in that high fat often tasty way gives me some pause

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-19597375587754691422009-07-01T12:15:00.001-07:002009-07-01T16:47:26.857-07:00

Part ISo after having driven off the map multiple times and having no inclination to stop doing so, I need to either go back to maintaining a great set of maps (might still so that), or buy a GPS.Unlike backpacking GPSs, where they keep the price the same and just keep piling more features in - though in all fairness they're not that much money, in-car ones have come down in price and have gotten

Ellennoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-70536872149770047792009-06-29T08:28:00.000-07:002009-06-29T09:49:05.430-07:00

I keep an ear/eye out for scams, frauds, come ons and general bad deals. (I am also a fan of mixed metaphors which is why the one in the title is still there - I swear it was an accident - they make the best ones). When the bottom fell out of the housing market, my favorite one, and how this all got started, the predatory house lending offer, has pretty much disappeared fortunately and I have

Ellennoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-83138388513347471362009-06-26T17:28:00.000-07:002009-06-26T18:25:54.921-07:00

While I'm still miffed that Jackson's death has overshadowed Farrah Fawcett's, it is understandable. Fawcett was a little older (62) and has been battling anal cancer for 3 years, her death was very sad, but not a complete surprise. Jackson's death, while on some level not a surprise at all (kinda frail, subjected himself to a whole bunch of medical procedures, though a great dancer and still

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-91877824599801338712009-06-25T10:53:00.000-07:002009-06-25T15:48:34.857-07:00

Going to try to treat this a little more like Twitter since I've seen other bloggers do it, though here I get to use as many lines as I like. I could also do Facebook updates, but am conscious of overwhelming my friends news feeds, so I try to keep that down to two a day or so.Farrah FawcettCNN breaking news tells me that Farrah Fawcett has died at 62 of cancer. Details aren't out yet, but will

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-23501615488253583312009-06-17T09:00:00.000-07:002009-06-17T10:57:59.701-07:00

It's funny what one's mind does when you read about things that are incredibly hard (sometimes impossible), but still sound fun. Ah, romanticizing. I wonder why we do it. It's like the opposite of a survival mechanism. It serves no obvious purpose yet we clearly need flights of fancy as we have been telling each other stories since the time when we figured out how to talk. (Ok, I don't know

Ellennoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-76718524035695617552009-06-16T09:43:00.000-07:002009-06-16T11:36:55.186-07:00

I've been delaying writing the end of my check fraud misadventure as the final details had not wrapped themselves up, but I'm going to take a chance and say they are.As I detail here, someone(s) created and wrote fraudulent checks against my checking account.The bank asked me to speculate who I thought it was and I cheerfully did so as the obvious suspect was a large, busy Doctors' office who I

Ellennoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-75166516413611626572009-06-11T13:43:00.000-07:002009-06-17T10:53:52.772-07:00

I am semi-bummed because we were rained out of our Shasta trip, but I admit to being kinda relieved too. It rained HARD all night long at Treva's in Redding on Wed night and we were supposed to leave Thur morning, but consulting the weather channel that morning showed the entire Western States under a cloud of rain and predicted to not lift until Sat.More sobering were the thunderstorm

Ellennoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-52001315896192245352009-06-09T16:23:00.000-07:002009-06-09T17:07:56.727-07:00

I am pretty bad at predicting what will last and what won't.While I'm not as bad as the person who quit his job at a start up because he was completely convinced that what they were involved with was completely ludicrous. They were working on something where someone would actually "log in" to a computer network and talk to other people - who would do that? What they were working on was related

Ellennoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-72350487049035034832009-06-01T16:06:00.000-07:002009-06-01T16:32:19.282-07:00

Those of you who either remember or have studied the bad old days of apartheid in South Africa may have heard that a status sometimes awarded to those of a different race traveling to S. Africa was "Honorary White." I had heard of the term in 1982 from a friend who was from there and it made such an impression that I remember the conversation clearly. Now that I'm researching it I find the

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-90537289608165433342009-06-01T11:40:00.000-07:002009-06-01T12:02:24.083-07:00

This week's Car Talk Puzzler is about Rattlesnake Canyon in Santa Barbara a place that I've hiked in many times, while I was thrilled to hear about it, I find the timing ironic as parts of the area just burned in the Jesusita Fire in early May. (Yes, like 3 weeks ago.)http://www.keyt.com/news/local/44397807.htmlhttp://www.independent.com/news/2009/may/12/

Ellennoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-31890380625620833412009-06-01T09:42:00.000-07:002009-06-01T10:42:04.590-07:00

I have a mountain of food in the living room and I'm just not really up to organizing it, so I've asked for Patricia's help. I'm getting less and less thrilled with playing house in the mountains. I like to climb things, but the mechanics of going on a trip into the mountains I am not fond of. If I could keep up with groups, I could just always go on group trips. Problem is that I like to do

Ellennoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-85416726820316371632009-05-29T23:25:00.000-07:002009-05-29T23:37:37.544-07:00

Google tells me that I'm about a year and a half behind on this, but I like the fact that I didn't know this going into the film as then I got to experience the unsettling realization firsthand.Sylar, the serial killer in Heros season 1 (played by Zachary Quinto) is now Spock in the new Star Trek film. Ok, Sylar isn't there but those Quinto eyes have an intensity that both Sylar and Spock share,

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-25074490681177333562009-05-21T09:21:00.000-07:002009-06-16T11:40:34.129-07:00

I've been waiting to post about this until I had some resolution, and now I do.In early April, I received an email from the bank saying that they'd transferred money to cover an overdraft. I knew there was enough money in the account so I immediately checked and saw two charges totaling $800 to two different Walmarts. I never go to Walmart so I called the bank and we went through the process of

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-28020927001469874852009-05-14T15:41:00.000-07:002009-05-14T15:50:54.932-07:00

I keep having to remind myself how much I dislike hiking by myself. I forget. I start thinking about how fun it will be to climb something and someone else isn't around who wants to go, and when I go and do it I find myself pretty much instantly now saying "I hate this" It's the weirdest thing - a complete cognitive disconnect. I wonder if this is what childbirth is like? No, this isn't even

Ellennoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-42329291561415166002009-04-14T22:53:00.000-07:002009-04-14T23:10:17.609-07:00

The distressing case of the murder of Tracy girl Sandra Cantu, is getting more distressing by all the media coverage, speculation, and the invitations by Kron 4 and others for people to share their views. I'm obviously a huge free speech advocate, but I also believe in our judicial process. The more we stir up a lynch mob, the less and less chance that her accused killer (look it up if you

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-76027471406513262252009-04-13T15:31:00.000-07:002009-04-14T23:09:26.508-07:00

So just to stay semi-current on geo-political events I looked up where Somalia's location is. They are the eastern-most tip of Africa located on the Gulf of Aden right near where the Suez Canal lets out, which is seriously prime real estate if you're in the business of commandeering loaded merchant ships.And who is on the other side of this not so quiet body of water? The nice calm (not), and

Ellennoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-86888494901392126242009-04-09T14:00:00.000-07:002009-04-09T15:19:00.731-07:00

(this is Part 2 - Part 1 is below)The day I discovered the Wal Mart charges. I checked pretty much everything financial having to do with me. I looked at all my bank accounts, and pulled all of my credit reports. Everything looked fine so it appears that the problem is isolated to a stolen checking account number.That same day because I wanted to cover some outstanding checks and I didn't want

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-19450881067843925542009-04-08T10:14:00.000-07:002009-04-09T13:57:37.227-07:00

(Good grief, this is the 301st entry of this blog - how'd that happen?)I logged in this morning to find an overdraft alert email from my bank. First concern is - is it a legit email, but the language looked correct and more importantly they quote the correct last 3-4 digits of the account number.I log into the account online (what did we ever do before the internet?), and what do I find? Two

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-38519458112833391302009-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:002009-04-09T14:00:36.081-07:00

Likes a lot of folks I take a lot of photos, and like for many folks they are a challenge to organize but I had a reasonably working system where I file them by date in drawers that can hold photo envelopes. (Digital photos now actually make this a while lot easier, but I digress.)And like most everyone else there are always some photos that don't quite make it into the drawer or at least right

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-79841580974747330462009-04-01T10:11:00.000-07:002009-04-01T10:51:06.872-07:00

Pretty much ever time you hear the news you hear something about G-some-number. I finally couldn't take it anymore as they were all running together in my head, so I had to at least try to parse it out some.G stands for "Group" - they really need to think of something more original.There areG7 (formerly G6)G8G20The G7 ("Group of 7" Yes, really.) are the finance ministers of seven industrialized

Ellennoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-20596886833126543272009-03-31T22:14:00.000-07:002009-03-31T22:25:31.154-07:00

First of all, full disclosure, I cook for fun. I do not have to do the amazing feat of feeding people on a day in day out basis. In fact, I'm not sure I could or if I did I would have no energy for anything remotely creative wrt cooking. Terri and I both cook and we don't have human children.Just for fun today I was standing in the grocery store and was pondering lunch and my imagination got

Ellennoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6035513.post-52750606176973029942009-03-31T12:12:00.000-07:002009-03-31T12:20:01.673-07:00

I have a semi high interest savings account that I pay house expenses out of.This is from a reputable bank fortunately, but the interest rates have recently been readjusting at a startling rate: Here it is from late 2007 on:Nov 1, 2007 Interest Rate Change to 4.121% (4.20% APY)Dec 13, 2007 Interest Rate Change to 4.025% (4.10% APY)Jan 23, 2008 Interest Rate Change to 3.590% (3.65% APY)

Ellennoreply@blogger.com1