Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Blog

  • Pointing to my writing elsewhere

    Yes, April has been a slow month on this site so far. I’m working on rectifying that. But it also occured to me that I hadn’t blogged about the High Desert Sun lately or even pointed to my articles that were published in it (and are online). So, they are here and here, and the third one should be up soon (I just picked up the April edition of the paper at the library). Enjoy!

  • For Dummies book cover generator

    This is pretty cool: Dummies Book Cover Generator (via eMusings). Now you can generate a fake “For Dummies” book for any occasion (which would have been handy when I originally created this and this). Imagine the mayhem…

    At the very least, I can now mockup my For Tards ideas:

    Book For Tards

  • Bond Street Barber Shop

    Just wanted to blog a short note about the Bond Street Barber Shop in Downtown Bend. I went there for a haircut for the first time Tuesday after work, it’s a nice place. The big draw, though, is the complimentary beer and wine you get while you’re waiting!

    Yep, you read that right. They stock Cascade Lakes beer (and a few macros), but I didn’t see what variety of wine; I thought maybe there was a bottle of Yellow Tail red something, but I couldn’t be sure. And on Saturdays, they also have Bloody Marys.

    As far as haircut experiences go, they were good. A bit of a wait, actually (I was waiting for almost a half hour, then another half hour to cut my hair), but they’re old school—straight razors for the fine hairs and everything. I was happy with what I walked out with.

    So it’ll likely be my regular barbershop from now on; anytime you can combine scissors, straight razors and beer, you know you’re in for a good time!

  • Free plug

    You may have noticed the new banner in the sidebar, for Obsidian Stock. What’s Obsidian Stock? It’s Simone‘s newish stock photography venture, and she’s putting out a call for Central Oregon photographers.

    Simone does good work, and I think she’s going to do really well with this venture. So click over and check things out.

    Plus, now she owes me a beer. :)

  • 01:02:03 04/05/06

    By now most of the world has passed the once-in-a-century date and time sequence of “01:02:03 04/05/06”. And you thought Daylight Savings Time was big news!

    Yeah, right.

    I think the anchor on NBC Nightly News tonight summed it up best: Perhaps it’s more notable that someone thought that up in the first place…

  • Hugh MacLeod’s stealing my idea!

    I can’t help but notice that this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod seems to be lifting from my “For Tards” book idea I blogged about back in 2004… :)

  • April 1 (Fools, and not)

    So. April 1st. Any April Fool’s Day stories to pass on? I have one. My wife calls this morning as they’re supposed to be leaving San Diego, and says they’re not leaving because my daughter has a 103 degree fever. I freak out a little bit.

    April Fool’s!

    That’s all I got, actually. I forgot it was the first of April.

    In non-practical joke news, I helped Shannon and Brian move into their new apartment in downtown Bend. Well, I and five other people helped. Not a bad move at all, though; they already had everything packed up and ready to go, and they don’t own too many big pieces of furniture. And, really, they don’t own that much stuff—at least compared to the amount of crap I and my family have been hauling around for years now. So we were mostly done by one o’clock. And got pizza and beer out of the deal.

    Their new place is pretty sweet. Overlooking downtown, mere blocks away from, well, everything, with a view of Pilot Butte from the balcony—yeah, we’re gonna be hanging out there a lot this summer, I think. Several of us have already discussed getting our own keys and setting up a mini-fridge full of beer on the balcony. :).

  • Thirsty Thursday

    After work today I swung by Newport Market over on the westside for their Thirsty Thursday beer tasting. I just found out about these Thirsty Thursdays recently; they’re every, er, Thursday from 3:30 until 6:00. Free beer! Can’t go wrong with that.

    Today it was a rep from Deschutes Brewery doing tasting of their two newest: Inversion IPA and Buzzsaw Brown. Both good, but the IPA was really good. So I picked up a six-pack of it, and then, to my amazement, found a bottle of Deschutes’ Mirror Mirror, which I’d heard about but hadn’t seen anywhere. I’m excited! But it’s a big barleywine, so I’m saving it for the weekend. Or Friday night.

    So remember—Thursdays at Newport Market.

  • Smoke alarm batteries

    Beep! Yesterday afternoon one of the smoke alarms started the intermittant beeping that indicates when the battery is getting low. These are smoke alarms that are actually wired directly into the electrical system of the house, but have nine-volt batteries in them for backup (in case the power goes out). No biggie, I knew we had newer batteries.

    Beep! Well, a bigger task then I thought; I couldn’t figure out at first which smoke alarm was beeping. We have a total of seven in the house, one down at the bottom of the stairs and six others upstairs. And due to the acoustics in our house, I was moving from one alarm to another waiting for the telltale beep, but everytime I’d get close to one the Beep! would chirp out, seemingly from behind me.

    Beep! I finally traced it to the smoke alarm in my bedroom. Popped out the battery, replaced it with a fresh one. All good, the beeping stopped. Case closed. Had dinner, went to bed.

    Beep! Wha—? Huh? I roll over in bed, echoes from whatever dream I’d been having shredding away in the onset of consciousness. Peer at the clock; 4:40. In the morning.

    The hell—?

    Beep! Oh, shit. Another smoke alarm is warning me its battery is too low. I do not want to get out of bed for this—

    Beep! Beep! Uhhhh… If I’m not mistaken, that was two different beeps. Son of a bitch.

    Beep! So for the next 30 or 40 minutes I’m stumbling around the house, trying to catch a smoke alarm in the act, failing miserably, swapping out fresh batteries only to find I don’t quite have enough because I just know that all the damn batteries have chosen 5:00 in the morning to sputter out, and all the while Beep! Beep! and I can’t figure out which ones are chirping.

    Beep! Screw this, I get vicious and pull the batteries out of all the smoke alarms. They’re wired anyway, and I’ll just buy brand new batteries tomorrow to make sure I’m covered.

    …Did it work? Did the beeps stop? Looks like I was—

    Beep! No. No no no nonononononononononononono.

    It dawns on me that we have a carbon monoxide detector plugged in to the wall in the hallway. It’s supposed to beep when it detects high levels of CO gas… and I think there’s a battery in it too.

    Check it… sure enough, the damn thing says “Err” on it’s tiny beeping fu—ahem, LCD screen. Okay, pull the detector, pull the battery, and…

    Silence.

    Ever notice how peaceful it is at 5:45 in the morning?

  • Boys’ week

    All this week (since Saturday, actually) it’s just me and my son at home. My wife and daughter took advantage of spring break to head down to San Diego to visit my brother and sister-in-law. Sadly, spring break doesn’t cover work or preschool/daycare, so we were left behind.

    It’s all good. We’re having a good time so far, despite the logistics of being a single parent for a week. No big plans, otherwise, though.