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  • The Crane Shed

    I guess I was bound to comment on this sooner or later: The Crane Shed demolition here in Bend last Thursday, August 19th. It’s the big news around here. Here’s some recap:

    And, here’s a good link about the Crane Shed: Brooks Scanlon Historic Crane Shed. Guess they’ll need to update their site now, though.

    For my part, I think the city should have fought for the Crane Shed and prevented Crown Investment from demolishing it. I’m not sure it would have helped, though, considering Crown Investment’s highly questionable actions:

    • Threaten the city of Bend with a lawsuit to deter a denial of demolition;
    • Demolish the building, after hours, without a permit or safety precautions, while the whole matter was still legally pending;
    • Publicly thumbing their nose at the city and the situation;
    • Not perform the necessary safety inspections that would have prevented the asbestos issues the DEQ is smacking them down for;
    • Lying about the state of the building and issues surrounding the demolition.

    I hope Crown Investment gets the royal smackdown they deserve—and they look like they will, too. Plus, how hard do you think it will be for them to conduct future business in this town? I guess they got what they ultimately wanted, though: now they can sell off the land, which is already worth a bunch more now that the Shed is gone.

    And in the meantime, yet another piece of historic Bend is gone. Sucks.

  • Paper Transformers

    Via Boing Boing tonight comes a link to the PaperFormers, where you can print out the PDF files of cut-and-fold Transformer designs, and actually build working Transformers out of paper.

    This takes me back; when I was young—probably around 12 or so—I used to create paper Transformers pretty much like these, though not nearly as elaborate. All I used was white paper, masking tape and small modelling sticks. Basically, I’d draw the design I’d want on the paper, usually in several pieces. Sometimes I’d color them. They were drawn to be foldable, with overlapping tabs for the tape and/or sticks to attach to. And they transformed, which of course was essential.

    None survived to this day, of course. But they’re fun to do; maybe I’ll make some for the kids.

  • Recipe: Cream Cheese Pie

    This recipe is one we found years ago—it actually comes from Cool Whip, and is really quite good (and quite decadent). It originally came from the back of the lid label on a Cool Whip container. I’m posting it here because we had a hard time finding it the other day, and I couldn’t find the exact recipe online anywhere either. So, enjoy!

    Ingredients:

    • 1 package (8 oz.) of cream cheese, softened
    • 1/3 cup sugar
    • 1 cup (8 oz.) sour cream
    • 2 tsp. vanilla
    • 3 cups Cool Whip (8 oz. tub)
    • 9 oz. graham cracker crust

    Directions: Beat cream cheese until smooth, and gradually add sugar. Blend in the sour cream and vanilla. Fold the Cool Whip into the mixture, blending well. Spoon into the graham cracker crust, and chill for at least four hours.

  • Perils of domesticity

    I don’t know what it is about this weekend, but here’s a few items illustrating the pitfalls of owning a home and raising a family:

    Saturday evening I noticed that the dryer had died. More specifically, that the drum belt had broken; the dryer would run, but the drum wouldn’t turn. So I spent most of this morning figuring out how to open the thing up, then buying a new belt and figuring out just how to fix it and put it all back together again. (You’d think a belt would be easy or intuitive to replace. If you’re like me, you’d be wrong.) Joy. It works, though.

    The event that led up to me discovering the dryer wasn’t working? My son, our youngest, was sick; he ate only a bite or two of dinner, then went to lie down on the couch. Which he then threw up on. But it wasn’t just the bite or two of dinner he threw up; it was lunch, too. So, I got to interrupt my dinner to clean up vomit from the couch. It was also on a throw pillow, which I cleaned, and was going to put in the dryer—and discovered the problem with the dryer.

    Same kid, twice over this past week, has set off his Tickle Me Elmo in the middle of the night (5:10-ish the first time, 2:10-ish the next time). Nothing’s quite as freaky as waking up in the dead of night out of a deep sleep hearing Elmo saying, “Elmo’s not ticklish there! Tickle Elmo again!”

  • Bend Brew Fest Review

    So, even after the bizarre entry pricing, the first annual Bend Brew Fest exceeded my (lowish) expectations. It was a decent event; my dad and I got there about 1:30 when the crowd was still very light, so we had a good run of the place. And it was great weather for it, too: started out sunny and hot, with a nice breeze, and as the day wore on clouds moved in to alleviate the heat.

    Decent beers, too. I was pleasantly surprised to find there were beers from breweries I’d never heard of, like Walking Man Brewing out of Stevenson, Washington, and Snipes Mountain, from Sunnyside, Washington. And of course, the “regulars” were there: Deschutes Brewery, Bend Brewing, Cascade Lakes, Rogue Ales, Full Sail, Bridgeport Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing. For posterity’s sake, others I remember:

    I was a little disappointed to not see Silver Moon Brewing (note to self: talk to Tyler about fixing his 403 Forbidden website error) there, since they’re local and all. Oh well, maybe next year.

    The crowd grew during the day, and I imagine they had a pretty good turnout Saturday night. The (free) music wasn’t bad, either. When we first got there, there was a lone accordian player up on the stage, and it only got better from there.

    I also ran into Kasey as we were leaving, which is ironic since we (my dad and I) had been talking about how we hadn’t run into anyone we knew, but probably would once we left.

    Now, how they can improve upon the brewfest for next year:

    • Cheaper admission! Like, at least 10 dollars cheaper.
    • More brewers. 20 brewers and 40 beers is a good start, though.
    • Space the beer serving stations and tables farther apart; there needs to be more room for people to line up, and/or browse among the various brands.
    • Break the beer serving section into two distinct areas, to promote movement and more effectively use the space (put food and general seating in between).
    • Complimentary water. The Oregon Brewers Festival has stand-alone water coolers that are self-service; spending three dollars for bottled water doesn’t do it for me.
    • Set up a website for the event, and list all the brewers and the beers that will be there. Also use it for publishing photos of the event, etc.
    • More food vendors. There were six, which isn’t terrible for a first time, but more variety would be cool.

  • Bend Brew Fest Reminder

    Just a quick reminder that tomorrow, August 21st, is the first Bend Brew Fest at the Les Schwab Amphitheater. Also, a sucky note regarding the price: they advertise that if you buy the ticket in advance, it’s only $10, versus $15 if you buy at the door. However, if you buy in advance it’s not $10, but $14—they add a four dollar service fee to the ticket.

    So, it’s really $14 in advance, and $15 at the door. What a deal.

  • Beer swilling bear

    This is good stuff: Bear guzzles 36 beers, passes out at campground.

    A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer….

     

    The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers’ coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

     

    It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

    The only way this would have been better if it had been Hamm’s Beer.

  • White trash cliché

    Following up to the post I made about the deputy arrested on sex abuse charges, there was this last bit from the Bend.com article about the arraignment that’s been bothering me:

    In the front row for the arraignment was a supporter of Malloy’s, who had quite an unusual story to share.

     

    “I know that he was a good police officer,” said Bend-area resident Janet Wickersham. But she also said that five years ago, after the officer came to her Spring River home to take a domestic-violence complaint (involving one of her four children’s fathers), Malloy, not in uniform asked if he could date her daughter—who was then 16 years old. (He would have been about 33 at the time.)

     

    “I told him, ‘Not until she’s 18—then you can come and get her,’” Wickersham said. “He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He never did anything with my daughter…. He lived down the road from us.” She said the family moved to Newport for a couple years, and that her daughter, now 21, still lives there.

     

    Acknowledging she was “a little drunk” at the time, Wickersham said she responded to Malloy’s request by putting her own arm around him and lifting her leg to do the same. “I said, ‘What do you want with a near-virgin with no experience, when you can have a mature woman like me?’ But guys like younger women.”

     

    At one point during the court proceeding, as the judge set the new bail amount, Wickersham exclaimed: “He’s in deep!”

    Holy shit, there is just so much wrong with that, that I don’t even know where to start. I’ve gotta give props to Barney for (I’m assuming) not just sitting there in slack-jawed horror after hearing that story.

    It’s just like the embodiment of every cliché about white trash you could imagine, rolled up into that segment. Wow.

  • Camping

    We spent this weekend camping up at Suttle Lake for the annual family reunion. I took Friday off and we left just before noon, and had great weather until Friday evening when the mother of all thunderstorms came through and we were hit by a torrential downpour. Fortunately, the tent mostly weathered the rain and the rest of the weekend was fun.

    It’s kind of nice to go dark and live off the grid for a few days. Back to it, though!

  • Put him away for life

    Disturbing local news: Deputy arrested on 180 child abuse, drug counts (from Bend.com) and the follow-up article: Deputy arraigned on 143 sex abuse, drug charges. This is way too creepy. The guy was a deputy for 10 years. So wrong.

    The articles state that the “charge of using a child in a sexually explicit conduct is a Measure 11 offense and carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 70 months in prison”—I hope they apply the 70-month minimum to each and every charge he’s arraigned for (143 counts). That would put him at 10,010 months, or over 834 years. Otherwise, 70 months just doesn’t seem anywhere near long enough.

    Sick freak.