Well, it’s official, there’s gonna be a Bend blogger meetup on Wednesday, May 12, at 7:30pm at the Bend Brewing Company. Jake blogged it here, and there’s even a Bend.com press release on it here. All are welcome, the more the merrier.
The funny thing about this is, my wife saw the press release on Bend.com and knew about it before I did. Aren’t I supposed the one who’s plugged into this stuff?
Notable: Weblogs mentioned in the Oregon Voter’s Pamphlet. Definitely milestone-worthy. The interesting thing to note is not that “blogging” is referred to in print, but that it is mailed to every home in Oregon. That’s impact.
Here are some pictures of various flowers in my yard that I took today at lunchtime. No particular reason, other than I like them and since we’re moving soon, I figure I’d better get pictures while I can.
They’re not the best quality pictures out there; it was awfully bright when I was taking them, and I’m definitely not as skilled as some people. And I certainly should be better at identifying various flowering plants and trees; unfortunately, whatever rubs off never seems to stick for any decent amount of time. Anyway, the pictures:
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We have an embarrassment of riches in dandelions this year. This is a small sample. I’m very, very tempted to pick as many as I can and try making dandelion wine; the only problem is, I just don’t have the time to sit down for a couple of hours to do so.
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No, I’m not sure what this is. Maybe a cherry?
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Bright splash of color on an otherwise green and brown background. The worst part is, I’m sure I know what this is…
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A crabapple tree blooming. It’s particularly fragrant.
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Could these be bluebonnets? At any rate, we have a good number of these and I think they’re pretty cool.
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These are in the bed in the front yard.
It was a stunningly beautiful day here in Bend, this first day of May. The first part of the morning was spent taking pictures down from the walls, part of our gradual effort to get ready for the move coming up in June, and not long after we’d finished boxing up a bunch of paintings and pictures, I got a phone call. Apparently the boss was heading in to the office to do some work, but found himself locked out.
So, off we went to make a day of it. After getting the boss into the building, we swung by the storage unit to drop off the boxed goods and then drove over to check out the progress on the new house. It’s coming along nicely, and quickly. There were people there working on it, so we didn’t wander around much.
Afterwards we took a leisurely route up Awbrey Butte on our way to lunch, and stopped at a garage sale on 1st Street, which turned out to be one of the most unusual streets I’ve seen here in Bend: narrow, steep (there’s a big dip in the middle), overlooking the Deschutes River, and all very nice, very expensive houses. It very much reminded me of something you’d find in San Francisco, which is very cool. I’d never seen that street before, though I don’t make it a habit to wander about Awbrey Butte much.
We had a decent lunch at Cousins, out on the deck overlooking the river. Perfect day for an outdoor lunch, even if it was a tad breezy. After that, I took the kids home while my wife went out for a bit. The rest of the day was enjoyed at home, playing outside with the kids.
Ah, May Day.
Here’s a link to a good image of the Piri Reis map. For all you mystery-history buffs out there.
A couple of links I found interesting. First is to All Consuming, “a website that watches weblogs for books that they’re talking about, and displays the most popular ones on an hourly basis.” Kinda cool. The other is to an article on Kuro5hin titled “Raising the Humble Chicken,” which is kind of random but good. I grew up with chickens; if we didn’t live inside the city limits, I think I’d try to convince my wife to let me get some.
Over on Jake’s site on a roundup of all the known Bend bloggers, the topic has come up in the comments on having a local blogger meetup. Time and place to be decided. I’d vote for one of the breweries.
Any interest?
Notable: Tonight’s episode of Law & Order: SVU marks the first time I’ve heard the term “blog” used on a TV show. Not just used, it was central to the plot.
My drive home from work everyday takes me by an old brick house on Hawthorne Avenue, just out of downtown Bend on the entrance to the parkway. What’s notable about this house is that it’s obviously old—one of those old, pre-War homes that has ivy growing on it and just oozes atmosphere and looks like it should be on a register of historic places somewhere—and for a long time I’ve been meaning to look up its address online and see what pops up.
Turns out it is a designated historic resource: the A.C. Lucas House, built in 1910, the first brick house in Bend. Cool.
Here’s some of the links I dug up while researching the Lucas House:
Okay, so not the most exciting of links. I can live with that.
Inspired by Tim Bray:
From We Interrupt This Broadcast by Joe Garner:
The Potsdam communique arrived in Japan on July 27.
Instructions: Grab the nearest book, open it to page 23, find the 5th sentence, and post its text along with these instructions, and point back to where you got the idea so that we can follow the threads.
