Friday, March 20, 2009

Someone read my blog...where??

United States (US), United Kingdom (GB), France (FR), Mexico (MX), Canada (CA), Australia (AU), Spain (ES), Netherlands (NL), South Africa (ZA), India (IN), Malaysia (MY), Peru (PE), Poland (PL), Ireland (IE), Croatia (HR), Sweden (SE), Costa Rica (CR), Taiwan (TW), Barbados(BB), Turkey (TR), Portugal (PT), El Salvador (SV), China (CN), Nigeria (NG).

The Orange colored country names are one's I've actually been to. The others are on-the-list as of now.
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Your search terms here:
44 44th Adam's Block ADSL Air Force antique antiques Aoitat Apple Pie Apple Tart Armstrong arthritus Austerlitz Australian Sheppard automobiles Avensis bake baking banana bananas bath bathroom Beale AFB Beetle Berry big rigs Bike Race Boar booking Bouchon Bourges Bread bread machines bread making Brocante California Camera cars cat travel Cats Cattle CDG Center Centre chef Cher cherries cherry juice Chezel Benoit chowder Christmas Christmas Sales Climate Colchicine colcochine Colinsville Colitus Computers Control Data cooking Courier Decor decoration Deer Desert diesel Disney Doctor Donkey dredge dredging Driving DSL Dulles Egypt election election 2008 Euro Europe Eviction faucet Feast feline flight flying fog Ford foriegn cars France France Telecom Freeways French French property Friends Gaza GE Global Warming Golden Gate Bridge Google gout Health healthcare Heart attack Hives hockey pucks Holiday home repair Hope House in France Huere Hunting Hurley's IBM Ice Ignitor Insect Bites interior interiors Internet Iran Ischemic Colitus Israel Jordan junkers Kaiser Kaiser Permanente Keesler AFB keyboards kitchen Lance Lance Armstrong Lignieres Linxwiler Loire Loire Valley Lunch Lyon Maps Marina Marseille Massif Central Master-Time Maytag Medicine Merced Mg MG TF Microsoft Microsoft Windows Mill Valley MS Napa Nikon Obama Old Port Ondine's Oradour Sur Glane Oven paint painting Palestine Petaluma Pizza Plumbing potassium preeclampsia presidency Provence Racing Ranch Red Cross Rent rentals reservations roads saladarie Sale. Sales salvadoran San Francisco Sausalito Selma SF shower soup sourdough sous chef speed cameras Squirrels Stinson Beach Stove Suisun City Syria Tag Huere Tax Taxes tenant Tenderloin TF Thanksgiving The Berry thrift store Tickets Tile tiles tiling Tour of California Tourist Office Toyota traffic Travel trucks tylenol United United Airlines United States Unlawful Detainer US Vallejo Velo Verizon Volkswagen VW VW bug Weather Win 7 Wind Windows Windows 7 Wine country winter yeast Yountville
So dear reader-person, you poor, demented, lost internet soul, absolutely bored to death searched the Internet with some search term from this list or someone else's (of course) and actually FOUND my ever-loving blog...in one of those countries above. Ah...Mazing! There's something for everyone I guess. A few useful tidbits and an eye-glazing display of boring content so ill-written as to provide joyous laughter to Britney Spears for instance. Now Barack O. will never read it, he's online searching for Other subjects...things I don't cover like "AIG Executive Compensation Packages", "The Economy of The United States", "Poppy Growing in Afghanistan", "How Money is Printed", The Federal Reserve System" and, of course..."Basketball Scores" his favorite pastime. Not that Presidents, and especially HIM, have any PASTIME at all, especially NOW, especially Here in these not-so-United States. Everything is The bloody economy, tanked as it is, it's like having a daily train wreck in your front yard when you go out to pick up the morning paper. Morning papers might be going away here too...the Hearst paper in Seattle is now and ON-LINE edition ONLY! Yes, no printing presses, no ink, no paper boys (and girls), no paper racks that don't give you a paper when you insert the coins. How many coins does it take today to buy a paper I wonder, I haven't done that activity in over twenty years myself. Huh.
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I remember a certain paper machine outside of 180 New Montgomery in SF a long, long time ago. I was a CE, a Customer Engineer, for IBM and worked at Pacific Telephone and Telegraph (known from now on as PT&T) that I bought the morning paper from. It was normally a balky machine anyway so I was used to dropping a quarter into the slot and jerking the door to open it and it refusing on the first, second, sometimes even the third try before finally flailing itself open.
It did this every day, day in and day out. Balky, unreliable but always there, never replaced, paint peeling, dented, window broken...you've got the scene. This went on for months, then a year. I even put messages on the bloody thing, "Not The Box!", "Faulty", "Broken", "!#$#@#!" and it remained. Unfixed. Then one day as I arrived on my BSA 441 Victor motorcycle and parked it in a nearby alleyway, there before me was a brand spanking NEW mailbox, bright yellow paint, no dents, a window you could actually read the Headlines through and 2 slots for coins, the paper had gone up (in price)! I reached grumbling into my pocket for two quarters and dropped them in the slot and pulled on the door. No go! Once again, replaced the coins, dropped them in the slot and pulled...nope! Not opening for me...ok, I slammed in the coins, grabbed the door and pulled and pulled and then I picked up the whole damned machine and slammed it into the sidewalk, grabbed a single paper amid the mess and walked calmly into PT&T a satisfied customer.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Happy B-Day MacKenzie! and a Great Bonding Activity for Fathers and Daughters and Others

Today is our little 2 year old GC's B-Day. She is a most cute, most bright, most engaging little character. Born to Aimee and Joe she has her Mum's good looks and the energy of both of them.
Her sister, Kaylee, loves her dearly. She just about didn't visit this world though as her Mum developed Preeclampsia and it was progressing rapidly about 7 weeks from her Real B-Day to be. They used to call this condition something else but I've forgotten that too, precious...aging, just precious. Anyway here's a link to get the real low down on this most dangerous and potential killer of new Mum's and babies.
http://pregnancy.emedtv.com/preeclampsia/preclampsia.html
So they took the baby by C section and though small at 3lbs and with the effects of the preclampsia, hospital bound for several weeks, she is a wonderful gift today!
Anyhow we will all eat Pizza at Mary's Pizza Shack and have a cake and all the mess that means. Great for kids and fun for us too.
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The rest of the few days I've paused from the blog have been spent reading about sourdough bread, the starter in trivial detail and modifying what I am doing somewhat. I sent a self-stamped envelop to Carl' in Maryland and he's returned to me a small package of his live starter. It looked pretty flat in the clear plastic bag but once freed and into a small bowl, warmed a bit and with a tablespoon of flour and a slightly shyer amount of H2O added and mixed well it came to life, burp! That was 5 days ago. I've divided the Mum Starter in two, forming a working starter that will actually become bread while preserving the original Mum, it's safer that way and less likely to end up getting polluted with some other ingredient. Mum stays a virgin, get it?
The Baby gets played with and will become a loaf, not today but probably tomorrow after I feed it two more times. To get Carl's famous starter stuff here's what you do; go to his site, read the blurb and ship off your SSAE, you won't be disappointed. Here's the link:
http://home.att.net/~carlsfriends/
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Then yesterday...Audrey came over as Kelly left as I needed the help of a strong woman with the mattress swap onto "my" man-bed (HA!) to try out our old marriage-bed mattress instead of the one that came with the bed frame. Audrey dragged and I pushed, Ooof, up the stairs we went with it and plopped it down on the box springs and wow, what a difference! A decent bed! Any you know...I didn't wake up once last night! Not once! And that had gotten to be a regular thing. Mattresses make a difference. Then in an ultimate step-father - step-daughter bonding moment we took on the task of changing the oil in her Toyota Echo some 13,000 miles since it was changed last...by guess who? Yes, me. 13,000 miles no less! Synthetic oil it was but ever so black and well contaminated now. I found the drain again (it was a year ago since I climbed under the beast, cute as it is) and proceeded to use a breaker bar to get enough leverage to pull the damned thing loose again! Grrrrrr. Loose, I unscrewed it and placed the old black lid from a boat battery box underneath to catch the black goo in all it's glory. Soon it was well draining and...what's that? Oh no! A FLOOD of oily mess...EXON VALDIZ!!! In our driveway!!! Shit! Merde! Something! A bag? Audrey rushed off to get some plastic bags, the mess continued to pour out onto the concrete of our previously clean driveway. Another container (no), rags? (no), paper towels (no), damnit...what a mess...and it has to be stopped before it gets into the drain system and reeks havoc with the local sewer system! (Think EPA, Corps of Engineers, State Lands Commission, City Hall, Barrack Obama!) Oh my God, this IS a disaster. So cat litter to the rescue! Having moved the car down the driveway and into the street...yes,yes with the plug IN and the filter changed and new oil added, the now thoroughly blackened driveway is fully exposed for my dear wife and Republican neighbors to see! So for the next two hours we scrubbed (more bonding), power-washed, soaped, scraped and removed MOST (but not all) of the slimy black goo. Such fun on a Sunday afternoon. And along comes my sweetie Kelly, all cheerful and pert, took no notice of the dark stain and pulled her car right in and covered the 20 foot long spot. Nice. And she's not even mad. Bonding activities are so very rewarding.