From Medford

Here we are in a Starbucks in Medford. I paid ten bucks to have internet access so I could check up on Who2 and make sure it's still running.

Things are fine, fortunately.

And Medford is hot. We've been swimming mostly. Yesterday the family saw a movie and I walked around Ashland, including touring their old pioneer cemetery. Nice place full of acorn woodpeckers.

Today Amy and I saw more of them at the cemetery near Rowean's house.

Now Iris wants to check her blog.

Cartoon

And We're Off...

We leave for Medford and parts south tonight. We'll stay tonight in Roseburg at the Windmill Inn, then on to Medford tomorrow. We return Sunday, after a stop at a family gathering outside of Sutherlin.

I leave you with a photo of an arm-wrestling arcade game that has been removed from circulation "as a precaution" by the Japanese manufacturers -- after three people broke their arms while playing it.

Simpsonized

Iris created this Simpsons version of me. From this site.

Superbad

You have to give them credit for having the guts to call their movie Superbad, an obvious invitation to movie review headline writers who don't like to work too hard.

This movie isn't exactly superbad, but it's not very good, either. Iris and I went to a matinee today. It has a similar pedigree to Knocked Up, and I like the actor/writer Seth Rogen, but this movie was too much and not enough.

Not enough story, too much teenage boy humor. More penis jokes does not make a movie funnier, it turns out.

The kid who played "McLovin" stole the show -- they should have made the movie about him (they nearly did!).

I won't even go into the bizarre male-love themes in this movie.

I laughed plenty, I guess, but I'm reluctant to recommend it to anyone.

Porch Dance: The Movie

Simmer's Slide Show from 2006

Rove and Holznagel

Now that White House advisor Karl Rove is leaving his post, old photos and stories of him are popping up all over. I dug into my own archives for this gem, from a trip to Las Vegas in the heady days of the so-called "dot com boom."

Hairspray

Yesterday Cleo was working at the zoo and Iris wanted to see a movie. We met Amy (who had been in her office) at the Lloyd Center mall and saw Hairspray, the movie version of the musical based on the other movie by John Waters (who has a mildly amusing cameo in this new version).

This is not the kind of movie I would normally see. I don't much like musicals and I don't much like the pop music of the era depicted (1962), and I didn't really want to see a Broadway Show interpretation of racial issues of the 1960s. But the movie was perfectly fine, and a much better time at the movies than several other movies I can think of that are the kinds of movies I normally see.

And now I can say "I saw HAIRSPRAY, yeah, I did."

Wildlife

Around the house right now there are three raccoons, a parent (mother?) and two young ones. We have no way of knowing if the adult is the same adult that has repeatedly entered our kitchen through the back door.

Last weekend a scrappy possum made its way into our living room and had to be shooed out twice.

A few nights later a baby possum was in the shed, so I took a photo of it:

It's a Rainy Sunday

I've spent the last few days working on PCs and Windows operating systems. The desktop PC is a frustrating mess and we bought a new laptop (which is what I'm working on right now, for the first time).

Last night we went to Mike Burns's house in southwest Portland and played ping-pong or table tennis. Some woman told us she wished she was still in high school. That woman effusively praised Cleo and told her to "keep being a cool kid."

I found a mouse head on the front porch. I wish I had photographed it before sweeping it up.