Ghost Story

Today at the local grocery store the clerk asked me out of the blue, "do you like ghost stories?"

I said yes, I do. She then told me of her mother's recent visit to their old family home in California, the home this clerk lived in as a kid. She said her mom was outside the old house looking around when a neighbor came up and excitedly told her about the house having become a famous haunted house since the family had moved away.

The clerk told me the ghosts had something to do with stabbing, knives -- I forget exactly because at this point she mentioned "my sister was murdered twenty years ago -- stabbed to death. Now, I know the ghost isn't HER. I know my sister is all right. I KNOW this. I KNOW where my sister is, I've talked to her several times, but that's another story."

Indeed. She told me a theory that the murderer was the ghost. Or something.

I asked where this house was. She said "oh, in California." I asked where in California. She said "in Santa Rosa."

I told her I knew of Santa Rosa, home of Charles Schulz and Luther Burbank. She didn't really know what I was talking about, because she obviously hasn't read The Santa Rosa Connection.

Coincidentally, my pal from Who2, Adam Duvander is from... Santa Rosa, California.

Meow Meow Meow Meow

Whoa!

This little video of girls going nuts after an American Idol announcement is intense!

The Who2 Blog Widget

My pal Mike Duffy (from Who2) created this nifty gadget that you can paste into your site -- I've slapped it over there on the left column. With this tool I can keep up on what Fritz Holznagel has to say about today's wacky world. Here's the widget:

A Sunny Day

Cleo's Intro

Cleo had a solo with the choir the other night:

Weekend Retreat

Weekend Retreat, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

"Mountain Man Weekend" (aka "Middle-Aged Man Weekend") in Vancouver, BC.

Toy Shelf

Toy Shelf, originally uploaded by Paul Hehn.

Some of the dolls and puppets we still have around the house.

Caught in B.C.

I told Mark it wouldn't make any difference -- he thought for sure the president's reputation would be ruined if the press knew Bush was "in his cups" at a sports bar in Vancouver, BC, watching a hockey game and drunkenly shouting "touchdown!" every few minutes. Mark insisted we get some photos. I told him I didn't think it would hurt the president's reputation one bit.

Pipe Down!

Last Friday night our shower broke. Now we're having the entire house re-piped, from the street on up to the shower. It's not unexpected. It's expensive. Casey's Plumbing is doing the job -- "the picky people's plumber" or something like that. If you go to their website you can see a little video starring Linda Gray, former star of Dallas.

Here are some photos of the plumbing action going on today:


Andrea the Plumber.


Justin the Plumber and Andrea the Plumber.


Digging around the water main.


The boring machine.

Vancouver BC Trip Slideshow

Ha!

I paid a guy ten bucks (Canadian) to do this, in the Gastown district of Vancouver, B.C.

My Airplane Glider Ride

This morning I drove out to McMinnville, to an airfield run by Cascade Soaring. I had an 11 a.m. appointment for an airplane glider ride.

This is the "tower" for their airfield:


This was the airplane that towed the glider up into the airspace (aka "sky"):


You can see the pilot in there. She was nice. The guy who piloted my glider was an old curmudgeon named Joe. His second sentence to me today was "who told you you had a ride out here at eleven a.m.?" He told me to come over to his mud-battered car because "there's all kinds of papers 'n' shit you gotta sign." He had me sign one thing, that's it.

Here's the little area where I waited for them to ready the planes:


Joe left to go do something for a moment, and when he came back he barked at me, "You gotta stay behind the orange plastic fence!" I said, "Okay."

He softened a little and said, "I didn't tell ya that." Pause. "But then I didn't figure you'd go wandering around on your own."

Ha! My wandering around had taken me all of about six feet past the orange fence. He wouldn't let me take my camera up in the glider. That was a disappointment. He told me it was because too many people had scratched the inside of the plastic cockpit cover with their cameras. I said, "Aw, c'mon, I can be a good boy!" But he wasn't buying it.

Here's Joe and his mute (and possibly deaf) pal, fetching the glider from the fleet:


Here are the tow ropes that tethered us to the plane on the way up:


Here's the plane we glid through the air in:


The cockpit:


I sat behind Joe. Because I weigh more than him, although apparently not by much. The ride itself was great. Beautiful, serene, etc. Great views of Yamhill Valley acreage. I didn't say much. Joe didn't either. By the end of it he was much friendlier and joking around with me. He told me if I lost a couple of pounds I could go up in the other glider and sit in the front. "How much is a couple?" I asked. "Three or four," he said.

Epiphany #1,749

From the Tripod

Iris and I this afternoon, sticking the tripod out the kitchen window for a selves-portrait:

I Love the Modern World

This is a screenshot from iTunes.

I'm not a huge Radiohead fan -- I like 'em fine and we have a few records -- but I love this kind of thing. I spent ninety-nine of my cents to get these six tracks. I don't know if I'll use them or not. This week I began making some music tracks for the first time in about five weeks, a long layoff from messing around with GarageBand and Audacity, the two software programs I use most.

But I don't think I'd go so far as to use all of the Radiohead tracks to re-do this particular song. That seems wacky -- to do the song again. If I'm going to go to THAT much trouble, I'd rather make a whole new song.

Now you know why I don't record covers. I once did a slowed-down version of the theme song to Sailor Moon, but other than that I've never spent my time learning how to play a song by someone else.

Headlines!

But... wha-?

Oh... it was fixed: