The Birthday

I took a photo to document what I look like at the age of 47.

Cleo is at Outdoor School, Iris is over at her friend's house, Amy is at work and I'm taking the day off (though I was involved a little bit this morning).

Tonight we have a reservation for dinner at Castagna. It's nice to be home and not at work. Although Friday is usually the day I clean the bathroom (if you must know). I will go for a walk, I will play with my two-string guitar, I will putter away the day and reflect on how truly fortunate I am to have parents who are not insane, a wife who is wonderful and not insane, two daughters who are a delight to be around and not insane, a good arrangement with my brother and his family who live close by and are not insane, several friends and co-workers who are not insane, a nice place to live and, soon, a new pair of glasses.

Stanford on iTunes

I spent a little time today checking out Stanford's cool iTunes thing.

I listened to most of a free lecture on Jesus, the first class in a course on "the historical Jesus." The downloads are free. This particular lecture, like most, is maybe 45 minutes long, maybe an hour. I have two more on the laptop, one lecture called "Why Do Baseballs Have Stitches?"

Who knows if I'll ever actually have time to listen to a lot of the lectures. Lyle says he downloaded a movie. I'll have to check that out. He's always ahead of the curve. Kind of spooky, really.

Anyway, all that education from Stanford for free!

You see, you don't pay for the education, you pay for the document that says you got the education.

Friendship

More hard-hitting satire!

That Exciting GOP

I saw four minutes of the Republican debate. What a yawn. Old, white men preaching imminent doom with phony optimism, to sum up. Oh, yeah... and attacks on Hillary Clinton, no matter what the question is.

Rudy Giuliani just made the statement that more than 2% of the Gross Domestic Product goes to "lawsuits." I guess it's easy to hate lawyers (hey, Hillary is a lawyer! But... wait, so is Rudy), but tossing that number out there doesn't make ME think "oh, people are suddenly lawsuit crazy." No, it makes me think, "when there's less government regulation of industry, there are more torts and thus, more lawsuits." But then, thinking is a bad idea at such an event.

Ha!

They shake their heads really fast and we snap the shot with a flash!

Mural

We didn't stop to talk with the muralists. You know how scary they can be.

Northwest Magnets

We stopped in at Northwest Magnets on our walk this afternoon. A short, older woman with a German or Eastern European accent helped us. She gave us a lot of warnings about this and that.

I asked to take some photos and she said okay. A minute or so later I asked if I could take a look into the back work shop, which you can see from the retail area through a window in the door.

Inside the shop a nice fellow was putting together a large electromagnet to be used for scrap metal and wrecked autos. He was wrapping copper bands around and around. "There'll be 1400 turns by the time we're done," he said. He told me it would "only weigh 3,000 or 4,000 pounds" when finished. He said, "that's nothing... some of 'em we build weigh 20,000 or 22,000 pounds." He didn't seem to mind that I was taking a few photos.

But then the woman shot in there saying, "no, no... I don't think you should be taking pictures... no, no...." She seemed nervous and concerned. I apologized but didn't offer to delete the photos and she didn't ask me to. I only took four shots.



I ended up spending about $60 in there and felt like I could have spent a lot more.

Glass Building

Seal Sniper

Urban Walk and...

Greg and I walked around the more industrial parts of the city this afternoon. I'll post some photos.

Sassy Solicitor Pt. II

Tonight the neighbor across the street asked if we'd had a problem with a solicitor last night. I said we had. Apparently the guy was at her house also last night, hanging around on her porch and not leaving when she told him to. She lives there with her young daughter. She said the guy spit on her front door at one point and she called the cops. I don't know if they ended up tracking him down.

I guess he was spoiling for a fight last night, that feller.

Time Flies

I had my eyes examined this morning. I need a new prescription. I've known I need a new prescription, but I had been putting off the eye exam because I wasn't sure what the status was with our Kaiser account. I knew we got a "benefit" of $150, but it's only good once every two years or so. That means they take $150 off the total cost of frames and lenses.

I was under the impression I'd had my current glasses "about two years," but finally figured I'd have to get new glasses whether it would cost the extra $150 or not.

Turns out I got my current spectacles over FOUR years ago.

Brother. I get the new ones in a week or two, I'm told.

While I was trying on frames a guy came up to me and asked me if I was a police officer.

???

More Sassy Solicitors

We've had a flurry of door-to-door salesmen and such lately. I don't get it, given that the weather has now officially turned bad.

Last night, just as dinner was about ready, a guy came to the door. I opened the door and said hello, adding "...but I'm really not interested in anything right now, thanks."

He didn't respond right away, so I started to shut the door. I heard him mutter something. I wasn't sure what he said, but I was darn sure it was something harsh. I opened the door again and asked him if he had said something. He defiantly said, "Yeah, I said something."

"Was it kind?" I asked him.

"Were YOU kind?" he snapped.

"Well, yeah," I said. "All I said was that I don't want anything right now. I'm getting dinner ready and... I just don't want anything."

"Well," he snarled, "you've got your opinion and I've got mine!"

Are they not teaching them in door-to-door school that you have to learn to take "no" in stride? Jiminy. Do these sassy solicitors think "If I'm mean to them, they'll come around to my way of thinking and order some magazines"??

I just don't get it, man.

Dad and Uncle John

Down outside of Sutherlin, August of 2007.


Dad explains why you shouldn't try to photograph Uncle John.

Rule Book

Yan Yan

These are sweet treats from the Asian market, called Yan Yan. By the makers of Hello Panda, and featuring the same biscuit-like things and same chocolate-like (dipping) "sauce" (frosting).

Movie Review: EXILED

Yesterday Amy and I went to see Exiled, a Chinese shoot-em-up, at downtown's Living Room Theaters.

Nice theaters, those. Very comfy and slick, and they use words like "cuisine" and "fusion," so you know it's upscale.

The movie was good, if not spectacular. It was very well made, but had a bit of a been-there-done-that quality. The Oregonian had me believing it would be chock-a-block with action, and it does have several gunfight scenes, but the overall mood and pacing is more subdued than I expected.

In the end I decided it was worth the trip more for the theater -- we'd never been to this place -- than for the movie.

Iris stayed home and watched Knocked Up (again) and Cleo was out with Andrea seeing Across the Universe.

It was a quiet, not very bouyant autumn Sunday, the last day of September.

Today's Jumble 9/29

Yeah, it's actually yesterday's Jumble.