A wide variety of miscellany

Everyone likes to talk about the weather, so I'll just put this out here...it's dang cold here! For those readers across the pond and throughout the land, it was 16 degrees at maison Tiar this morning (or -8 for you aforementioned "across the pond"). High temp forecast for the next 5 days: about 50. Sheesh, winter doesn't start for 3 weeks still...

In other news rattling around my consciousness, I've developed a newfound fondness for soy. Specifically, soymilk. Randomly picked up a box of vanilla, and man, that's good over Life cereal in the morning. Now I'm hooked. Edamame too.

Coupla links to throw out here for you all: This news item is too good to go unposted, and please give a hearty welcome to Turi's blog!

Finally, I should thank my lovely wife this week for being married to me for three whole years, as of yesterday. Thanks Morgan!  Dinner tonight at 4th St. to celebrate. (Coincidentally, that review written by the wife of a colleague here at the lib. Small world.)

Cool search and more

More neato than really useful (I don't see this replacing Google for my typical needs), check out this new search engine, Pagebull, that gives small screenshots of results.

Other stuff to check out:

A local blogger's final visit and description at Deux Gros Nez.

Some pretty crummy reports out of Iraq.

Movies

I forgot!  As rare as outings to the movie theatre are, I feel I shouldn't pass up an opportunity for a brief review of what we saw.

As Morgan mentioned, Lola's first movie theatre experience was "Flushed Away".  Pretty good animated flick, as expected from Aardman.  Nothing to complain about that I can think of.

On Sunday, Morgan and I got to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale.  Typically excellent Bond action.  The cars, the action, the women...all top-notch.  I like the new Bond too, he seems cut out for this.  Maybe not as much as Remington Steele Pierce Brosnan, but he's pretty likeable.  Bond trivia note: This is actually the third version of "Casino Royale".  The very first Bond "movie" of all was Casino Royale, an episode of a TV series called "Climax" with Barry Nelson as Bond, then there was a David Niven spoof of Bond movies with that title in the late 60s.
And just so this isn't all about movies, for the benefit of all the non-Reno readers...we've got snow!  Just a dusting here in the valley, but a bit more in the mountains.   Pretty dang cold out there though.

That's all folks, take care!

Old photos

Real quick...added some scanned photos of our house in the old days in their own album.

Recent photos

Just added a bunch of photos...

• A new subalbum from our drive to the top of Peavine


• New photos from my turkey frying adventure, rubble of the Mizpah hotel, and a walk at Oxbow park, all in the newly added photos album.


• An extensive video of me frying turkey.  This is a big file, 26MB.

That's all for now...

Family Holidays

We had a full house for Thanksgiving yesterday. My friend Maggie, Mom, Paige, Aunt Patty, her friend Tom, my cousin Alex from Omaha (currently at Travis AFB), Matt (works with mom and Paige), Marc, Lola and I. Marc fried a turkey and it was delicious. He injected it with a marinade and it only took about 45 minutes to cook. It was really really good! We also made a ham, all the standards, and a runny sweet potato pie. Not sure how that happened. Lola had a ball with all the company and didn't get to bed until late. That of course was after her naked dance for our departing guests. Too funny!!

I think we will be a little more subtle with Christmas. Just a small family gathering. We bought our Christmas tree today. I opted for a real tree instead of our vintage tinsel tree. Lola even has her own little pink Christmas tree in her room. We will trim them both tomorrow and add over the next few weeks until Christmas.

We took Lola to the movies for the first time today. We went and saw "Flushed Away." I should have known that she would not be that into it. She doesn't really like TV and only has the attention span for things less than 5 minutes long. She wasn't too bad and we watched the whole thing - just missing a few parts to step outside to give her a break and change a diaper to give the rest of the theater a break! Yuck! She didn't even want to eat any popcorn! I think any future presentations will wait until she is a bit older.

That is about it for now. We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday.

What's new

Not a lot actually. Feels like it's been ages since I posted, so I should put something up here I suppose.

A grey-skied Sunday here, Lola napping and we're between tasks. The house has been cleaned for company later this afternoon, Julie, former resident of this very house, and her boyfriend. Her mom couldn't make it, but Julie's bringing some old photos anyway.

Yesterday, after a bit of leafhogging in the morning, we decided to drive up a mountain. Peavine Peak to be exact. It's probably been 25 years since I've been up there, I think I've only been once before, with my parents in the early years of living here. Nice drive and a good view from the top. We also took the opportunity to drive by the former Tiar residences on Moth Circle and Pine Grove Dr. Lots of childhood memories out there.

Sickness update: Still hacking a bit, especially at night, but progress is being made.  I think the fog I've been in for like 2 weeks now justifies my sparse updates on this here website.  I finally saw the light and got some real decongestant.  Did you know the Patriot Act now regulates pseudoephedrine too?  What does fighting meth have to do with terrorism?

Briefest movie reviews ever: Mission Impossible III - Mediocre, typically action-packed, not awful.  The Break-Up - Dumb and painful to watch.

And so we come to the end of another excruciatingly unsubstantial blog entry from Marc.  Thanks for sticking around, please keep coming back, I'm sure more interesting reading is in store someday...

Link o' the day and more

Probably mostly because I find some elements of spam so fascinating (where do they get the made-up names for the "From:" field? How about those subject headers???), I found spamusement.com pretty darn funny.  If you get much spam, you probably will too.

Sickness update: a little bit better each day.  Still fighting some symptoms, but they're decreasing.

Lola's off feeding horses and goats this morning with our neighbor Amy, as she did yesterday as well.  Good fun for her, good free time for me.  Morgan comes home tonight, thank goodness.  I don't know how single parents do it, particularly when they (the parents, that is) get sick.

One last item, this RGJ story today is really good.  Nice snapshot of life in downtown Reno's residential hotels in the wake of the Mizpah fire.  That lady Caral was a frequent library patron some years ago.

Have a nice day everyone.

more news, mine and others

forgive the brevity, I've got a sleeping child on me...

• bought peanut oil and a turkey fryer today, so I think we're going to go for this delicious yet potentially dangerous project for Thanksgiving


• RIP Jack Palance and Ed Bradley


• Happy birthday Carol and Sofia


• wanna buy a camera?

that's all, i can't type like this any more.

New album layout

I've been working to make the photo gallery feel less "segregated" from the rest of the site here.  Take a look, click on the photo gallery link over there to the right.  What do you think?  It's more integrated certainly, but still feels kind of kludgy to me.  My coding skills and available time and patience are not sufficient to make it really slick, I'm afraid.  Let me know if you hate it or love it at least.  One winning point - there's a "home" link to take you back to this page.

News items of note

As sort of an afterthought, some stuff from the news...

• Update on the Mizpah Hotel fire for those who don't follow the news: 12 dead, making it the deadliest fire in Reno history.  They start demolishing at least part of the building today.  Businesses remain closed indefinitely.  2nd Street is open again.


• Election roundup from my perspective: Looking good nationally, continuing Repub rule for the Silver State as expected with one pleasant exception, David Bobzien won.  Several of the ballot questions that I cared about and major races, everything went opposite the way I voted.  Yes, several Dems won minor offices locally, but that's about it.


• You just can't make stuff like this up.

OK, now I'm done.

Lucky winner

Well, I certainly drew the winning card this week. Sickity sick sick sick, and Morgan left for Michigan this morning. Either one of those occurrences would be just fine on their own, but watching Lola for 4 days by myself while sick, well, it's sort of like having to take care of two people, her and sick me. We're about 4 hours into our little solo adventure, and so far all is well.  Morgan's on a layover Denver for about 15 more minutes.  (Update moments later: OK, now it's getting to be more work...3 diaper changes already, and this stuffy head just makes everything so exhausting.)  To be fair, I do have a good support system in place, with several friends and family at my beck and call to help out.
As for sick me, hmm, let's see, I think it started last weekend or so, mostly cold-like, cough, stuffy nose, etc.  But yesterday, the fatigue and aches hit me mid-day and I left work early.  By late afternoon, all I could do was lay on the couch, shiver, and take my temperature (101 if you're interested) and eventually I just skipped dinner (and we were having Vietnamese, dangit!) and went to bed at 6.  I'm actually much better today than at that pinnacle of illness, but there's a broad range between better and well.

Like Morgan said, we got the new camera.  Hopefully I can get some of those new pics up this weekend and list the old camera on ebay.  Actually, I'm really hoping this creeping crud subsides soon...I've got a three day weekend that I don't wish to spend nursing myself back to health.  I've got to go shopping, buy a turkey fryer, and hopefully devour the new Michael Connelly book.

So I suppose that's it for now.  Hoping this finds you well and fine.  Marc

raking leaves

What a waste of time. As I watched the kids run around in the yard, I decided that I should rake up the leaves. I love all of our big trees, except for the annual falling of the leaves. After I came inside, I watched as a new layer covered the backyard. Marc even asked if it was really noticeable. Of course, by that time I had two huge black garbage bags full. Of course it was a big difference - but only for anyone (only me and three children under the age of 4) who witnessed the before image. UGH! So needless to say, if you wander by, you will not think we have done anything to help our problem with the leaves.

I am off tomorrow to visit Dad. I will have a full update next week.

Marc got a new camera from his parents for his birthday. It is really neat. There are so many options, I think they should offer a class. But for me, who had no idea other how to work it other than turning it on, it took some pretty good pics in Evan's Canyon yesterday afternoon during a long hike with Maggie and Lola.

Birthday photos

Posted the best photos from Lola's birthday party, also a few new non-birthday photos while I was at it.

That's it for now, there's a new Simpsons Treehouse of Horror on tonight!

Lola's two

I suppose you're wondering, "Lola's two what?"  Two shoes?  Two skinned knees?  No, sillies, Lola's two years old today!

Birthday party is impending, a mere 50 minutes away.  Balloons still need to be fetched, pizza cooked, cake frosted.  We're on it.  The streamers are hung, mama's in the shower, and I'm writing this blog post.

No other major news at this time, we should have some photos to share soon, and videos in the near future if that new camera shows up soon...

News

'Tis indeed a gloomy day, and not just because of the weather Morgan mentioned below.  The Mizpah Hotel burned last night.  Besides the obvious tragedy of the loss of life (six, maybe more) and injury (over 30), 60-80 people who were mostly barely making ends meet as it was, are now homeless and have lost (mostly) everything.

And let's not forget our friends Pho 777, Blind Onion, Hippies, and the other small businesses that, while they didn't lose everything, at a minimum while probably need to relocate, could potentially lose enough business to close their doors, and are probably facing the single worst day a business owner can face today.
Finally, the other loss is for the city of Reno.  We've lost yet another chunk of our history, a fine old 85-year-old building will probably need to be demolished when all is said and done.  Tragic no matter how you look at it.

Not to change the subject too radically to something less serious, but I just wanted to note, I've recently rediscovered NOFX and am remembering how much I enjoy those guys.  Picked up an EP at Tower, can't stop listening to it, and now I think I need to buy the full CD.

It is November

Waking up this morning to the gloomy skies and bare trees, I have decided that maybe fall is finally here and ready to stay. We had been so lucky with warm, sunny weather. Global warming? Nah!

Lola had her first memorable trick or treating adventure last night. She dressed up in her Princess Leia costume. We went to a library Halloween party, to some friend's houses, around the neighborhood, and then over to the Beckers. There we had pizza and hit a few houses on their cul de sac. We had a bear, dinosaur, ghost, princess, and Princess Leia. Sarah and I decided that Ramona and Lola could keep going, so we went to a few houses up the street. The first house was a random man (who may or may not have been dipping into some kind of homemade, life sucking, teeth rotting drug) with a pitbull tied up in his living room. That candy went into the trash. The next interesting house was the lady who you would have thought was handing out mini vodka bottles to the adults. She was slurring and rocking. I think I moved Lola just in time. As she was telling the kids to 'be careful,' I thought that she surly was going to lose her balance and fall onto Lola. I hope she was 'careful' for the rest of the night. All in all, it was a very fun night and Lola has loads of candy to prove it. It was great to hear her say "trick or treat" and to get right up onto the porches for her treats. She had no problem grabbing into the bucket and bowls to claim her stake.

My favorite Halloween treat has to be the "fun size" candy bar. It is all in the name. There is no other.