Getting back on track

Welcome email readers!

Slowly getting back into the swing of things, caught up on email at work, bills around here, and, perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this post, vacation photos are up on this here website.  Actually, that may be about all for now.  Coming weeks seem kind of busy: Nana Tiar and Grandpa Dave are coming, baby showers, birthdays, cupboards to be painted, sprinklers and swamp cooler shut down for the winter.  Sorry this seems kind of scattered, but well, that's how I'm feeling at the moment, so dangit, that's what goes up on the website.

On my nightstand: The Long Tail, Spam Kings, and Buddha (v.6).

And a website worth mentioning: dailyepisodes.com has full episodes of Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, South Park, and Futurama.  Every episode from every season.  Yep.

Home again

We're home, one day early.  Too tired to blog significantly.  Lola puked in the car, which makes 3x during the trip.  Total miles driven: 1885.  Photos tomorrow (after cleanup and unpacking).  Good night.

Live from Montpelier, ID

Another night, another Super 8 room with wifi...this time in Montpelier, Idaho, population ~2,800.  Good cable channels.  Dinner from the truck stop down the road.  The route here?  Through Yellowstone one last time, through Grand Teton National Park, through Jackson, WY, other small towns, and here we are in Idaho again.  Lola has been generally pretty good with occasional bouts of crankiness.  Tomorrow will bring us through Salt Lake and into Nevada somewhere.   So vacation is winding down.  Lots of photos were taken, good times had with friends, wonderful sights seen.  As I was telling Morgan earlier in the car, my feelings for Yellowstone (and by extension, national parks in general) are mixed - it's amazing and beautiful and I'm glad we preserve such places, but it seems so...staged?  One just drives from attraction to attraction, stopping to photograph animals and geysers and such, and the road is jammed to the gills during the times when it's appealing to visit.  The only way to get away from the crush is to go backcountry.  I suspect one can see equally beautiful sights without the crowds in a multitude of places that are not national parks.  Anyway, that's all I can muster for tonight.  Our route is roughly described by Yahoo Maps beta but may not work in Firefox.

Live from West Yellowstone, MT

Just a quick entry right now. Writing to you from the beautiful, cute, hospitable, and welcoming West Yellowstone library. Yep, that's what we librarians do on vacation, visit other libraries. Weather has been very cold and inhospitable except for this morning. Clouding up now, but it was great before lunch. Thus far, it had been very cold (close to freezing during the day), snowing, and generally not outdoors weather so we've trucked throughout the park. Lola had a big meltdown last night so Morgan and I stayed in town today to let her have a less hectic day. Scott and Patty went back into the park. We did see plenty of elk and bison, but no bears or moose. (We did see some nice grizzlies and wolves in the wildlife center here in town though!)

So that's it for now. We leave tomorrow, not sure which way home, but maybe through the park one last time and through Grand Tetons south to I-80. We'll see how Lola does and what seems wisest.

Until next time...

Live from Pocatello

Writing to you live and direct from room 312 of the Super8 in Pocatello Idaho this rainy morning.  Over 500 miles yesterday, and Lola was a peach.  No meltdowns, great behavior all the way.  She's cranky now, maybe up a little too early, and she wants to go see the turtles in the lobby.  Good stop for the night: free wifi in the room, good continental breakfast awaits, and everything was clean and in good working order, including the La-Z-Boy I sit in while writing this post.  Can't ask for much more than that for $60.  We even got a discount at Applebee's for dinner by showing our room key.

We should be on the road by 8 (and dang it, the computer says it's 6 because of the time change crossing into Idaho - it's still dark outside right now at 7am) and to Yellowstone easily by lunch.

I'm actually getting more and more excited about Yellowstone as I learn more about what there is to see.  Boiling mud, sulfur stink, bears and elk, and of course, scalding water shooting into the sky.  Excellent.

Until another connection opportunity presents itself...

Monday roundup

Got a whole slew of stuff to write about today, and little precious time. After all, we do leave for Yellowstone in a mere 38 hours, but who's counting?

For starters, I'm always getting hassled by my wife for the seemingly trivial nature of my blog posts. So I'd like to take a moment to explain a bit. I do this for a couple reasons: to dispatch fun/neat/interesting stuff I find online without turning it into an email forward, to keep a journal of sorts for myself, to leave a sort of "historical record" that maybe someday Lola (or legions of adoring fans) will want to read, and to keep in touch (at least unilaterally) with friends and family all over.

That said, I'll proceed to ramble.

Past: You might notice a fun little gizmo I added to the sidebar on the right - Blufr seems to be good for some fun and learnin'. This weekend, we: had a yard sale, did pretty well, got rid of a bunch of stuff, had a good time with neighbors who joined in, and made about $100; and painted some of the kitchen cabinets. Why does painting invariably take longer and take more coats of paint than you ever plan for???

Present: Enter this contest and take me on a trip if you win.

I'm trying to get around to reading "55 ways to have fun with Google" but just haven't gotten to it yet. Thought it worth point to anyway.

You might be wondering why we haven't posted any videos lately...our digital camera that we shoot them with seems to have died in terms of video. All we can do is still photos now. So if anyone's looking for that perfect gift...Canon powershots have a pretty good history with the Tiar family.

Weather update since we don't have that little doohickey on cheztiar anymore: COLD last week, but sunny and pleasant now.

Lola update: Geez she's getting big. Combining words into phrases like "Go see Mama", "Smell candle" (candle-smelling being one of her obsessions, along with lip balm), and "take shoes off". Toddler, schmoddler, she's a little girl now.

For those so inclined, a quick roundup of other blogs I enjoy: BoingBoing, Lifehacker, Parenthacks, Fresharrival, and Best Week Ever. There are others, but those are the most FVB (frequently visited blogs). Downtown makeover is good for Reno redevelopment updates too.

Future: Nick's show at Neverender gallery sounds really great in and of itself, but that it's the inaugural show for Neverender in their new building, which happens to be where I first lived alone back in 1993(?) makes it even more fun.

Librarians are gearing up for Banned Books week, September 23-30.

And finally, as mentioned above, we leave for Yellowstone on Wednesday and will be gone for a week. Probably no updates to this site, probably no replies to email, probably no phone calls answered. But when we get back, hopefully a bunch of great photos.

Thanks for reading, bye for now!

Retail beer

Just a quick note...we just got home from Raley's and several beer-buying items of note.

First, Sierra Nevada has bottled their Brown Ale (for the first time?) and is available for $8.49/six pack.  A bit steep for my taste, considering that I'm not a big fan of anything but the flagship pale ale.  Still, neat to see a new brew in stores.  Might be for a limited time, as it's still only listed as a "specialty draft" on their site.
Second, two sale prices worth mentioning: Heineken Light for $9.99/twelve-pack ($5 off), and Bass Ale six-packs are two for $10 (normally $8.49 each).

Neat stuff today

Just a couple items I thought were worth sharing with my audience:

• For our upcoming trip (and for future travels), the Universal Packing List.


• Japanese surf guitar covers of classical pieces - I've got these downloaded, but haven't listened to any yet.  Definitely looking forward to hearing them.


• This site full of music videos also has potential for some serious time-wasting, but wasn't working when I tried it.

Thanks for visiting, bye for now.

Ketchup

That's actually a pun...playing catchup, not really ketchup.  Whatever.  Not that i have a lot to say, just feel like I need to note some stuff to get it "out there" before time whizzes by too quickly.

• Lots of balloonspotting going on around cheztiar this weekend.


• Went garage saling, bought nothing.  Boo.


• Had lunch with Kirsten this week.


• Starting to plan a bit more for Yellowstone trip in a mere 10 days.


• Watching Nip/Tuck off and on as discs come and go.  Season 3 is disappointing.


• Saw some neat ponds and koi at Sierra Water Gardens yesterday.


• Watched "The Sentinel" last night.  Uninspired, but not awful at least.

I guess that's all that merits bullet points.  Also churning through my consciousness, Bart's sister Yuki, SO David, and baby Hebe are here visiting, had some fun with them over the weekend; Maggie's in Portland.

Possibly the biggest news, both Morgan's Dad (Grandpa Dave) and my mom (Nana) will be visiting in October, simultaneously, and meeting for the first time.  Yay!

One final thing that's made me obsessed this week: the random page from Wikipedia link.  Every time you click, it's something different.  Learn something new every day!

New pics again

Added a handful more photos from Burning Man, courtesy of Angie. Thanks Angie!

Also, just decided that I'm such a glutton for punishment that I thought I would take a stab at integrating the Gallery into Wordpress. I don't know why I insist on doing this to myself. Frustrating, challenging, infuriating. Does anyone out there want to do it for me?

Burning Man recap

Got some photos posted. Just the good ones from my roll and a half of film. You'll find them in the album creatively called Burning Man 2006. There will be more as my campers send me theirs, so keep checking back. And as long as I was in there, I posted a very few Lola pictures that I snapped to use up the film. Using up film, boy there's something I haven't done in a while, and one of those things that the next generation will consider a quaint relic of the past like cranking a phone or getting up to change the channel. But I digress...

Yes, we had a great time! We camped next to my friend David, former president of GBFS, and a bunch of his very nice friends. Our camp was me and Morgan, Paige, and friends Maggie, Angie, and Lily. Overall everyone got along splendidly, we ate better food and more of it than usual (including chicken tortilla soup, Indian food, and tortellini...we were offered fresh oysters even!), no major injuries that couldn't be fixed with duct tape. Morgan and I tended to fade early (relatively speaking) and go sleep in our Westfalia long before those who got back to camp, um, around 5am, on a few occasions.

I think I'm getting too stressed, old, and parental for this. There is talk around maison Tiar about this being our last burn for a while. It's starting to feel a bit routine. Just the absence of bad isn't enough to make me want to keep going, and the amount of work, money, energy, etc. that goes into it doesn't return enough on that large of an investment.

Highlights? Randomly running into Jeff Johnson in the middle of 40,000 burners (and that's happened with him before)...the Belgian project that literally took my breath away the first night we saw it...the guy in the pink singlet dancing all "militaristically" with a toy AK-47 to Matisyahu's "Jerusalem"...weather so pleasant I barely touched the warm clothing I brought expecting very cold nights...not living out of a tent in the dirt...kind neighbors with jumper cables and chilled chardonnay...excellent shade, carpet, and general camp layout and best location ever...nice gifts like pressed pennies, little knives, and artistic magnets....fun in the street like squirting passers-by and playing ladder golf.

Well I suppose I've droned on long enough about our little desert festival. Oh yeah, for those who were wondering, wifi connectivity out there was spotty at best, and I only was able to check email once, and it was unbelievably challenging. Should have seen me out there, standing with the laptop raised over my head trying to get a signal....ridiculous.

Back to reality

We're back from Burning Man.  Dirty, tired, hungry.  Cleanup awaits.  Everything was marvelous, everyone had fun, no bad weather, good campful of folks.  Excellent.  Photos to come soon.  BIG thanks to all our wonderful Lola-watchers who took care of our monkey while we were away.  We had a nice little vacation from the real world.  See you around.