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Showing posts from 2004

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all you out in blogland. I haven't posted in a bit and I owe a long rambling summary of the past few weeks, but I also owe an apology to a certain person out there. You see, one of my prior posts (I deleted it this morning) aired some dirty laundry that probably should have been kept in the closet of my mind. You kknow who you are. I'm sorry.

Picking A Tree From the Wayhiup

When my friends Phil & Julie Gardner used to live in Indiana, there home was tucked away south of Indianapolis is a beautiful wooded area near Martinsville. They called their home the Waydownback and it was frequently the jumping off point for our weekend adventures in the hills of southern Indiana. Phil & Julie moved to Missoula about 7 years ago and now have a home, nestled in the pine forested mountains, about 30 minutes south of Missoula...they've affectionately named their Lolo, Montana home the Wayhiup. The Wayhiup sits atop a ridge and is surrounded by both logged and unlogged forest. Their land butts up against land owned by the timber conglomerate Plum Creek. Because of the reforestation methods of logging companies, fast growing and invasive species of pine have crept onto the Gardner property and they let some of their friends come up each year to help thin away trees that crowd out the native trees. This year, I got invited and it was a super fun time.

An Early Season Ski Day

Wow, what fun. Sunday, Karl & Lori and I headed up to Lolo Pass for some cross country skiing. Lolo Pass is on the Montana/Idaho border, about 30 minutes or so from town. It was a gorgeous day and the Snow was fine. Karl & Lori are in great shape and are much better skiers than me, but they humored me into thinking I could keep up. Here's me in an action shot on the 3 mile loop course. We also had their dogs Sarah & Sydney with us, so we went on an ungroomed course across from the pass that was fairly strenuous. All big fun.

Brown County Hoe-Down

Hard to believe a whole week has gone by since I last posted. Thanksgiving was a blast on my end. I flew home last Thursday morning, arriving in Indy at 3:30 PM. I'd hoped the trip would be full of holiday cheer, but most of the travelers were down right grumpy. The bad weather in the Eastern and Southeastern parts of the country ran roughshod over travel plans and left people stranded from Wednesday trying to get home. The higher prices this year also seemed to affect families so many were flying on turkey day to get better deals, so both my flights (Indy to Minneapolis and Minnie to Indy) were chock full-o-grumps. No worries, I just kept right on wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving night my Mom, Dad and brother hopped in the car for the ride up to Carmel, Indiana...my sister's Mother in-law hosted Thanksgiving dinner. The O'Connor's are used to eating the holiday meal around 2:00 and then again around 5 & 6 & 7...we compromised and ate a

Heading Home for Thanksgiving

You may be wondering where I've been hiding the past few weeks...my posts are becoming less frequent and not as full of juicy details. I've been a busy boy this , working more than usual trying to get 4 reviews completed and preparing for the holiday. I've also been stepping up my workouts, trying to speed up my conditioning so I can try a move to a different workout regimen being used by my friends John and Rick. It's called Crossfit and it's used by the military and police forces as a total body conditioning program. It is very difficult and challenging and to date I've only been able to do a few of the exercise with any degree of success. So I'm now working out daily and I've also started to change my diet to accompany the new regimen. I'm hoping my renewed focus on my physical condition will spill over and keep my mental condition positive. This is always a tough time of year for me, Winters onset (at this stage the theme is cold and grey

Mean Flower

This song, Mean Flower, by Joe Henry (from the Album Scar )has been dancing around in my head for days. So much of my idle mind has been filled with it that I had to make a new mixed CD with Mean Flower as the centerpiece. What a gut wrenching and beautiful song. I have to admit though, it's added to the mood of melancholy I've been in ever since the election ended and the skies over the Missoula Valley turned grey...if we see the sun in the valley again before March it will be marked with great joy. The elections...yuck, yuck and yuck. We've probably all had enough talk about that but for me, it's not that I even liked Kerry that much, it's just that I don't like Bush at all. And my fears about what will come next are only heightened by the nomination today of Cond0leezza Rice to replace Colin Powell as the Secretary of State (SOS). I fear for the future, if her nomination is approved. Anyone who is a student of history, especially since the war of 181

Veterans Day

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Today is Veterans Day here in the USA, a day where most people only know something is different because the banks and the schools are closed. I put my flag out this morning to honor the soldiers who have served and lived. I'm always a little self-conscious about the act of putting my flag out...but I do feel it is the appropriate thing to do, especially on a day like today. We celebrate Memorial day as the day to honor fallen soldiers, but we don't pay much attention to the ones who survive the messes we put them in. I have tremendous respect for those who are willing to serve in harm's way, who work for terrible wages and who suffer the mental wars long after the physical ones desist. In our medical practice we deal with a population that is overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly over the age of 50...we have many veterans. Today we made a sign thanking them and put cookies out. It's the least we could do. I called one of our doctors, who was a Navy surgeon in V

Hanging Out In Alleys

My little house has a detached garage that opens onto an alley, well sort of opens into the alley. The garage, like my house, is quite old; but unlike the house there doesn't appear to have been much of an effort made to at least keep it functional. The roof is sagging and the shingles are only half there, with the remaining ones curled up like a snarled lip. There are two sets of swing-out doors, one I've made permanently unusable after a break-in and the other is barely hanging on...I've sort of rigged them to stay shut. There were two couples that lived here between 1920 and 2001, and then the yay-who who bought it as a rehab before selling it to me after one year (he is supposedly a contractor, but based upon the quality of the work he did in here I would say he will be out of business soon). Until today I only knew that the last couple (before the yay-who) lived here for about 40 years. But today I learned a whole lot more from an 83 year-old German man named Ot

VOTE!

Wow, what a feeling...I arrived at the old Lowell School, the polling place for precinct 89 (my precinct) this morning shortly after 7:00 AM; that's the time the polls opened and there was already a line. The electricity in the air was evident the minute I stepped inside the building. People were EXCITED to vote. And what an important election this is. No matter which of the aisles you fall beside, this election matters more than possibly any other since Hoover v. FDR and the New Deal. In Montana we have 5 choices for President/Vice President...5!!!!!! Personally, I think that is awesome. Nader is on as an independent, we have a Constitutionalist candidate, a Libertarian candidate, a Green candidate and the two major parties. In Montana we're also electing a Governor/Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Three Supreme Court Justices, a Congressman, School superintendent, State Auditor, District Court Judge, County Commissioners and City Commissioners and cho

The Power of the Internet

Tonight I got and sent an email from Pete over in Thailand. He's busy with his life, his new wife and trying to start his bronze business. Anyhow, i'm trying to connect Pete with my new friend Hossein, who is Iranian. hossein has some friends who make and sell pottery and I thought he and Pete could somehow cross-network. Here's a glimpse at how my twisted mind works when I have too much time on my hands. While daydreaming about how all this could lead to some sort of adventure in iran for me, a Greg Brown playing in the background made me start day dreaming. my thoughts of Iran floated to Turkey and thoughts of beautiful rugs and wonderful people and then my mind floated to a dusty corner and the name of Ela Aktay popped out. Ela was the first girl I thought I was in "real" love with and that would have been about 20 years ago. I have some funny stories about meeting her parents (Turkish emmigrants to the US) but I'll save that for another time.

Being Mad at Blogger

I haven't posted for a week or so because I've been mad at Blogger. See, I wrote this very wonderful review of the third day at Yellowstone...quite detailed and blogger lost it. I know that sounds absurd, but I posted the damn thing and it just never appeared. no search found the glitch and this isn't the first time. But I heart blogger and I heart my little corner of the owrld, so I am back 9but I'm still mad). I'll write another 3rd day review soon.

Our Yellowstone Adventure, Day 3

Sorry for the hurdy-gurdy approach to my journal these days, but I wanted to put the final touches on the Yellowstone National Park adventure I had with Mom, Dad, Chris & Nicole. If you haven't read the prior posts, you may want to before reading any further. I awoke bright and early Sunday, as Dad went outside for a smoke and the sound was just enough to roust me from my slumber. It had gotten cold the night before, and the morning sun was already busily melting the frost on the Hoosier's Hotel roof, which was plop, plop, plopping onto the sidewalk. Cooke City was quite tranquil, either because the locals were sleeping off the Saturday night fun had at the Miner's Saloon or perhaps they were already up and out hunting or something. As I said before Cooke City is an end of the road sort of place. We had breakfast at one of three places open, and the Chinese waitress (with a wedding band on...I'm thinking international matchmaking) was also serving as cash

Book Review: A Rumor of War

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I am somewhat of a history buff, including military history. Over the past 10 years or so I've tried to learn more about the history of various parts of Asia, Europe, Africa and the United States. I've also read quite a few books on various wars and conflicts, both modern and historical. From the moment the United States invaded Iraq, comparisons to the US involvement in Vietnam began to surface. And as time has worn on, the comparisons to me seemed to merit some sort of personal research. My friend Rick is also an avid reader, especially of military history and he suggested I read A Rumor of War, which has been touted as one of the defining pieces on Vietnam. This book is brutally honest...not only in detailing the often surreal events in Vietnam and the consequences suffered by soldiers and civilians alike from often farcical decision made somewhere far off, but also in the depiction of what can do to perfectly sane and otherwise moral individuals. It can be disturbing a

Yellowstone Park 2004, Day Two

We awoke early Saturday with every intent to get into the park before the weekend rush. The first of October is the official rate change date, when summer rates go away and many area shops begin to close. Yellowstone is huge and mountainous and the weather changes fast. In the winter, the only road that stays open all season is from the Gardiner entrance to the NE entrance at Cooke City, everything else shuts down and becomes accessible to snow mobiles and winter enthusiasts. So this first weekend in October is just about the last weekend of crowds in the Park and is by far much less crowded than high season...still we really enjoyed Friday and hoped to not get in too many crowds. I forgot to mention that our night in West Yellowstone ended with a huge bus pulling up and coughing out what may have been the entire male teenage population of some small Montana town, the football team which came down to battle the West Yellowstone high school team. In the morning, they evidently trie

Yellowstone Nat'l Park, Prelude & Day One

Mom & Dad arrived in Missoula last Tuesday afternoon. The weather here was unbelievable; after two weeks of wet, cold and blustery weather Mother Nature decided to shine down on the northern Rockies...it was perfect. We went to The Depot for dinner and the service & food were both wonderful. I worked on Wednesday, letting Mom & Dad have a free day to enjoy our Indian Summer. We spent the evening looking at maps, going over accommodation possibilities and laughing about the fact we'd been planning this trip for two months but still had no idea what we were going to do or what direction we were headed. My brother Chris arrived Wednesday night with his girlfriend Nicole. Thursday morning we all packed up, stood around the map and finally decided to head to Gardiner, Montana at the northern tip of Yellowstone. I came into the office to wrap up a few things before we stopped at Worden's Market on the way out of town for one of their awesome sandwiches. Worden's

Jeff in Puglia

Hey, my buddy Jeff Gromen is now in blogland. Jeff is from Indy but now lives in Italy. It's a great way to to hear about an american in Italy. Jeff in Puglia

Yellowstone National Park 2004...An intro

Not much time to write this morning as I need to get back to vacationing! Mom, Dad, Chris & Nicole arrived last week and we've spent the past 4 days down in Yellowstone National Park...it was everything advertised and more! We saw Eagles, Grizzlies, Black Bear, Bison, Elk, Otter, Coyote, Mountain Goats, Sheep, Deer, Antelope, Black Wolves and Grey Wolves! We saw geysers, paint pots, mineral springs, thermal holes, mountains, waterfalls, canyons, mud holes and more. It was an amazing adventure. I'll write more later.

WPAQ: Voice of the Blue Ridge Mountains

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Category: Music Genre: Country Artist: Various Artists This is the review done by Tom Sheridan at allmusic.com: These on-air recordings made between 1947 and 1950 at the Mount Airy, NC radio station offer a fascinating snapshot of the musical milieu of the time. From breakdowns like "Old Joe Clark" by the Gurney Thomas Band to the gospel harmony of "I'm Living Down Here on Borrowed Land" by the Silvertone Gospel Harmonizers, it's priceless material. ----------------------- I'll add to it that these recordings hearken back to a long gone era for me. Sure, we had TV growing up but our family spent alot of time listening to the radio and to old albums. My Dad's folks had a 78 record player too. But most of all these recordings make me think of my Grandpa Orville, Mom's Dad who was a Kentuckian through and through. For anyone who has a music library and appreciates old timey music, this CD is for you

The Lucky Girl

I suppose it would be about 10 years ago this summer when I first met the spunky & delightful Gwen Plouhinec, a.k.a. "The Lucky Girl" . Gwen is from Rennes, in Brittany (France) and I met her through happenstance. She was working as a traveling occupational therapist down in a rural hospital in Tennessee. She was in the United States on an H1-B nonimmigrant Visa and was working for a company who assigned her to facilities they contracted with for 6-12 weeks at a time. It just so happened she was working in the same hospital as another traveling therapist, Heidi Shubert, an Australian who originally came to the United States to work with me. Heidi and I had known each other for about three years when she brought Gwen up to Indianapolis for the Memorial Day weekend and my Indy 500 race party. Now I had a huge crush on Heidi, with her constantly messy hair, big smile and awesome Aussie accent, so when she said she was bringing a friend I said sure. I knew I would like G

Missing Posts

Over the weekend I thought I posted a couple of stories about Dr. Dave's wedding and the rehearsal the night before. Apparently they are floating out there in blogspace. I attended a fabulous outdoor wedding, amidst not so fabulous outdoor weather. It was the wedding between one of my employers, Dr. Dave and his fiance Pamela. It was held out at Dr. Dave's river place, also known as Tarkio. There were about 300 people in attendance. Rain has been falling over Missoula constantly for about 10 days and even though Tarkio is 45 miles west, the rain was constant there too. But as these things often do, the rain stopped just about 15 minutes before the ceremony was to begin and held off long enough for us to gather down on the beach and watch the wedding celebration take place. They wrote their own vows, which they recited at the same time and were wed under an alter made of river driftwood. It was lovely. On Friday they had a rehearsal dinner for 100! It was held at

Watch Out for Neon Drivers

This afternoon I had to run an errand at lunchtime that involved the use of my car. Now I normally don't drive during the weekday, especially at lunchtime, merely for the reason that a gazillion people are all trying to cram as much as possible in an hour and are generally rude and inconsiderate on the road while doing so. So it was with a certain dread that I got into my car and headed across town to the busiest and most McDona-Wenda-Old Navy-Best Buy'ed part of town, the Reserve Street corridor. This is a section of town where all the new development is taking place, where Reserve Street serves as a connector between US Interstate 90 and US Highway 93 and where all the box stores are located. I was heading to the Eye of the Beholder, a custom framing and art shop located in a strip mall next to a mini Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was packed with painters, construction workers, truck drivers and a few office folk looking like ducks out of water...all enjoying the $5.99 all you

The Straight Story

If you thought David Lynch could only make movies that were a bit off center, then you need to see the movie The Straight Story . It's a great movie that will pull at your heart strings and have the whole family in tears. It's slow, and I mean s-l-o-w, moving but at the same time it feels just right. The movie is based on a true story, about a man who drives his lawnmower across Iowa and Wisconsin to see his ailing brother. Harry Dean Stanton is in the flick, a plus for just about any movie. It also stars Sissy Spacek and Richard Farnsworth, Farnsworth in particular does an outstanding job. The scenery is fantastic and the stories created along the journey help make the movie a success, at least in my book. Check it out this month on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) here in the states.

Multiply

Oh this blogging type thing is getting out of control. I just joined another service called Multiply . It allows you to upload photos, keep a group calendar, share recipes and do just about anything else you want. And since (as my Austrian friend Martin so aptly pointed out in my newly added guestbook)my blog is more of an online diary, the multiply site will let me expand outside of the diary concept...thanks for the kick in the pants Martin. I found Multiply while visiting the blog of a Brazilian girl featured on the blogger home page. Since her site is in Brazilian Portuguese, I just started clicking on links to see where they would take me. in addition to some info on chocolate and some cool photos, she has links to Multiply, Friendster and Fotolog.

My Friends, the Superheroes

Today I realized just what superheroes some of my friends are, day in and day out. I happen to work for a group of surgeons and I also consider all three of them my friends (Two of them have been my friends long before I moved to Missoula). I work as their Practice Manager, meaning I run their business. My office is across the hall from the main clinic and my interactions with patients are usually brief (when I'm across the hall and cross paths with them) or about issues related to patient care or their bills. I am not a clinician and I'm never involved with actual patient care. The patient care issues I hear about are usually related to appointment wait times, confusion (or complaints) about their bills or when they want to pay a compliment to our staff or the doctors. It's pretty cool to work in a doctor's office where the patients oftentimes bring in treats or send cards or make things (painting, carvings, etc.) for the doctors and staff. It's a testam

A Note About My Guestbook

Just a quick note, the guestbook I am using is a free tool that has a few glitches. in the case of my guestbook, I thought it was customized so it would show the person's name, what country they were from, a link to their homepage (if any) and their comments...doesn't look like that is what they activated. I will try to fix it tonight.

Sign my Guestbook!

When you visit the Blogger website, you not only can find out about blogging, but can also learn about other bloggers. Tonight I dipped into the website of an Armenian blogger, who happens to live in the long disputed region of Nagorno-Karabagh. The blog is super cool and the blogger, Ara Manoogian, has a great feature I decided to add to my site...a guestbook. On the right hand side of this page, right under my profile, you'll find a new link that says, "sign my guestbook". Click on it and a new window should pop up allowing you to sign the page. don't worry, I'm the only one who will see your email address and url (if you enter them). I just added it tonight and it should be live by tomorrow morning (or whenever the $1.99US clears paypal). Sign away and welcome

50 Cents and the Meaning of The Koran

Some time back I spent 50 cents on a book written in 1953 by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. The book was published then by the New American Library as a Mentor Religious Classic and is entitled, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran . Over the ensuing years I picked it up at various times (usually whenever I reorganized my bookshelves or moved) but never gave it a serious reading. The paperback cover is torn and the pages are yellowed. I originally bought the book out of sentiment, as the first girl I can honestly say I loved was Ela, a Turkish-American girl from a Muslim family who I dated in College and pined after for many years afterwards. My experiences meeting her family and some of the things that happened during those stays (like the fact she couldn't speak directly to me in her parents house and also was not allowed to make eye contact) made me want to know more about Turkish culture and Islam. Long after we broke up (err...I mean, long after she broke up with me 'c

Well, This Explains quite A Bit

Late last night, while watching highlights from yesterday's college football games, I saw a commercial for an Internet dating service called eHarmony. Although I've played around with Internet match services in the past, it's not something I'd normally consider. But the combination of AW and I biting the dust (at least I think that's what happened, I'm still unclear on this), my emotions of the day and a spontaneous, "what the heck" that sort of popped into my head at the moment, I decided to visit the eHarmony site. eHarmony touts itself as being the perfect way to find a match, using a 29 dimension profiling system to properly match people. I spent about an hour filling the thing out, almost quitting three or four times. But I battled through all the psychological profiling (you know, where you're asked the same thing 5 different times in a slightly different manner) and carefully read through the terms of the agreement before I pushed the

9/11 Thoughts

I got up early this morning, while the sky was still grey and the morning air cool. I put out my American flag, more of a traditional act of respect in my family than anything else, but I thought it appropriate nonetheless. It was early enough that I stepped outside in my boxers and a T-shirt, I knew no one else would be around. I came inside and started thinking about what to do next. The house needed cleaning, the yard needed cutting and my laundry needed to be done. I turned the radio on and the Weekend edition of All Things Considered was just starting. The host started talking about New York and how residents of the city were marking the third anniversary of the events of 9/11. I hadn't planned on participating in any sort of memorial to those who died, American, Bangladeshi, Honduran, British, South African and others alike I'd thought my flag was enough. But as I stood in the living room, thinking of how to go about the morning, I found myself drawn to the story on the

The Politics of Dancing

This has been a fun week in Johnny O's blogland...I seem to have somehow gained an international following. My Mind: Lifesized has gotten all kinds of crazy hits this week and even some comments. I think that is totally cool. When AW and I were in France this summer we had one of those days from Hell that has a way of turning into a great story. It's a long story but let's just say it involved getting stuck on a bus at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris which then got delayed by a bomb threat, which then got stuck in traffic, which then dumped us in a slum and so on. During this 6 1/2 hour ordeal I first exchanged glances, then hellos and then a conversation with an Iranian guy named Hossein. Hossein was in Paris for a quickly arranged business meeting and had somehow gotten himself into the same predicament as AW and I...turns out he's a pretty cool guy. We've stayed in touch via email, first exchanging pictures of where we live (my pictures were

A Labor Day Scorcher

Busy, busy, busy is the story of my life these days. Since my post last Thursday I've been to Boise and back ( a 7 1/2 hour drive from Missoula), played in another Ultimate tournament, experienced the unpleasant task of having to terminate an employee at work and spent countless hours wrestling with my own thoughts (ohhhhhh, cruel world). This past weekend was Labor Day weekend here in the States and, like most Americans, I used the three day weekend to get out of town. I headed south to Boise, Idaho to participate in the Boise Scorcher ultimate tournament with a team from Missoula. The drive to Boise is really spectacular and I saw a bull moose on the way down through the mountains. The weather was perfect and the sunset on the way down was added to my list of great sunsets. Our team had won a tournament the weekend before in Jackson Hole, Wyoming but we weren't really expected to make much noise in Boise. Scorcher is a tourney that brings out some very good teams and

Holy Crap, Did George Bush just Speak Spanish?

What genius! What bravado. GW Bush is giving his convention speech right now and I'll be damned if he just didn't stammer through, "we will leave no child behind" in Spanish. That was pure genius. Now you may wonder just what the heck a fiscally conservative Democrat like me would be doing watching the RNC...I believe this is important, important to know what all (notice I didn't say both as I am also following Nader...sorry, the Libertarians lose me with some of their crazy gun ideas) sides think. The RNC has been truly amazing...I cannot believe the bullshit flying out of the mouths of some of these speakers. Gov. Patacki tonight said the Bush inherited a recession...that is untrue [sidebar...GW just through out his first salvo for a pro-life, anti-gay, pro religion, right wing constitutionalist agenda and the crowd went crazy and now he's launching into his anti-Kerry bit]. This election will be incredibly close. The RNC has been tremendously eff

Uncle John Gets Dissed

Today I got the first inkling of things to come with my niece Tara. It's her 11th birthday today and I decided to try and call her as soon as she got home from school to sing to her and wish her a happy birthday. My Mom told me that Tara got off the bus at 3:15 PM Indiana time (2:15 PM Montana time)and she was planning on taking some balloons up to her so I thought that would be a good time to give her a buzz. "Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you....", I had barely finished the song when she announced that her friend Jordan was there with her. "Great", I said , "did you have a fun day at school? Are you excited for your birthday? Have you gotten any treats yet? Do you feel older?" "Well, my teacher totally embarrassed me", she said, "and everyone sang happy birthday to me...it was totally embarrassing". "Ah, c'mon, that's pretty cool", was my response, "they must really like you". "N

Even the French?

I have quite a bit to catch up on, like my trip to Jackson this past weekend, my romantic state of limbo and the passing of a dear family friend, but right now all I can think about is how really pissed off I am at these so-called insurgent groups in Iraq. CNN reported today that a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, is threatening to kill two French journalists it captured on August 21st. Now terror has been used in the world for a very long time, dating back as far as recorded history, but most modern historians feel the use of terror was resurrected in the modern era during the 1970's with hijackings, bombings and assassinations. The Japanese Red Army, various Palestinian groups, South America's Shining Path rebels and the SLA in America were most notorious. Most people in the world today think of terror as something committed against westerners or western style countries (not discounting the Spaniards struggles with the Basque movement or the Columbian rebels t

Women's Field Hockey

Tonight I vowed to myself that I would get the Hollasaugadougatuck 2004 vacation expenses figured out. Admittedly, I'm only hurting myself by not getting this task done, well me and a few other of the 43 participants who fronted the cash for the event. I thought I emailed the spreadsheet to myself so I could work on it at home, but it turns out I emailed the wrong document which leads me to the topic of my post. I just turned on the television and the Olympic gold medal match of Women's Field Hockey is on the Bravo network. I've never seen field hockey played and frankly I'm a bit dumbfounded by the sport. Now I know that I play another crazy sport (Ultimate)but this field hockey thing looks like a back breaker. The women play with sticks a length that forces them to constantly move about in a perma slouch...that's gotta take its toll on their backs. It's brutal too, they all had blood coming from somewhere on their bodies. But what really surprised me wa

This One's for You, JCP

My two readers both pointed out to me the frequency of my postings has dropped dramatically in the past month and upon short reflection I agree. But don't be fooled, my mind still fills with all sorts of ideas, my days are still full of notable events (at least to me) and I still have plenty to say. I could try to blame the Olympics for cutting into my time (they have been pretty awesome after all) or I could say that I've been too "busy" to write, but the fact is I just haven't been able to motivate myself. Thanks, Mr. JCP, for shaking the cobwebs from my brain. Tonight was an amazing evening here in Missoula; the cold, fall-like day gave way to a remarkable night. The clouds all parted and almost vanished, letting the sun brighten the evening sky and make the mountains shine. I got to play some Ultimate, which was a nice way to end a pretty busy day. Things aren't going so well for Annie and me, which has alot to do with the lack of posting. We&

Wow, Kooser takes the title!

About three months ago I visited my local Barnes & Noble (shhhh, I should have supported the independent Facts & Fiction)looking for something to read on a plane...I'd been immersed in a series of political history books about the Middle East and so I decided to try and find something a little lighter. I came across a book called Local wonders, Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by Ted Kooser and picked it up. I'd be telling a fib if I said who I knew who the author was at the time; it was the cover that attracted me. The cover has an old red truck with bright green grass growing up through it. The quote on the cover, by Jim Harrison says, "The quietest magnificent book I've ever read." and so I decided to bite. Local Wonders is by Ted Kooser and is a marvelous piece of work about Kooser's homeland, Nebraska. It is the kind of book you want to tell your friends about and the kind of book you want to read aloud. In my own case, I do that sort of th

Bruce's Election Link

Dave and Bruce posted some great election information on The Holland Pages and Bruce's link is worth sharing. As Bruce said: This guy (the Blogging Caesar) combines all available polls into a weekly national and state-by-state statistical composite, a running tally of the electoral college votes, offering many illuminating views into this fascinating data. Naturally, he has a strong personal opinion of who will win and why. But unlike some in say, the entertainment field, he keeps that out of his work, the calculations, bravely giving you a clear look into the data even when it hurts: Election Projection Blog

The Western Montana Fair, The Green party and the not-so-crazy Colonel

Tonight I ventured over the the Missoula County Fairgrounds for "free admission" night of the Western Montana Fair...it also just happened to be Charlie Pride night, so the joint was jumpin'. I met Andy Puckett and the two Puckett youngsters, Jack & Daniel in the food area, a sort of lane with a long thin barn divided into food booths operated by various organizations. There was the Tater Pig booth, the twisted tater booth (operated by the Camp Fire Girls USA), the Lifesaver Shaved Ice booth, Pizza booth, hot dog stand and so on. This is not health food, it is full on fair food. By the time I arrived, the boys had already polished off a couple of pieces of pizza, some breadsticks, a corn dog and a couple of slushies. Jack's tongue was blue and Daniel had a good portion of his food all over his face and clothes: they were all jacked up on sugar and super stoked to hit the Midway. Now going to the fair anywhere in the USA is prime people watching territory and