Retro Blog

Library project continues apace....

2012-02-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

Allrighty then, whiled away part of Saturday morning, adding
books to my bookcollectorz program and adding to physical shelves. The folding shelf in the middle top and to the right are new ones and are now sadly FULL. I still have seven boxes to put somewhere. Hmm might have to eyeball the upstairs hallway.

Have realized that I cannot continue to bounce back and forth schizophrenically from boss desk to my desk. So have had some technical help to get some stuff transferred across the hall. If things come about we may have a new medical record clerk in addition to our temp hire file clerk. It will still be a squeeze with everyone in attendance not to mention the nurses and office personnel who come down occasionally. Somebody open a window!!

Oooh Look! The Putty Putty truck was here.

2012-02-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

The gentlemen in galoshes were about smoothing the wet cement for the nifty new sidewalk.

And we didn't even get a chance to sneak out and sign our names in the wet cement.

Also went out to our favorite Italian place for New York Steak with Gorgonzola sauce and cioppino (spelling?)

Also got to sit in on a group interview for a couple of people being considered either for housekeeping or medical records. Met some nice people.

Tour of HIM dept in new hospital.

2012-01-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

This is a small office across the hall that will hold two small desks, the copier and incomplete charts for the physicians to finish.

OY! The rest of the space is gorgeous!

Pouring cement and take out chicken erp...

2012-01-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

Today the guys directed the cement truck up onto the ER road entrance to pour concrete into some forms.

They came back again to pour more...cement.

And this is what it looked like after they left. Beats me, the plan show some sort of covering for the drive way so maybe these are footers for a really BIG roof like thingie?

Also I am now going to review a local eatery, I shall not name names. It all started because I mentioned at lunch that I would really like some good fried chicken. Some one piped up and said, "XYZ has pretty good fried chicken", So today, I stopped in and ordered six pieces box to go as well as a small veggie pizza for the hubs. Got home, handed off pizza, settled in with my crisp white box o chicken. Well,first of all the chicken was in reasonably recognizable pieces, two legs, two thighs, two breasts. Coated in a a very brittle coating and well WELL cooked. No chance of salmonella here, my friend. So I daintily picked off most of the crust because it was so hard and sharp that I feared impaling my gums on the crusty bits. Over all two to three mouthfuls from each piece, detritus routed directly to the ah, recycling center. Mini review from the hubs, he picked the pineapple off the veggie pizza. hah? So next time I am foaming at the mouth for fried chicken I will go get a chicken, butcher it into the traditional pieces, spice it, dredge in flour, fry until golden brown and delicious and then finish off in the oven or crock pot to desired of done.

I will then ponder the character who recommended this and think that mayhap he has never had a really good piece of fried chicken.

Strange Dream

2012-01-17T22:50:00.000-08:00

Woke up from a strange traveling dream.

I and a couple other people were driving around in what I assumed was San Francisco only the landscape was curiously flat. Lots of 4 to 6 story buildings, busy streets. We were driving, strangely enough, a pick up truck not unlike that pictured above. There were seats in front and there was a second row of seats arranged stadium style.

We parked in front of the hotel where we were staying. The placed was um "industrial". My room had a huge bed in it and there were several doors that lead into hallways at several spots. People would come and go through those doors er because it was still working hours and the people were busy in the factory just next door. Thus the doors into the hallways.

The host of the establishment encouraged us to go outside after 5 pm and stroll to the local shops and restaurants because it was a very lively district.

I have not gone to the dream interpretation web site. But I would guess the main symbols are travel and constant interruptions.

Jeez. G'night.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

2012-01-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

BEFORE, yargh, ick, blech....

AFTER..........sigh....nice....sigh.... I feel much better.

Celebrations and incidental weather

2012-01-16T15:01:00.000-08:00

Because I have a collection of crystal/glass etc candle sticks sitting on the fireplace mantle, husband went shopping and found what looked like nifty candle sticks. Turns out they were little bud vases so to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary, he purchased a couple of pretty roses to go in the candlestick/bud vases. We also received a 25 percent off on dinner at Bennetti's, I think some Gorgonzola Steak is on the menu sometime soon, lucky us!!

It was very cold this morning, hovered around 40 this afternoon so the freezy snow melted off by 3 p.m. Nice!

RETAINING WALL

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

I thought were were all done with the giant wall in the back of the hospital. Nope, no one allowed to park on that side all day Saturday, so the boys could build a small tasteful retaining wall. At this point I hope there is room to plant some sturdy sun loving plants so the deer can come nibble.

Oh and today we actually had a teensy bit of snow.

General update

2012-01-14T09:41:00.000-08:00

1. Bathtub remodel. Demolition went perfectly last Saturday and Sunday. Husband and contractor got two pieces of ancient iron schlepped downstairs onto the lawn. Remainder of Sat/Sun worky worky worky. And at least we have running water if no actual hook up to tub. Looking forward to long soak status post final hook up.

2. URI resolved. Was seen in ER 01-04-12 with seriously sore throat, doc diagnosed probable strep, gave me antibiotics and Tylenol 3's, boy do they ever work good. Sore throat finally gone, damn streptococcal germs.

3. Computer -- have sound, hubby got wireless printer to print an actual document on new PC. He loaded on free version of Open Office which recognizes and is compatible with all sorts of documents. Yay!! Printer allows me to do Turbo tax. I yam thrilled.

4. Need to kidnap teen aged geekazoid to transfer files from old lappy to new PC. I HAVE followed directions! I. Can't. Follow. Directions.

yeah......

WE GOT BACK UP GENERATOR

2012-01-10T16:08:00.000-08:00

Today we got the new back up generator for the hospital installed inside the "cubby" located RIGHT outside my office window.

The wind was rather brisk and the crane operator came within scratching distance of the wall, whole thing is heavy enough to knock down a whole bowling alley.

Next event will be a live test once they get it fueled up and all approved for use etc.

I been sick

2012-01-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

This is a sample picture of Strep throat. I have been sick with a pounding sore throat since last Friday. Finally went to be seen in ER on Wednesday morning. Dr. Fritz looked in my mouth, asked if I was a smoker, I said nope and he said , "Looks like strep".

So I am on a short course of antibiotics Azythromycin and Tylenol with Codeine. Phew!. That combination knocks you right out.

I woke up this morning mildly hungry and fixed a bowl of Malto O Meal. Yummy. Oh, and I have a very soft, nearly nonexistent voice. Gonna take a short all day nap,now. 'Bye.

Okay, OKAY, Happy New Years already!

2012-01-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

We went shopping Friday it was my day off, the power went off during a dark and stormy night, well early afternoon.

We went to Freddy's got a few supplies. Then it was suggested that we go to Staples and look around. I purchased my HP Pavilion in2005 shortly before my year long stay in Dillingham,AK. It was a nifty machine for a grand and had all the latest bells and whistles.
Now it only whistles.

Brother in law had given the diagnosis that it was old and slow.

I actually priced a sound card and video card on line. Boy Howdy, yeah lets go to Staples.

The Assistant Store Manager helped us. I looked at a mini tower and he pointed out that it was not recommended get this model at a lower price and more memory (A terabyte). Okay, new screen? We have one that works now. He recommended an Acer, picture of which you see. The tower comes with a single drive that plays CD and DVD etc. We also opted for a 2 terabyte external hard drive,
a pack of DVR+R, um a 50 dollar Epson printer,that scans, faxes, etc. I put my little memory card from the Kodak and it downloaded all 600 or so pictures, the one above is of this screen,
We purchased a 3 year warranty thingy for not a lot, at first I was going to refuse but he pointed out the computer parts no longer come from USA and only Sony is from Japan. So, yeah sign me up.
Gave him plastic. Amazon.com is going to give me reward points! Ooh boy.

We are currently hooked up to the Internet through the magic of some strategically placed power cords and a little mumbo-jumbo.

It is nice to be able to go online at nose bleed speeds once again.

Happy Christmas!!

2011-12-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

This is husband's kitty collection, today added a half dozen more collectibles, three of them are worthy of a giggle or two this trio all possess large whiskers with a bulb on the end. I found three blue delft like porcelain kitty's playing with balls, all slightly different, found those in a downtown spot. There are also several very nice three dimensional birthday cards featuring cats. Go ahead click on picture to make BIG and take a closer look, please ignore the dust.

Also a couple somber discoveries, my brother in law brought his computer tool kit to look over my two aging computers. The tower was pronounced dead as a doornail, the sound card and video card are dead, dead, DEAD. He recommended getting a newer cheaper computer rather than try to find the OLDER MORE EXPENSIVE dead sound and video cards. Huh, how about that!?

Also the lap top is glacially slow, only has a gig of memory, 50% of which is dedicated to programs I need to run, need more memory, again the recommendation is that I invest in a newer cheaper computer. Oh well tax refunds are coming in March. Along with the unexpected expenses of getting the bathroom leak fixed. If it ain't one thing, it's another, thanks Del.

SEASON'S GREETINGS, ETC.

2011-12-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Happy Birthday tomorrow, Brother James!

We are expecting visitors today, so am baking turkey today rather than tomorrow, have already prepared golden potato casserole, dressing, pumpkin pie, various condiments and a green salad of slaw. Yummy.

AND we have been visited by the Ghost of Plumbers past. Husband noticed something and called me to witness.....
a drip over the kitchen sink and then directing ones eye upward, I seen clearly where it is dripping, I estimate the drip to come from the upstairs bathroom somewhere beneath the damn bathtub. Hello? Bateman Plumbing would you......

Decorating, etc.

2011-12-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

We finally decided to decorate our department wreath in honor of Judy. On a more criminal note, the kitchen's wreath consisted of a Nativity scene. Someone kidnapped baby Jesus, no ransom note, nothing. A plea to return baby Jesus was posted on the wreath. The kitchen supervisor threatened damnation because the Nativity set was a personal item belonging to one of the chefs. Eventually the mystery was solved, the kidnapper had stolen baby Jesus, wrapped it a Christmas gift under the employee tree in the dining room addressed to last year's baby Jesus kidnapper when the same crime was committed against the Nativity set from the surgery crew. Cooler minds intervened, unwrapped baby Jesus, returned him to his rightful owner and re-wrapped the box and returned the gift to the tree. Er, demented Gift of the Magi by O. Brother.

The sum total of my season's decorations. Done! Done! Done!

Little dance in the end zone done!

Oooh Picture windows....

2011-12-09T19:32:00.001-08:00

The glaziers/construction crews got around to installing windows on the front upper level. This will be the entrance for patients coming for laboratory tests and radiology examinations.

This week has seen the Christmas decorations go up, we are once again faced with decorating an artificial Christmas wreath.

It lay around for well over a week while departments smartly hung their finished products. This morning I suddenly thought that it might be nice if we decorated the wreath as a memorial wreath for Judy Kollen. Everyone else fell in with the idea as no one else had had time to even think about the project. So, I went to the flower shop and the lady cheerfully gave me three yards each of wide black ribbon and thin red ribbon. There was also a nice fabric "window" with a lacy angel to hang in the middle. I also had some red ornaments. I went to the hospital and dragged home the wreath and the embossing machine. I embossed three strips In Memoriam Judy Kollen 1939/2011, those all had peel and stick backing that went on the lace window very well. The ribbons wrapped around the wreath and I used five or six shiny red plain ornaments to fill in the voids between the ribbon and voila, our finished wreath. Housekeeping loaned us on those magic decoration hanging devices. I will take a picture Sunday.

On a slightly different season note I have made two batches of fruit cake this year. The first batch involved dragging out the various packets of dried fruit I had squirreled away and soaking the fruit in rum over night. I found dried mangoes, raisins, dried cranberries, apricots, apples, pears, peaches, candied pineapple and cherries. I also found pecans, cashews, Brazil nuts and walnuts. Since this was a biggish batch I doubled the recipe and got 8 loaf pans.

I made a second non alcoholic batch the next day with dried dates, raisins, cherry flavored cranberries, golden raisins, dried applies and walnuts. House smelled pretty good. Do be careful when you bite down, some of that fruit is a little on the crunchy side.

My inheiritance

2011-12-03T19:29:00.001-08:00

Today Judy's son, Don, called to say that he was going to bring over some books that Judy wanted me to have. Okay......

The back of his truck was FULL. OF. BOXES.

Sixteen of them. Husband and I helped bring them inside. I thanked Don and he left promising MORE BOXES. That cleaned out the bedroom. He said there were more books hidden way. Oh, dear.

My, God I had no idea she had collected so many books. I will have to drag my laptop down stairs with the book collection program and the bar code scanner. No idea how many individual books there are but I'm think close to a 1000, makes that used book store look better and better. Need more shelves, need a very cheap rental downtown somewhere for a store front, either that or I start selling like crazy online.

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE

2011-12-01T17:14:00.001-08:00

This a variety of task chairs on display for testing and voting by the employees. That first one looks hideously uncomfortable but rides surprisingly well.

I like this one it is mesh material, very comfy and quite spendy,
I have great taste.

And how for something on a sad note. Last Wednesday 11-23 my first boss lady here was killed in a car accident. I will miss her, she retired a few years ago and got to enjoy a few years of fishing on the Coquille during the steel head and salmon runs. I actually called her one day in 1999, husband and I had purchased the house here and since Y2K was looming, it seemed to be the better part of caution to relocate before the computers refused to work. And my aren't we glad that worked out well. Anyway husband was already here, I called CVH to see what if anything was available. I networked with Judy. She called me back a couple months later to say there would be a transcriptionist position open soon, was I interested, yeah, anything to pay the bills. So I made arrangements to leave the frozen north and move to lovely rainy Southern Oregon Coast. By the time I got here, late December, Judy was off with a bad sprained ankle or some darn thing. I interviewed with the hospital administrator and the business office manager who hired me and I begged for a little vacation and started January 2000. As it turned out I became acting manager almost immediately and sort of fell into the job. Thank you, Judy, I hope there is a fishing stream and good book with your name on it.

On an electronic note; I opted to purchase the Kindle Fire.
It is much more than I hoped for. I can access my books, I can access my email and I can access my blog. Still have to edit blog at home but I am astounded by this little tech marvel. The screen is lit, I. CAN. READ. IN. THE. DARK!!!!!

MOVIE REVIEW....

2011-11-19T19:48:00.001-08:00

As is common with my viewing habits, I came across this film entirely by accident surfing the channels. Ah hah! Let's see what this is all about.

The above picture is from Julie & Julia. A young woman's husband challenges herself to cook all of Julia Child's recipes over the period of one year and blogs about it. Interspersed are peeks into both of their lives. I thought Meryl Streep did an outstanding job of looking 6 foot tall and only a little over the top portrayal of Julie Child, not quite a over the as that of SNL. There were two instances during the film that truly deserved two hankies; the first one came along in the early years in Paris, Julia had just received a letter from her recently married sister announcing that she was pregnant. Julia had always wanted children and burst into tears, as her husband comforted her, she sobbed briefly into his chest, patted him dearly and assured him that she was so happy. I wept.

The second instance was near the end of the film, the young blogger couple had gone to visit the display of Julia Child's kitchen that had been donated to the Smithsonian (I could have the wrong museum here..) and they were taking picture and oohing and ahhing. To one site was a portrait of Julie Child and during a close up, Julie looks up at the portrait sneaks a block of butter on the niche beneath and whispers, "I love you, Julia.". I wept.

DONATING BLOOD

2011-11-16T11:37:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was donate blood day at the community building. I had a 4:45 pm appointment and I walked in, handed over my donor card and didn't have to wait very long at all. The whole thing took about an hour. They were very busy. There were four donation tables. They take your blood pressure, pulse, weight and do a finger stick to check your hemoglobin. Then you sit in front a computer and answer 49 questions about travel, exposure to Aids, drugs, etc. I had to have help with one question, I inadvertently answered yes to did I take aspirin so the nice man had to sign on and get that straightened out. After giving a pint, I got to go to the "canteen" area for juice and a cookie. They ladies at the canteen very carefully disposed of the empty juice can because not do they recycle they take off the tabs for donation to Ronald McDonald houses.

Very cool.

Christmas Cactus

2011-11-14T18:39:00.001-08:00

This is the Christmas Cactus I have had for several years, as soon as the days begin to shorten, the blooms start forming and this year is the most blooms I have ever had. Husband thinks it is blooming in appreciation for actually getting watered on a semi-occasional basis. What ever works.

I am going to think peaceful thoughts, I am not going to envision choking anyone that I work with. Really....I am going to Pray mightily that certain people get what they need most and if they can throw in a tenor solo (ten or more miles away and so low I cannot hear them) so much the better.

WALK ABOUT TODAY

2011-11-10T21:02:00.001-08:00

Today I went walk about as I had a 9 am appointment at the clinic just down the hill. I left a bit early in order to take a few pictures. This is the west side of the building lower level.

The road has undergone a bit of construction this week, there were three great huge concrete box like structures brought and placed in trenches cut across the road, for under ground utilities, we had flaggers, and traffic has been one way for a couple of days now.

This is the view from the clinic parking lot looking up hill. The part of the building that is standing out from the surface is where radiology and lab and respiratory therapy and maybe physical therapy will be located. Mr. Z's office is on the floor beneath that in roughly the same location.

This is the view from the north end, if you will look very carefully you may notice that they have windows installed. Good tight windows are a very good thing when it rains sideways here.

New art work

2011-10-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

Today the auxiliary put up new art work, all photography.
This little beauty is a photo mounted on canvas. It is gorgeous, NOT FOR SALE and the only thing that would make it better is if the pears were actually dripping juice. I love still life this is all dark and moody like an old master. Yumm! Other artists have lovely nature shots of birds, trees, but give me a bowl of fruit any time.

Now let me describe lunch today. It being Halloween, dietary really got into the spirit of things. We had beef stew inside a hollowed pumpkin, quite delicious. The biscuits were lovely and light. There was green salad with cockroaches made of dates stuffed with cream cheese. There was some nice green brain cottage cheese salad. The brown and black worms were made of jello. There was an unappetizing serving of poopy diaper dip. And the piece de resistance was the dog logs made of crispy rice cereal, very dark brown chocolate and candy corn. Thank god they forgot to make the kitty litter cake. The pumpkin contest had one outstanding entry, Beth in the business office sacrificed several hundred paper clips to make a very complex paisley pattern on the pumpkin, very pretty. I should have taken a picture of that, too.

Um happy birth little 7th billion

2011-10-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today is apparently the day that the seven BILLIONTH human will be born on this planet.
Apparently 1000 years ago, there were 300 million people in the entire world. That is roughly the population of the USA at present. Due to inventions in medicine, better food more people survived to reproduce, and here we have the current population.

My question is this, how much does the earth weigh? Wikipedia says 6.585 x 10 to the 21st power. Oh and I am sure we do pick up a few tons from meteor impacts on the surface, eh? Just a thought.

Gulp, given that nothing comes from nothing uh unless you live in the Quantum universe, do 7 billion people make the planet heavier? I think there is a law of physics something like the conservation of energy and matter that covers this.

I'm thinking we need a plague before we consume everything and the planet is reduced a pile of dust and a few surviving microbes.

A few years ago one of my roomies had a very nice picture hanging in the living room it was a landscape of the seashore, mountains, forest etc...until you walk up to and take a closer look, everything was covered with people...EVERYTHING.

New structure

2011-10-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

This odd looking "patio" was just built in the last couple of days, so far it has three walls and no roof. It will hold the back up power generator for the new hospital. It cuts off the view out of the medical records window, this view is from my desk. I wonder if the will put in a new generator, maybe a big old Caterpillar thingy.
Should be very noisy. I'm thinking the bushes probably need to come out if they plan to somehow put on doors to enclose it. We shall see.

Bricks are going up all over the place

2011-10-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

The nice stone facade is nearly up 100% around the building. That is the upper floor entrance to the emergency room. Fancy.

This is the view out of the boss lady's window to the right, the curved wall is the driveway to the top level ER entrance.

Well that huge pile of rocks has been flattened and rearranged so that there is plenty of stable access for large machines to drive right up and lift stuff and supplies and workers into place. The weather has held on beautifully, lovely Indian Summer, local weather calls for freeze warning tonight.

Product review...kind of...

2011-10-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

This past week I have been visited by one of the minor plagues, the common cold. I worked part of Monday, part of Tuesday, Part of Wednesday, missed Thursday, worked part of Friday. During this time I suffered the usual symptoms; migrating sore throat, migrating nasal congestion, migrating cough, migrating lung congestion. I had a PE teacher years ago give a student a hard time about her absence excuse from school, apparently her mother had written"Please excuse little Bunulla from school as she had a chest cold and a head cold". The PE teacher yelped, "That's not possible to have a chest cold and head cold at the same time". I got information for you, teach...yeah you can.

Any way I dosed myself with the usual Alka Seltzer cold relief, some expectorant cough syrup, some sore throat lozenges...nuthin. I finally purchased a box of Mucinex. First of all the commercials are one of the the MOST DISGUSTING COMMERCIALS on air...ever. Well except for a certain nameless drippy cat food commercial from the 70's. ANYway...I decided to gulp one down. The first thing I noticed upon said gulping was INSTANT DEHYDRATION. I could breath, thank you. I needed to drink LOTS of water.

The active ingredient for each pill is 600 mgs of Guaifenesin...that's it! So go google Guaifenesin and purchase that, same effect and you will not have supported the industry that created the gawdawful commercial. Oh yeah, wear the blue mask, it won't protect anyone from the virus but it looks like you are trying and everyone will feel better and actually rebreathing your own air will keep you a little hydrated.

Cooking with ready made ingredients.

2011-10-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

First of all these are not cinnamon rolls, those are stuffed biscuits. Stuff with mushroom, sweet Italian sausage, shallots, 4 ounces of cream cheese and either Parsley or Cilantro. If the left over herbs have turned all black on the cut edges, it is Cilantro. I also made stuffed Portabello mushrooms using the same filling, popped in a 350 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes, I left the biscuits in longer than the package recommended 13 to 17 minutes, as I wanted them golden, brown and delicious. And they were. Husband actually preferred the mushrooms they were meatier. This from the bread eating member of the family.

So next topic; I used a new to me product the other night, you have seen the commercial; a young couple are in the kitchen and a man appears outside their patio door, he comes in, the husband mutters, "Chris Angel?". He says, come and put a package of microwave popcorn in the microwave, hits the popcorn button, gives a one eyed grimace, and the machine goes "ding". He pulls out the popcorn and asks, "Do you know what this is?", The man says, "Its a bag of Orville Redenbacher popcorn.", Chris Angel says, "Do you know what THIS is?" and swiftly dramatically pulls the top off the bag of popcorn. The wife exclaims in an excited voice, "It's not a bag it's a bowl! How did you do that!?"

At that point I must interject MY experience with Orville's bowl in a bag concept. I put my bag of microwave pop corn in the microwave, set the timer for 2 minutes and 15 seconds and waited.
Took out the bag, grasped the lid of the "bowl" and gently tugged, nuthin', tugged a little harder, tugged VERY hard. Got out a knife, to cut gently into the membrane, pretty tough, cut sharply into the membrane, still nuthin'. I had visions of Norman Bates going at it with a very sharp knife..Shriek! Shriek! Shriek! Got out my KITCHEN SHEARS, and finally managed to snip a very raggedy hole in the container. I poured the bowl of rapidly cooling popcorn into a REAL bowl and declared myself the winner! There was no instant sleight of hand removal of the lid from the bowl, there was no magic. But the rapidly cooling popcorn was tasty.

BOOK REPORT..real book...real report

2011-10-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

I was encouraged to read this book, "At Home" By Bill Bryson.

Subtitled "A short history of private life". Mr.Bryson has written about life in a Church of England Vicarage in which he lived for a period of time. He decided that he could write a history merely from the rooms of the house...and the garden. So far I am up to the garden. Capability Brown gets mentioned.

This book has been described as a good conversation. I agree and I'm not through reading the thing.

So far my favorite excerpt is from the study and I quote exactly:

At times in the past attempts have been made to capitalize on bat's special qualities. In the Second World War, the American military invested a great deal of time and money in an extraordinary plan to arm bats with tiny incendiary bombs and to release them in vast numbers -- as many as a million at a time -- from planes over Japan. The idea was that the bats would roost in eaves and roof spaces, and that soon afterward tiny detonators on timers would go off and they would burst into flames, causing hundreds and thousands of fires.

Creating sufficiently tiny bombs and timers required a great deal of experiment and ingenuity, but finally in the spring of 1943 work had progressed sufficiently that a trial was set to take place on Muroc Lake, California. It would be putting it mildly to say that matters didn't go quite to plan. Remarkably for an experiment, the bats were fully armed with live bomblets when released. This proved not to be a good idea. The bats failed to light on any of the designated targets, but did destroy all the hangars and most of the storage building at the Lake Muroc airport, as well as an army generals car.

Snort, giggle, hardy har har har.....

Justice for all....

2011-10-06T14:13:00.000-07:00

I am not normally a heavy metal fan but I googled "And Justice For All" and this is what popped up. Strange.

Recap of jury duty this week. My number was called Tuesday evening. I found some sketchy parking on the jail side of the complex and trudged to the juror room. The room holds about 90 chairs and every chair was full. O, joy. The sign in method was fairly slick, (It was SO slick, I didn't even get a chance to read my kindle at all), tell them your number, name, get a form to fill out for jury fee and take a seat. We watched a fairly decent video entitled "Justice For All" and then we were roughly divided into three groups as there were three trials that day. I went to the court just down the hall and listened to the opening remarks on a case involving reckless endangerment. The alleged perp was accused of endangering two young boys, 12 and 8 I think. A firearm was shot, and I was mildly puzzled that this made it to criminal court but again second guessing myself, I figured it was because a firearm was involved. My assignment for the remainder of my time is to listen to the call in number each week night through the 14th. O yay.

VERY BUSY YET SOME MORE

2011-09-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

This week the protective "hallway" came down between the two buildings, we can see much better, more sunshine is let in. This view is towards the old main entrance of the hospital. The larger opening in the new building is a temporary opening to allow the CT scanner and MRI scanner to go in.

This is the view from the main entranced looking South.
Eventually there will a meandering walk way between the two buildings.

This is the view from the extreme edge of the parking lot on the North end of the building. The blue pickup is parked in the lane that will curve around the building into the top floor entrance of the emergency room. The lower road where it splits will circle around the new building allowing a complete drive around the entire site once finished. Those itty bitty trees down there are actually pretty tall, that level has been built up a good 40 feet and the is where the helicopter landing pad will be outlined in white paint.

Jury duty

2011-09-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that I have lived in Coquille for 10 years or better and just this week received a jury duty summons for two weeks in October. The drill here is call in the number, if your juror number is called, show up for the day, do not wear cologne or perfume.

I first served on a jury in Marin County, California late 60's, actually got selected for a trial involving a women charged with passing bad checks from someone Else's bank account. It was quite an elaborate tussle. Lots of testimony. I'm sure she is out of jail by now.

Second and third experiences with jury duty was in Alaska. Once you have received two dividend checks from the state you name goes in the jury pool not for a measly two weeks but FULL QUARTER of each year. I served on one DUI, one assault,and one mistrial. That trial was called a mistrial because the prosecutor was reading from something that the officer witness did not have a copy of. So mistrial.

I served on a Federal trial held in Nome, Alaska. It was a big deal. There actually is a Federal Court house in Nome. I asked when the last Federal trial was held in Nome, um, sixteen years ago. I was briefly empaneled and excused.

The very last week that I lived in Barrow, I was called for jury duty. I was briefly empaneled. Perhaps it was the panic stricken look on my face that got me excused from that one.

So I call call the phone and if my number is called, I will take my fully charged Kindle for a day of reading and observation. I

MORE PICTURES OF THE HOSPITAL BUILD

2011-09-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

This is the view outside the North exit, they have begun filling in the driveway with truckloads of fine sand, followed by generous application of hundreds of gallons of water. The larger machines massaged the sand into a semblance of flatness. I predict the layer will stop about 18 inches short of the top of the wall, in order to provide a barrier. Gotta keep the ambulance from accidentally going over the edge. Of course it would also be possible for some civilian to do the same, come around that corner, misjudge the speed and sail right out there....and no bunch of trees to stop the vehicle.

This is the view outside the window in medical records. They just about have the building buttoned up, got on a layer of wallboard and Tyvek. When the sun came out it was SO yellow we needed shades and we looked distinctly jaundiced. We can no longer look over and see the guys taking their lunch break.

Also brief review of a show on The Science Channel called

"Stuck With Hacket". Premise is that what can a man do to create civilisation from junk. Quite a bit actually. Hacket was stuck in a junk yard next to a desert. He decided to make a "dirt boat" utilizing obtainium (junk). He assembled the pieces and parts, discovered he did not have a critical piece to connect the mast to the boat and actually made a mold of to hold molten metal and poured the piece he needed. He hurt himself several times and finally got to sail his dirt boat, it looked really good and like a lot of fun. I like this guy.

WORK SHOP....

2011-09-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

When you sit near the front and bring your own camera, you don't wind up on other peoples cameras y'see.

This is the ICD10 workshop held in Albany, OR on 9-16-11 at the Expo building. ICD10 is a diagnosis coding system originally invented by the World Health Organization to track statistics of disease outbreaks around the world. The USA has plowed through various versions of ICD8 and ICD9 and ignored the fact that the rest of the world is using ICD10 but not US. Until 10-1-2013. Yep, that is the magic date when Medicare will no longer accept bills coded in ICD9 and we must ICD10. I was educated in the basics and while the guidelines are similar to ICD9, it will be difficult at first to get this pounded into my head. Hey,wait a minute! Aren't you retiring someday? Yeah, well about that. Our contract coder really REALLY wants to retire before 10-01-13. The only other people interested work in the business office, so I'm it. I am hoping/prayer that we go with the Ingenix encoder with computer assisted coding so that I won't have a fart attack on 10-01-13.

MORE WORK ON THE BUILD

2011-09-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

The view above is next to the street, they are gradually building up so that the 360 turn around on the upper level can be completed.
Lots of very large dump trucks bringing loads of rock, dumping the rock, then a skip loader kind of thing daintily scraping the rock over the side to the lower level. The guys below are tamping with rollers and putting down layers of membrane, that dirt ain't going anywhere.

A layer of brick work or stylish cement block has been put on the north side of the building, nice huh? Also they are loading fiberboard of some kind in through the windows.

Wednesday parking very congested. My ride gets me there and back to home. Today it was quadruple parking at times what with the MRI van and patients.

Different level same view just off Fifth street. Very fast work.

This is the same view closer to the new building where the 360 turn around will drive right up to the entrance to the lab. Handy.

Brick laying.

2011-09-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

The workmen started putting stone work up on the north end of the building this week, very pretty.

The parking lot has been an absolute zoo. Triple parking etc.
Thank goodness I still got my ride on Wednesday.

Also a couple days ago I woke up from an extremely colorful dream. I was inside a Japanese style house. As I walked outside onto the porch area, I could see many people using very colorful bits of paper making what appeared to be a giant origami. There was a river running by the left of the house and some one was putting baskets into the stream and pushing them away with a long pole. The baskets were filled with wrapped bundles. Further upstream was a lovely Moon bridge. As I looked up I saw a bi-wing airplane flying over head, I think it was made of bamboo. It landed to the right of the house, folded its wings neatly up and over the body of the fuselage and putt putted over to park by the house. I looked up and the house was situated in a beautiful little valley, the hills were shrouded in the morning glow of pink sunrise all misty and water colored. I looked many of these symbols up at the dream interpretation site. Origami generally means creativity. Air planes landing means a plan has come to fruition. A calm river means one is going with the flow. A bridge means a transition point. My oh my. Well very entertaining. No sound though.

tastes better than it looks.

2011-09-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

Went shopping for ingredients for tamale pie. I could NOT find frozen onion rings, so I experimented with a bag of those cute itty bitty baby potatoes. These must be miniature Yukon Gold as they were still quite firm once cooked up. I had three nice fresh tomatoes that I diced up and tossed along with the other ingredients. I think it will taste better tomorrow, it just looks odd but smells wonderful!

Oooh, isn't it pretty?

2011-09-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

These are some of the beams that have been craned into place on the roof of the new hospital building. I went outside this morning and took this as the sun cleared the mountain in back of us. Lovely day in the neighborhood. We will be able to see the beams from inside the atrium once it is all enclosed.

Very busy Tuesday

2011-08-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

We received an official e-mail notification that no parking was allowed on the north side of 5th street, that is because there was a huge delivery of glue-lam beams. The crane was parked on the lip of land next to the current ER entry and swept several beams onto the building all day long.

They finally pried all the boards off the new cement wall that will eventually be back filled with rock and dirt and become the top floor ER entry. That's gonna take a couple truck loads of dirt,
I hope the dump trucks decide to drive between the two buildings rather than through the new parking lot, either way it will be a delicate operation.

Oh yeah, the ladies in the department gleefully pointed out that I made the front freakin' page of The World. Gah!! Slow news day.

We had a nice little ceremony at work today....

2011-08-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

A topping out ceremony. Mr. Z spoke, a guest minister said a Power Prayer and we all scrambled to sign the beam, which was then hoisted into its final spot on the top of the building.

Yeah I signed a building. And from here it looks like all of our signatures are upside down.

Just makin' soup

2011-08-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

Just gazing about the kitchen cupboards and the fridge. What to make? What to make? Hmm, have half a bag of split peas, have 3/4 of an onion, have garlic, have some cilantro frozen, have jalapeno pepper frozen, have frozen turkey stock and some boxed chicken stock.

Well get out favorite frying pan, chop onion, saute in butter, add chopped cilantro, add chopped jalapeno pepper, add two bags frozen turkey stock, use up last of boxed chicken stock in fridge.

Add couple teaspoons chopped garlic, add salt and pepper. Simmer for 90 minutes.

Topping...topping. O! Have bag of dressing in freezer, pour out half a bag into largish casserole dish, sprinkle salt, pepper, sprinkle of chives and drizzle generously with olive oil, bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Serve soup in bowl, top with fresh croutons. Delicious. Left overs are in fridge help yourself!

Busy week....

2011-08-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning, is when the MRI van parks in the up hill parking lot and takes up NINE employee parking spaces, so husband very kindly drives me to work. However, THIS morning as we approached the clinic, there was a very long, long, LONG truck and trailer completely blocking fifth street. So husband dropped me off at the clinic, and I walked up the street. This is the rather misty early morning view of build from the street level as one puffs steadily up the 30 degree incline. Phew!

and this my friends, is the end view of the cement being boomed into the concrete forms that will ultimately be the sharp left turn into the second floor ER entrance. I will update once the forms come off. Tah!

All together now...We all live in a ...

2011-08-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

YELLOW SUBMARINE, YELLOW SUBMARINE!

Yeah that wall board/insulation what ever is being speedily put up.

Couple of guys on a boom lift put them in place on the outside, another guy using some sort of electric expanding ladder/stairway is fastening them to the studs on the inside. Sure is a pretty bright yellow. There goes the million dollar view....sigh....

Forms for pouring a LOT of concrete.

2011-08-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

This impressive edifice is part of the form that looks like a minature version of Hoover dam will be the road to the top floor ambulance entrance. That's going to take a lot of cement. You can't get proper prospective but I took the picture just at the edge of the sidewalk right outside the medical records door, it is a drop of a good 30 feet to more cement that has already been poured on re-bar. Oh my.

Sort of an interesting day....

2011-08-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

I elected to take a paid time off day on Thursday because it is very difficult to take time in the summer but there was a lull and voila!

Husband and I ran away to Coos Bay to shop at Freddy's and eat at Kum Yon. I mentioned casually that I thought there was something wrong with the muffler because it was so loud the last couple of times I drove that I was startled by the throaty roar of Harley Davidson dimensions. I had even noticed a couple people looking up to see what the hell was coming down the street at them.

Husband made appointment for us at a muffler and brake shop in Coos Bay Friday at 1:30 so off we went. The guy told us to have a seat, watch some television they would take a look and tell us what needed to be replaced. We were mentally thinking new exhaust system, 300 bucks. Oy.

We had just gotten comfy watching "Cash Cab" when he called us back into the garage. He asked us if anyone had been working on the car and we said no. He showed us where not one but BOTH bolts had sheared off that held the muffler to the exhaust. He replaced those and replaced the gasket that had crumbled to bits.

Forty bucks later we were out of there headed happily home.

We no longer have the throaty roar, which sounded real sexy, but I was afeared that the local cops would have given us a ticket eventually.

Its been a very busy week what with building stuff .....

2011-08-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of re-bar and stuff being made part of the foundation for the road that will eventually circle the hospital.

Well there goes the view, they are putting up metal wall studs.

The large opening is probably the second floor access for the emergency room, once the ground is all filled in and leveled up the road will branch to the second floor ER bay as well as the first floor ER elevator.

This is a picture of the very large boom that is shooting concrete into the forms. The gentleman in the middle of the picture wearing the white hard hat is also wearing a remote control device hanging from his belly, I admit it looks bad from this angle but there really are two little swivel sticks that direct the cement.

Uh huh that looks suspiciously like wall board. They also boomed concrete on part of the roof today.

And this my friends is my attempt at tomatillo salsa. One of the OR nurses told me to come sample. Good stuff!

My version is 6 medium sized tomatillo's chopped, two bunches of scallions, sliced, one smallish jicama sliced and diced, the juice of four limes, tsp chopped garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes. It would have been better with cilantro but I forgot to purchase some.
Very tart, crunchy and refreshing. Be sure to get lots of chips. Tasty!!

MORE BLOSSOMS AND MORE BUILDING

2011-08-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

The second cactus blossom bloomed earlier this week. It only lasted a couple of days, now its all back to desert.

This is part of the facade where the three story atrium will go, it will be glass and stone and first floor is where the cafeteria will be located as well as public bathrooms, seating and stairs and elevator to the second and third floors.

Today the cook made fried chicken, legs, thighs and breast. Tasted almost as good as Grandma Horn's fried chicken. We also had mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, biscuits, fresh salad, and fresh fruit salad. Yummy.

Also this week I cooked a couple of dishes, I was playing what can I cook that I have on hand. I came up with corn pudding. I had a couple well aged loaves of french bread in the freezer, two bunches of scallions, 3/4 package of frozen corn, a can of mushroom soup and a variety of spices. I emulsified the soup with about a pint of buttermilk, and a couple cups of milk, I soaked the bread in that, added four beaten eggs, half cup or so of shredded Parmesan, the chopped scallions, salt, pepper mixed well and baked in oven for about 45 minutes. Husband gave me a thumbs up but is having a terrible time calling it corn pudding because it looks mostly like stuffing with corn added. My secret ingredient was of all things a couple pieces of chopped fresh ginger. Meh. Next time I will leave it out.

That same afternoon I noticed some meat in the fridge I had set to thaw and decided to make Swiss Steak. So I pounded the meat into submission, coated in flour, buttermilk and Italian bread crumbs and fried it. I then added some canned sliced white potatoes, made a milk gravy sauce, added more pepper, let it simmer for two hours and it turned okay, could have used a little more pounding actually but tasted good. That's enough cooking for the week.

SUNDAY LUNCH AT WORK

2011-07-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

For a few months now we have been blessed at work by a woman who gave up her restaurant business to come cook at the hospital.

No more 14 hour days, and today her shift is Sunday and the menu announced hamburger and fries and dessert. Yummy, I put my order in early and opted for everything including grilled onion and fresh mushrooms. Fries. Heaven.

Dessert was strawberry pound cake with whipped cream.

FIRST: I did not have to cook it.

SECOND: I got a wonderfully polite call from the kitchen telling me that my lunch was ready.

THIRD: I didn't have to wash the dishes.

FOURTH: Three bucks.

FIFTH: Next Sunday she is making fried chicken, with mashed potatoes and gravy....stop I'm drooling here. I'll take pictures of that, too.

Several construction type things went on this week...

2011-07-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

The cement was poured this week, cured and in honor of the County Fair one of the best carnival rides was the top heavy cement buffer dingus. The guy rode the thing around until he got dizzy and then they took turns.

This was right out the back door by medical records, they started digging out dirt by the bucket load and hauling it out, eventually there will be a connector lane from the up hill parking lot to the lower level.

This guy was all suited up to spray on the insulation foam onto the steel structure, his hat was very fuzzy. Wish I could get them to come blow some foam into the voids in my house...it is also fireproof.

This is a view out my car window as I waited for a large piece of equipment to move. This is where they removed the remaining pine trees that were just outside the emergency room entrance. The trees had to go because eventually there will be a semi circular pick up and drop off drive around on both upper and lower levels.

PS; Admidst all of this activity the little herd of deer; two does and two fawns picked their way daintly along the upper parking lot looking for greenery. Eventually wiser heads prevailed and they headed back up into the forest darkness.

A PETUNIA GROWS IN...THE PARKING LOT

2011-07-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

This beautiful little purple petunia seems to have volunteered all by itself near the new sidewalk. Not much has been done landscaping wise other than to save a few of the mature Rhodie's but here we have mother nature giving her blessing Either that or some rogue gardener has struck with deadly intention. We be green!!

Work and more work....

2011-07-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Look carefully, the guys in hunter orange are putting up a fence in order to keep deer from falling down the steep wall or to keep sports minded individuals from repelling down the cliff face. See, MY plan was to plant black berry bushes all along the top, deer do not particularly like to eat blackberry bushes and neither do mountaineers...er to fall into, that is.

This is a view from the "Front", there has been a tremendous amount of banging of metal on metal, the men are putting re bar down on top of the flooring and tying it in place with pliers and wires. Lots of stoop labor.

Very colorful very brief dream

2011-07-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke from a very brief and colorful dream of one of those wing back chairs.

Covered in green plaid fabric. So I decided to consult the dream interpretation site as follows:

Chair

To see a chair in your dream, symbolizes your need to sit down and take time out to contemplate a situation before proceeding. Or you just need to relax. Alternatively, it indicates that your feelings or ideas are being dismissed or cast to the side.

To dream that someone is offering you a chair, suggests that you need to be open to taking and accepting advice. Nope no one was offering me a chair. It was just there.

Hmmm, I don't find that particularly alarming, I LOVE to contemplate situations for proceeding and I LOVE to relax. Ah........relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax.

Amusing one self with the world of Harry Potter

2011-07-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

Meet Matthew Lewis the young actor playing the part of Neville Longbottom of Harry Potter film fame.

He played a nerdy part and oh my didn't he grow up just smashing?

I would argue that if the many producers involved had the ability to foresee how their young charges would grow up that Matthew would have been sporting the glasses and the lightning bolt on the forehead.

Yeah. Perhaps J.K. Rowling could be persuaded to write a sequel just for Neville.

Pretty please with bread and butter on it?

:Paint!

2011-07-17T20:26:00.003-07:00

IS THAT A BLOSSOM I SEE?

2011-07-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, actually, it is one of our little desert friends, blooming here in wet rainy Southern Oregon in July. It has bloomed before but it has been a couple of years. I am not sure exactly what triggers the bloomage, may hap it is a mini drought.

On another note, I noticed that someone spray painted a message on the back of the "chicken coop" structure at the build. In yellow pain are the words "Oregon is the beaver state", a green circle is spray painted around it. Um, for those of you who do not know; two of the major university mascots are the Beavers and the Ducks. One of them is in Corvallis and the other one is ...Portland?
Anyway Corvallis is the Beavers and the Ducks cavort for the other guys. They both have webbed feet and are allegedly delicious if prepared properly. To quote the singers in "Popeye

Everything is food.
Everything is food Food FOOD
Everything is fooooooooooooood
Everything is food.

I would gladly pay you Thursday for a hamburger today.....

Damnit, now I'm hungry.

Here is the progress so far...

2011-07-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

The metal flooring/roofing is on and thank goodness, we had a couple days of sunshine and the glare was BLINDING. I did notice that most of the guys on the crew wear sunglasses. The chicken coop looking structure is holding the architectural plans. The crew is putting a lot of metal bolts sticking up about three inches. I would hazard a guess that those bolts will hold the next layer of flooring and I have no idea that that will consist of, cement? Who knows.
The surgery crew had some vendors in giving a presentation on items they will need in the two surgery suites, exciting stuff, all the medical gases and armatures for power and suction hanging from the ceiling. Presently all of that stuff comes out of a wall and any loose lines have to be secured to the floor. This will be huge help.
As the surgeons are fond of saying, "You can't have enough suction in surgery".

MAKING MOVIES

2011-07-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

Let’s just assume that I have come into a great deal of money and I have decided to produce a movie. The blockbusters usually have Hollywood stars, special effects and are very VERY expensive. So expensive in fact that President Obama could possibly balance the budget with a series of successful movies. I said successful.

However, I am going independent. I have always wanted to see several of my favorite books made into film. My first choice a few years ago would have been “Dragon Riders of Pern”. These books have a huge fan base. Making this movie would take the best people who made all three Toy Story films for the special effects. All those lovely intelligent dragons, y’know. The main female part, Lessa, would take a small dark beautiful woman, Winona Ryder type. Need a handful of good looking Dragon men. Yeah, perfect. There are at least ten books in this series and the public demand for the continuation of this particular universe would be greater than that of Star Wars. But that project will have to wait until the stars are in proper alignment.

My next choice would be from the War Prize series. This would be an epic film all about the horse culture, (Hello Mongol Hordes) and the castles of a small middle European country invaded by such. The main female lead is a blond healer who is half-sister to the ruling not so enlightened king type person. The warlord himself is a very good horseman. This would be swords, fighting, a little loving. And lots of employment for the media. This project might have a greater chance of actually making it to film as it is not so technically challenging at “Pern”.

Third choice? There is a lovely old Sci-fi book called “Dream Snake”, it is post apocalyptic society. Our heroine and her genetically selected tiger striped pony are traveling about looking to do good deeds. Actually she is looking for a dream snake replacement. An alien visitor brought the serpent, they became very handy with the healers as they carry anesthesia needed by the good traveling doctor. Her dream snake was accidentally killed. She needs a replacement desperately. Her other two snakes can do things like create some pharmaceuticals, but not anesthetic. The story is all about her journey of discovery amongst various civilizations in her search. All very doable, some special effects, but over all very green.

My best option is the books of the Change by S.M. Stirling. Start with “Dies The Fire”. Basically it is survival story. Something happens on the East Coast, flashes around the world in minutes and all things electrical no longer work. The film starts with a small plane crashing in the Bitterroots. Mike Havel lands the plane in a creek in the near dark and manages to get everyone out. One woman has a bad fracture of the thighbone. A small party of six must fight their way out to save themselves.

The second story also begins with a plane crash in downtown Eugene where Juney McKenzie is playing her Celtic style music. Again, a survivor story and quite wonderful.

Of course there are lots of bad guys, the biggest bad guy is Norman Arminger in Portland who immediately takes control, he knows that after the die off from starvation, he will be in a position to run things. This would be a chance for an established actor to get a chance at a lovely bad guy part, I could see a younger Mel Gibson type going for this or maybe Tom Cruise if we could afford him. Hmm, wonder if Tom wants to be a producer? Since Norman is a professor of the 9th through 14th century history, his interest is in Kings, castles and armies. He acts accordingly recruiting Society for Creative Anachronism types and gang bangers to create his version of Camelot and he, of course, wants more.

These three stories eventually meet up over the course of three books. As with most trilogies the second book is a little weak because you have to wait for the third book to see how it all turns out.

I would love to cast non-Hollywood types who due to the success of these films, go on to ridiculous heights of fame, fortune and all the other dangers of excessive living and they become incredibly expensive to keep employed.

Mike Havel is 5 foot 11 inches tall, dark, a combination of Finnish, Norwegian and his Anishinabe grandmother. He is ex-marine, a pilot, he becomes Lord Bear of the Bearkiller outfit. We need four tall Nordic blonds for Ken Larson, his son Eric and two daughters, Signe and Astrid (who is a genuine Tolkien fanatic, bow and arrow carrying 14-year-old). His wife Mary was killed shortly after the plane crash.

We need a Danny Glover look-a-like who plays the part of Will Hutton, all around horse trainer, his wife Angelica is Tex/Mex and their daughter Luanne is a lovely mix of each. Mike and Ken rescue them from a group of evil, wicked, bad and nasty survivalists.

The third main casting call is for Juney McKenzie. She is a short red haired Irish pixie type. She has a 14-year-old daughter, Eilir who was born deaf and Juney home schooled her, they all speak sign and she reads lips very well. Oh, and Juney is Wiccan with a genuine talent for calling up real power. No nose wiggling stuff just the ability to sense when the Gods and Goddesses are lending an ear.

There, now all I need is money, endless patience, a good screenwriter who actually LIKES the books and luck. The locations are a snap; Idaho, Oregon and later on bits and pieces of England and a few concrete block castles. What a swashbuckler! All those war horses and sword work and stuff. Swell!

LEARNED A NEW WORD LAST NIGHT

2011-07-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

I watched the Taladega Zero Coke 500 race last night...purely by accident. I was waiting for one of my cooking/decorating shows to come on and there was nice Nascar race being televised.

At first I didn't pay too much attention because these kinds of events are soothing kind of like a golf tournament, lots of ambient noise in the back ground, a little sumpin' sumpin' happens, I nod off.

But they were doing something called bump drafting. Huh? The guy in the back car drives right up to the bumper of the car in front of him, gives him a bump and the guy in front speeds up and the guy in back rides the draft, speeds things up over all. So pretty soon every one I mean all what seemed like 80 cars were paired up bump drafting at speeds of between 190 and 197 miles per hour. This went on for HOURS.

There were three scheduled green light pit stops, there was the usual tires, gas, wipe down stuff and the guy holding the gas can was spraying on PAM on the back bumper so the two cars would not stick to each other. Some pit crews were using lard.

There were a couple of spectacular crashes caused by the ittiest bittiest slide too far up hill. This knocked out a few drivers had been "partnering" with other drivers on track. They go to green and back to normal, drivers pairing up kind of like accelerated speed dating. The announcer kept exclaiming that there had been record setting leader exchanges, some thing like 30 different leaders. I think is what I heard.

This goes all the way to 6 laps and there was an um high speed slide into the infield that knocked out some more drivers. Then the announcer said that they had three tries to win under the checker/green flag status. Which means that WWIII could start on the track but under certain circumstances a winner would be declared.

Um, okay GO! There were two sets of contenders that kept on bump drafting, there were TWO more wrecks and someone did win about half a millisecond before the last wreck. That was sort of exciting. No one was hurt. There is a lot controversy about even allowing this kind of driving. What next blind folded pit crews?

End of the week observations and activiies

2011-07-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to mention the "other" parking lot, about where the little blue building is will be the helicopter landing pad. Just glad the workmen have decided to park off street.

Potato salad with a secret ingredient. Potatoes, eggs, caramelized onions, chopped celery, dill pickle, garlic, mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, red pepper flake, celery seed.

I was disappointed in the caramelized onions. I started off with 1 1/2 chopped onions in some butter, checked every 5 minutes until it was turning brown, wound up with very scan half cup of onions. Next time I will start out with at least THREE LARGE onions.

Secret ingredient: hand full of chopped almonds. Adds a bit of crunch.

Happy Fourth of July!

SUB Sub sub flooring maybe?

2011-06-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Today the workmen scattered out um.. subflooring type metal structures, I saw them spot welding some of them to the metal frame. Hope the wind doesn't come up.

Reminds me of an Emmett story. One summer we had a hail storm that caused considerable damage to my awning. The awning I had ran the full back of the trailer house I was purchasing. I put in a claim and got a smallish check to fix the damage. I asked a friends handy-man husband if he could take the back half of the awning and move it to the front so I would have shade. Yep. He worked at it, got it taken down and moved to the front and partially fastened. He told me the legs were not fastened to the cement pad yet but he would do that the next day.

The next morning I got up and was half way out the door on my way to work when I realized that the awning over my front door was gone! It was completely not THERE. I looked up, nothing.
I walked out into the street and realized that the awning was peeled back lying on top of my roof!

My neighbors told me later that the wind came up a bit and they hear a hell of noise. It was my roof peeling up, over, back and down with a bang. I slept right through it, I just could not figure out who would steal that stupid awning. The handy-man came over that day, put the awning back and used a nail gun to affix the uprights to the pavement.

BOOK CASE FULL

2011-06-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

That did not take as long to fill as I thought it would. Just this past week, we picked up one of those folding book case thingies at Freddy's, brought it home, popped the connector dinguses into the slots between the bottom and top and hey, look it's a tall empty book case. Not for long, I processed the five bags of books donated to me by a long time friend, I added them all to my book collectorz program and I now official have over 2000 books and according to the program the are valued at 8000 dollars. Hmmm, I think that is a bit on the high side. Some of these books are older than dirt and well preserved in coffee stains. But I have always loved the look of books in the house.

One of my favorite memories of young married life was to go visit a retired school teacher who lived near Elk, California. Her little house sits on a bit of cliff poking out into the Pacific. Inside her house are books....lots of books, books stuffed into risers on stairs, book shelves etc. Very cosy. If I ever get my book store opened one of the features will be comfortable chairs, and a good reading light.

Welding and dreaming

2011-06-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Oh look! He's welding stuff. There were sparks flying all over the place today. It is fascinating to watch. And no, I did not stare
into the welding arc too long, I do wish to avoid retina burn.

Woke up this morning from a "lost" dream. One of these where you are in a strange city, somewhere in Japan I think and you do NOT know where you are going.

I was walking around looking for my hotel, it was somewhere nearby I had just gotten turned around. I went inside another building to ask for a taxi and how much was it? About 360 local, how much is that in dollars, oh 60 dollars an hour. Um, yeah it might take me that long to find my hotel.

The taxi was all weird looking, very modern, boxy and yellow. The doors slid up, not swing up, grooves in side allowed the doors to go up like an upright sliding panel. I may have stumbled onto a design feature here, Detroit!

I'm not even going to the dream interpretation site because it will tell me something boring about feeling lost and needing direction. Duh...

Shopping some more

2011-06-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today it became apparent that I needed to purchase another folding book case (Blond, please) as I had accumulated three bags worth of books that were decorating the living room floor and soon to be kitty napping places.

So off we went to Freddy's, but not before checking out South Coast Hospice Thrift Store. What a neat place! They have everything! I have added to my glass candle stick collection. Time to count them up! There was not a mate to it rather stands out on its own. CHTS also has tons of books, I purchased one for a dollar. We picked up lunch at Burger King, I had the steak burger and it was worth every calorie!

Weather today Hawaiian Mist, missed Hawaii and hit us.

BRIEF WORD ABOUT FASHION

2011-06-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Most of you are probably aware of a more or less minor fashion trend. It is that of wearing a different colored T shirt on top of another T shirt,usually by skinny little girls...to keep them warm...and to double up the fabric so chest/breast/nipple stuff does not show through.

I has been my observation however, that some of us are taking that to extremes. In particular very large women who should be shopping for cheap canvas have taken to wearing two T shirts together. The net effect is that this tends to ENLARGE the arse area quite tragically especially if worn with one side lower on the hip, belly, what-ever-is-sticking-out-the-most area. Thankfully I don't see a lot of this at work but occasionally a truly magnificent example of the Two T-shirt style ambles through the corridors.

Like the poodle skirt and Mom jeans, this too, shall pass. Wouldn't it be awful if it stayed?

WE GOT IRON GOIN' UP!

2011-06-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

Much fun to watch the crane carefully swing in steel beams. The guys scamper out with safety harness to tighten bolts. I'm not sure if these get welded or not. I'll let you know if we see any sparks fly. I just hope all this naked iron is grounded. We don't get a lot of thunder and lightning here but you never know when Mother Nature is having a snit.

CASSSEROLES TO THE LEFT OF ME...

2011-06-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

\
Recent discussion in the kitchen:

I'm thinking about making macaroni and cheese.

Well, how would bacon bits taste in that?

Um, the fake bacon bits would break your teeth.

How, about I use those chicken garlic sausages?

Ingredients as follows:

Gather up two cups of bits and pieces of lingering dried pasta from your cupboard. Bring 4 quarts of salted water to a boil, drop in pasta, cook 8 minutes, drain.

Pour back in the pasta pot, add 1 cup sour cream, half cup shredded Parmesan, 2 ounces shredded Gruyere, 1 cup fresh
mozzarella, half chopped onion, 1 cup sliced mushrooms, half jar capers, salt, pepper, slice four garlic chicken sausages.

Combine well and pour into buttered casserole dish.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, top with buttered bread crumbs for another 15 minutes.

The hubs gives it a thumbs up. I really like the capers.

Couple of interesting things today....

2011-06-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

As you can see they painted on water proofing layer and topped that with some sort of board. Then the orange Hitachi daintily lifted up several bucket loads of fine sand and dumped it into the hole. Unfortunately one the workman got a neck full of sand and explained in a very loud (insert expletive here) voice not to do that again. So they got a spotter who hand signaled the Hitachi where where and when to dump.

Later on, maintenance called for one of my co-workers to move her car off the street they were taking a delivery of structural steel and the semi came with a very long trailer and only managed to side swipe one brand new shiny truck, only bent the fender a little bit and the semi actually came out his fender was bent even worse.

They have the elevator shaft partially poured. I haven't been able to get into good position to take a picture of it.

Bubble bubble sour dough starter!

2011-06-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

I fired up the sour dough starter last night, dumped in two cups of milk and two cups of white flour to the starter and let it rest over night. It smells SO good! I made about 7 good sized pancakes, ate three and stored the rest of them for oh maybe a snack.

I also decided to make husband's favorite casserole; stuffing.
This time I had five ears of fresh corn. I used the Rachel Ray method of corn removal, I put a small bowl upside down in a larger bowl and sliced the kernels off the corn. I have a good hefty two cups worth of corn. Chopped onion, wilt in butter in pan, dump in about a generous quart of frozen turkey stock, simmered until warmish. I tossed the corn into a larger bowl along with the dried bread stuffing, some salt, pepper, other seasonings to taste and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. Baked for 60 minutes in 350 degree oven. Not bad. The corn is surprisingly firm at 60 minutes and tasted pretty good. Yum!

Today it got almost summery here, weather up to almost 70 degrees. Enjoy the weekend!

Blog stats ever look at 'em?

2011-06-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

I was looking at the dashboard thing on blogger and opened up stats. There is another area you can look at your audience to see what country the page views are coming from.

I have 38 page views from Iran. Really.

I pondered what could I have possibly written about that would trigger a page view? It would have to be something that would be of interest to Iranian viewers and I finally remembered that I had written about a piece of fiction that I was thinking of writing.
One of the pieces regarded something called the Bubble, it was technology from Earth that is a nano-bot product that protects the wearer from EVERYTHING including radiation, poison, force of explosions, etc. I was trying to explain some of the social and society impacts this would have on various institutions and I mentioned among other things:

Earth’s most historical enemies have been faced with two choices; get along or forget it. I should probably write a sub-story theme about how society has changed due to the Bubble. Long time enemies still exist however the Shiites and Sunni’s have evolved public insulting contests, quite elaborate and beautiful sort of like ceremonial Sumo without the wrestling.

That has to be it, I have never, prior to this, mentioned weapons of mass destruction or other word trigger kind of things. Weird.

Shukran! I am also not even sure if I spelled Shiites or Sunni's correctly.

Reminiscing...

2011-06-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is a Google Earth picture of Kleinschmidt Grade. That thin pencil of dirt road is the grade. I have never ridden a car over the road and do not wish to do so. I do remember riding in the car with Dad driving and him pointing out that going up that road was the only way to Paulette Ranch other than by helicopter or a long drive by way of Halfway, Oregon.

You can Google a couple of fairly good You Tube videos of a motorcycle going part way down and another of a very tense family driving down. Gulp.

It was much stepper when I first saw it because the dam had not been built yet and the road went down into the canyon quite a ways. That is the Snake River you see down there but think lower level, much much lower level.

Today at work I watched a pretty good sized crane rumble into position about the build site and position some good sized pipe.
I was remembering living in Hells' Canyon, especially at Daggett's Trailer Court (Court, Hah!) Dad had been told that T.K. Jensen was going to move a very big crane from point A to point B and we were all going to go watch the thing creep along. So we all loaded up and dutifully watched the crane. Dad always had much admiration for crane operators. By the time we turned around and went home, a little rain storm had blown along some wind and rain and all of Mom's freshly hung laundry had collapsed into the very large mud puddle. I do dimly remember her throwing a fit and falling in it.

I remember asking Dad if we could possible get a Yuk truck inner tube tire. He always said something that didn't sound exactly like a promise but we knew it was a long shot. I think that may have lead to all the men and boys to damn up the creek for a swimming hole.
You had to know exactly where to dive into the water so you wouldn't knock yourself out on the underwater rocks.

Hells Canyon was where I learned how to make hand made bound button holes for my doll dresses. A lady in the "court" taught me how to do them. I think somewhere about this time Mom got her recipe for raisen spice cake with powdered sugar frosting. I get a taste for that every once in a while.

Any other memories surfacing out there?

Appliances

2011-05-31T11:11:00.000-07:00

I never owned a toaster oven until husband came along, not only that I had never bothered to own a microwave or a VCR. As a result of his influences these appliances soon made their way into our household.

The microwave was swell for melting butter and making popcorn and eventually bacon and fresh corn.
The VCR's multiplied and recorded many many MANY old episodes of mid century television programs.
The toaster oven surprisingly enough replaced the on-its-last-legs toaster and flourished.

Until this weekend. Popped in toast, NOIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Hmph, try again. Same NOIZZZZZZZZZZZ. Smell of electrical components burning. Finished preparing breakfast, warmed bread in microwave (bleach) and put new toaster oven on shopping list.

We spent Memorial Day afternoon shopping. The new toaster oven has a generous slot for toasting on top
and a dainty little oven for warming up the smaller frozen entree type meals. I purchased some English muffins to try it out and works perfectly. I am hungry for a toasted English muffin even as we speak.
The dead toaster oven (Great name for a rock band by the way) fit nicely into the garbage can and was picked up this morning.

Forms coming off revealing gray concrete wall.

2011-05-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

Nice gray wall on view outside the office window. Nice.

The crew are still dumping rock and pounding into a more or less flat area, from down by the clinic it now looks like standing at the bottom of the Hoover dam looking up, way way up. Ah progress.

This is Bulwer-Lytton's home in Jolly Old.

2011-05-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

Below is my 2011 submission for the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest. I had originally submitted this last year and it was rejected because my first version had nattered on far longer than their guidelines would allow.
I will post results when they come out sometime next month I think. R

-----Original Message-----

From: SCOTT B RICE [mailto:srice@pacbell.net]

Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 3:05 PM

To: Royce Alden

Subject: Re: BW contest entry 2011
Your submission has arrived and will receive the treatment it deserves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: BW contest entry 2011
BULWER LYTTON CONTEST 4-14-2011
The Iron Chef inhaled the secret ingredient saccaromyces cerevisiae and was
reminded of his favorite breakfast of sourdough pancakes topped with genuine

maple syrup the kind that came in a maple leaf shaped glass bottle, which

once empty could be used to hold wildflowers after rinsing and thought it

was going to be an excruciating sixty minute battle.

VIRTUAL VERSION OF CVH MARCH 2012

2011-05-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

BUILDING AND BUILDING CONSENSUS

2011-05-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

View from lobby window of the goings on.

Today a group of us spent the better part of the morning looking at various choices of chairs, furniture, etc and choosing. Just because we like it does not automatically guarantee that we will get it.

We were given green stickers and red stickers and allowed to select green for yes and red for no. We seem to like the lighter colored office furniture.

Fabric swatches most of these are very tough microfibers, can withstand at great deal of wear and tear. As you can see all of the violently vibrant colors went by the way side in favor of muted blues, grays, greens, tans etc. There is one pesky paisley print in that got everyone excited. Meh.

RECAP

2011-05-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Boo hoo hoo. I was expecting to lose the view but not THIS soon.
Yep wall type activities going on. I think the crew decided to start on the wall next to all the windows because some of them may wish to take off their shirts in hotter weather (no hot weather yet) and some of them really need to keep their shirts on.

BUILDING IN THE 'HOOD:

This lovely old farmer's lady (1890's) is getting a new roof and
what look suspiciously like windows in the roof! (I am having a senior moment, can't remember the name of the sky panels, not solar panels but well you know what I mean). (Sky light!!!) This house has stood empty for nearly five years. It was on the market as is for at least 250k. Not even a nibble. I believe they may have replaced the heating system because the nasty 200 gallon oil tank has been removed. Last year they jacked the old lady up and put in new cinder block foundation. Since the roof had moss growing on it, they ripped off the shingles and took it right down to the barest of bones. Those new windows will make nice light into the third floor attic. Wish we had them on our roof, but anyone who puts those kinds of windows in here in rainy Oregon is asking for an eventual leak.

PUTTERING WITH RECIPES:

This past Wednesday was Appreciation Day at work. The senior staff dons aprons and head gear, heads for kitchen and makes omelette's for everyone. Mr. Z puts on his tux and cummerbund and takes orders, bus tables, schlep fruit cup and muffins. Mine was delish. Afterwards I spoke to our personnel director. I suggested that they try sour dough pancakes. Monte looked interested and asked for a starter....

I took out the starter and knew immediately that Mom would pout. I was out of white flour, so I substituted whole wheat.

Add two cups flour and two cups warm milk to starter, let set over night in warm place. Rats! I used two cups of water instead of milk. (Mom! Stop rolling your eyes!). Next morning, slight workage of yeasty beasty but nuthin' to get excited about.
So I added a tablespoon of pure maple syrup because my honey had crystallized and let it set another 24 hours. (Stop with the eye rolling)

Saturday morning. Gratifying bubblage in the starter, kept out 1 1/2 cups for each of two quart mason jars. One will be delivered with directions to the PR director. The other will be stashed in the fridge.
I got to thinking, and you know how dangerous that is, Mom always used whole milk. I have been using 2% for so long I have almost forgotten how whole milk tastes and I am sure that makes a huge difference on how yeasty the sour dough becomes. So next time I use whole milk,gently warmed to less than 100 degrees.

I stirred up the balance of the sour dough batter with egg, sugar, oil, salt, baking soda, baking powder and cooked six nice sized pancakes. The three I had for breakfast were pretty good for non standard Virginia sour dough pancakes.

DREAMZ:

Last night I dreamt about money.
I was at work and someone from the front office gave me a form. With this form I was to go to my bank and receive sixty dollars.
I went to the bank and was seated at one of the service desks in the lobby. I gave the lady my form and she went to process. She returned to tell me that the form could not be processed because it was the wrong form.
I left and stood in the outer lobby a bit and decided I would go back to work.

INTERPRETATION:
To dream that you lose money, suggests that you are lacking ambition, power and self-esteem. You are experiencing unhappiness and setbacks in your waking life. You may also be feeling weak, vulnerable, and out of control in your waking life. Now that is just boring.

To see a bank in your dream, denotes your desires for financial security. The dream may be trying to offer reassurance and that your fears of financial instability are unfounded.
Meh.

One last thing. Yesterday the mail carrier left a plastic bag to be filled with canned good, packages mix etc to be donated to the local food banks. I sorted out some canned veggies, corn, peas, green beans. The mail carriers will pick this up today. I hope who ever uses this stuff lives long and prospers. The canned tuna is mine regardless of mercury content.

Baby boomer land marks....

2011-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

Visited the optometrist this past Wednesday. I didn't expect much but alas there have been just enough vision changes to warrant new glasses. Insurance covers exams once a year but no new frames for two years. So the plan is that I will get new eye pieces inserted into my present frames.

and....I have newly diagnosed cataracts. When do we remove them? Not for at least ten years, maybe never. Okay then.

I feel grumpy..

I feel grumpy..

I feel grumpy and frumpy and gray.....

Oh wait. I AM grumpy, frumpy and gray.

MUCH better.

PROGRESS AND BLACK HOLES....

2011-05-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

I love to listen to Morgan Freeman, especially when he is narrating about black holes and gently twinkling as he expounds on esoteric points regarding quantum mechanics. As if there were real mechanics involved.

If NPR were sponsoring this, we could listen to Click and Clack the Tappet brothers yapping about Schroedinger’s Cat trying to tell the customer that the cat is both alive and dead!

I watched the argument about Hawking Radiation and Leonard Susskind endless propeller explanation. Hawking Radiation is the little half of the Big and Little discussion. Little involves the spontaneous emergence from nothing of opposing pairs of subatomic particles, one particle positive, and one particle negative. (No one has ever proven the existence of Hawking Radiation except on the blackboard). These two particles instantly annihilate each other. Lots of that going on at a subatomic level, not a fun
neighborhood to live in I am thinking.

The disagreement came about between these two famous physicists regarding whether or not black holes violate the Law of Conservation of Information. Um, that sounds an awful lot like the Law of Conservation of Energy that states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed thus the sum of all the energies in the system is a constant.

Somehow I must have missed the class on Conservation of Information, assuming the corollary holds equivalently states that information can neither be created or destroyed, thus the sum of
all information in the system is a constant. I think I fell asleep.

To get back to the Hawking Radiation for a moment. Apparently the paired subatomic particles that come into existence from nothing (cannot be created, they had to come from SOME where, recycled from a worm hole maybe?) do not destroy each other if they are created at the edge of a black hole, such as right near the event horizon where stuff slows down…a lot.

So the negative charged particle falls into the black hole and being negative mass, contributes to the gradual shrinkage of the black hole. The positively charge particle escapes the black hole in the form of radiation…Hawking Radiation. (which has never been measured I think). That is kind of cool actually.

Hawking states that information is lost. Gasp! Susskind states that
information is not lost. Which he demonstrates by describing a plane flying into the black hole with a propeller, on the end of the propeller is another propeller and so on until there is a film of propellers. At this point I decided both men are too brilliant for me and I watched House Hunters International.

Oh wait, I skipped the good part, the negative particle? All of those
billions and mega trillions of negative mass particles that keep shrinking the black hole eventually cause it to explode.

So there you have it, the basic engine of the universe that changes stuff, remember it neither creates or destroys the information, it just changes it. Schroedinger’s cat may be an exception as it can be both dead and alive. I have no doubt hopelessly compromised Quantum Mechanics as it is known today.

So what if the universe expands forever, it will still be making a lot of noise on the way.

Study chapter 37 including footnotes, there will be a test on Friday, Class dismissed!

Happy Mother's Day 2011

2011-05-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

It was an interesting day at work today, Mother's Day. There was an inordinate number of elderly cranky, disoriented ladies and I don't mean the nurses. The female patients all needed their Mom's really REALLY bad today and the nurses did a fine job of Mommying them. "Get back in that bed or I will tie you in!". "Get off the toilet now" , "Time for breakfast" and so on.

Then I decided to call Mom. I dialed her number and breathed a little sigh when I got the "You have reached a number that has been disconnected" message. It's been almost two years, I wonder how long the phone company keeps a disconnected number from being reissued? If someone had answered I would have wished them "Happy Mother's Day" and then hung up.

I decided to pick fixings for strawberry shortcake and whipped cream on the way home. Delish. I also make Delux Tamale Pie, that variety is made with thin cut strips of Black Angus Beef and roast peppers, yummy!

WORKY WORKY

2011-05-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

The construction has moved onto FOUNDATION work. They brought in a boom truck to deliver cement over head into the difficult-to-get-to-bits. That was fun. More cement fun later.

I decided to make cajeta de leche con platano for Cinco De Mayo.
Unfortunately my first attempt did not turn out well. I only cooked the condensed sweetened cans of milk for six hours thinking that was long enough. Nope, got can of faintly beige goo. Dumped that because I was NOT brave enough to attempt continuing the caramelizing process in an open pan. So, two cans went into the slow cooker in the oven for ten hours. That was still not as done as I like it but it was time to make the pies. Graham cracker crust, cajeta, layer of bananas, whipped cream. It got eaten but had turned a bit runny. Next time, MINIMUM TWELVE HOURS in the crock pot. There was a very nice selection of enchiladas, tamales, rice, beans, salad. The WINNER was a jar of pickled green beans, in dill, garlic and a taste of jalapeno pepper. Delicious. I think those pickled beans would be lovely in a virgin bloody Mary. Yep!

Sunday on Fifth Street

2011-05-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

The heavy dump trucks and other equipment not to mention all the regular vehicular traffic have exacted a toll on the asphalt. There were two canyon sized rumpled muddy areas, and on Friday the crews cut out the remaining intact asphalt and dug the mud down a foot and poured concrete. That ought to last a bit longer. They had already cemented part of the intersection further down on Fifth and Elliott. There is another rumpled part in the parking section of Fifth Street park where they have had to stage some of the retaining wall concrete blocks, which are heavy and thus the rumpling of asphalt. Looks much butter, when the cones are removed that will free up a bit more street parking.

POINK is not what you want to hear when....

2011-04-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

...you sit down at work and suddenly go blind in the right eye.

WTF!? Crap, lost the lens out of right side of my glasses.

Help!

A cry for help summoned a co-worker and between the two of us, we managed to pry the computer and desk away from where it was wedged precariously against the shelves near the window in medical records.

I could see a gleam down in the dark and dust bunnies. The lens was retrieved and it fit inside the wire frame and I used clear tape to hold it in place for the rest of the day. Examined glasses, screw came loose. It's only 7:30.

Husband picked me up after work and we drove to the Vision center in town and they very kindly put a slightly longer screw in the frames.

Oh! It's been exactly one year since your last visit...so I'll be going back in a couple of weeks to get checked and to complain about my increasingly greasy left eye ball (floaters). sigh....

And now for a little before and after

2011-04-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

Taken a few days ago, from the back door, that area way down by the wetlands/creek.

Same spot, they are building that area up in layers, they put in a row of upright cement retaining wall type of things, thrown down some more gravel, tamp it tight, every third layer or so roll out some type of membrane, repeat until level with stairs poured by clinic.

One of our doctors went on a little walking tour this past Saturday and walked the edge of the wall down there and kicked at it to make sure it wouldn't collapse. Uh huh.

UNDT NOW VE DRILL

2011-04-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

This bad boy is drilling very large post holes.

The slender pole next to the drill filled with dirt is the tamper.
The medium sized skip loader partially hidden behind the drill is
poised to scurry in, dump some rock and the tamping thingie will vigorously pound the rock into the very large post hole. Then they will move on to the next series of three holes, once these are filled with rock, and cement and re bar they will hold a combined weight of 750,000 lbs each. I could feel the pounding clear into medical records.

...AND NOW LETS PUT SOME DIRT BACK...

2011-04-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

That is bed rock, er dirt rock with bed rock being put on top of it. The uppy downy bits are being stabilized with concrete and re bar and stuff. As you can see more dirt got nibbled off enough to see most of the clinic roof.

Now onto something slightly different yet hospital related.

We had a guest doctor, an internist from Romania came for medical staff. Very nice gentleman. Looking to finish up medical school in less than a year, loves the area, his wife is also in the medical field and would provide valuable health care.

So, sure enough during medical staff as the meeting was opened up to general questions, I blurted out the two words of Romanian that I know, "Buna seara!" (good evening). He looked startled and replied back to me. Meeting was very congenial once they started swapping fishing stories.

And now a small aside to explain how I learned my two words of Romanian. During the mid 70's, I was living in Idaho working waiting to go to school at BSU. I and sister, Ellion, both worked at a fruit packing shed on an apple farm. She stamped boxes and I sorted apples. One day, Mr. Dewey brought around two gentleman and told us that they were participating in a work exchange program and were from Romania. He introduced them as "Our friends from behind the Iron Curtain". Really. At any rate we sort of got acquainted with various forms of chit chat,
"How do you say good evening?"
"Buna seara"
"Hey that sounds like Italian!"
"Yes, Italians influenced language, from time of Imperial Romans". Uh huh. Then other bits of chit chat. It was near Christmas and they would be returning home soon.
"Have you purchased Christmas gifts for your family?"
"Yes, ool."
Ool. ???
"Bah bah"
"Oh wool!"

They were fun to get acquainted with and were hard working.

Some other time I will speak of the Japanese crew that came to work for Mr. Dewey.

Mo diggin' and flattenin'

2011-04-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

We can see a lot more of the clinic's roof now, yesterday some guys were climbing all over it, looking for a leak.

It is flat over there? It's flat over here. It is flat down there? It looks flat from up here.

I got up a little early this morning, last night had dusted off my night stand and some how bumped the time up two HOURS. So my alarm went off this morning, I wandered into the bathroom, performed my routine morning ablutions, dressed, went downstairs to make breakfast. I looked at the clock and it said 4:30AM. I checked some other clocks and decided against trudging back upstairs for a two hour snooze, ate a very leisurely breakfast, read a book, left early and got to work a bit after 6 am. At least I had my choice of parking, it is MRI van day and things get a little more crowded than usual.

Saturday

2011-04-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Nice day, a little over cast, no hail, no thunder...ah Spring.

We drove to Coos Bay (gas is $3.85 here) and shopped at Freddy's, I picked up Tangled and Tron Legacy. I giggle a lot during Tangled and if I were a little girl I would be growing my blond hair out to 75 feet. The music was wonderfully operatic/showbiz. I predict Tangled will open on Broadway sometime soon. Haven't watched Tron yet.

We ate lunch at Rodeo Steak House. The waitress handed us a bowl of peanuts in the shell. While I perused the menu, husband went,

"Psst, look!"

Oh peanut shells all over the floor.

"Do you think that just happened?".

"Um, no customers are supposed to throw the shells on the floor." "GASP!!!!!".

"really".

I took pictures of the food but I thought one of the signs was very cute NEVER MISS A CHANCE TO SHUT UP. Husband loved his well done steak and I enjoyed mine medium. Goody left overs!!

ADDENDUM: I am completely hooked on the 99 cent Scrabble game I down loaded on my Kindle. I must say though that I think AI cheats. AI has used a few words that are definitely NOT in the Oxford English Dictionary. Hmph.

A LITTLE BIT OF THIS...A LITTLE BIT OF THAT

2011-04-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Digging has gone deep enough for them to drive the driller into the hole and make some holes below the level of the old hospital in order to put in retaining wall re-bar and concrete. Enough of the parking lot has been dump trucked so that we can now see a bit of the clinic roof just down hill from us.

A friend of the family gave us a whole wheat sour dough starter. The recipe is for loaves of bread but I wanted to mess with things and make sour dough pancakes...and I did.

This is a VERY substantial pancake that should be served with fresh berries and whipped butter etc. You won't walk away hungry, because you will have fallen into immediate post prandial torpor. Husband liked the whole wheat flavor, I will stick with the original recipe for pancakes thanks. It was a good experiment, however.

The Big Dig

2011-04-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

This morning the Orange Hitachi's and dump trucks started just outside Vicki's window, they started the dig for the new hospital.
The plan is 14 feet out and 14 feet down. That is a lot of dirt.
I asked Vickie if she ducked every time the bucket swung around at eye level...just about, yep. Because they were working so close to the edge, there is a moderate pucker factor especially when the one Hitachi was working down hill-ish trying to pry a tree stump out of the hillside and the back end of the tracks was rearing up off the freaking ground. I had to go type something LOUD for a little bit. Sheesh.

By this afternoon a great deal of dirt had been removed, the guys working the Hitachi's (two of them were digging away) had dumped a great many loads into the dump trucks. I think they filled up the soccer field, there MUST be some low lying ground somewhere that needs some dirt.

Here be parking! Finished, occupied, employees park in yellow striped zones, patients park in white etc. It sure looks nice and parks even better. I will drive and park tomorrow, there is not room to double park so first come, first serve! Just don't leave for lunch or you will wind up parking on the street. Because the front parking lot was partially blocked and open for the dump trucks to enter and exit, a few patients tried to park in the front, but they had to give that up when it became apparent that they could not get into the front door as usual, it was blocked off too. Mr. Z's PA and the director of marketing donned safety vests and helmets and flagged traffic for a little bit to get people used to parking IN BACK where there are DOORS....eventually, just keep walking folks, follow the signs. Wheelchairs are available.

It has been a couple of busy days in the 'hood.

2011-03-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

Mr. Z had the opportunity to "test drive" a 25 foot section of the new carpet destined for the acute care patient rooms in the new hospital. First the "abatement" folks had to come, put up plastic sheeting on half of the hallway, chip up the glued down carpet and safely dispose of it. The next day the vendors installed the new carpet. I must say I like it, it has several tones of brown and will hide a multitude of coffee spills. It has already passed the spilled coffee test with flying colors, the liquid beads right up and is apparently easily removed. How 'bout that?

Close up of the carpet pattern, nice.

Then we watched the cement truck dump stuff into the curb former machine and three guys walked it all over the parking lot pooping curbs. They got it all done in about four hours. Very impressive.

Then the paint guy got his quasi golf/paint cart all fired up and striped the parking lot in a couple hours. They have "doctors parking" signs set up near the South end (close to ER) and it

may still be a little crowded and the employees are still going to have to park on the street, but it sure looks purty. I might get to park in the new lot on Sunday.

POW RIGHT IN THE ASPHALT!!

2011-03-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, because the weather looked promising and there was no surgery scheduled, they brought in what appears to be the cutest little asphalt machine, and a whole bunch of guys shoveling and raking the loose stuff into a uniform 6 inch depth. Then the dainty little steam roller machine zoomed over the surface like a demented Zamboni. The weather continued to um degrade and during the especially damp sequences, great plumes of steam would arise from the surface. It looked like they got most of it done by the time I left a 4 pm. They have also installed light poles, very tall, will cast a nice bit of light on the parking lot. Really looking forward to having it complete. We will probably have to wait for parking space painting etc, but the weather man is predicting sunshine later this week end, that ougta help dry the paint.

Review of Porta Coos Bay

2011-03-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Onion Soup. Delish!

My salad; spinach, green apple, feta cheese, toasted pine nuts, crispy onion, house pancetta. Tasty!

Husband had steak salad, well done, on lettuce, roast pepper, tomato equally tasty.

My dessert was creme' brulee. Fab.

Husband had chocolate decadence cake with mocha flavored gelato with caramel garnish. Even better! We will probable go back for a dinner.

Bathroom rating? I give it an 8 out of 10. Clean, well decorated, towels plentiful, hand soap available, handy trash can by door which opened with a lever. Lever's are crucial for OCD folk. Minimal touching of hands to surfaces and in today's presence of MRSA and other super bugs, best be washing those hands, people.

ER SOMETHING NEW TODAY...

2011-03-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

The white lattice work looking structure is part of the covered walkway, it consists of opaque plastic sheeting and is to protect people who parked in the East parking lot and must walk around to the front entrance or go in at the emergency room entrance.

I took the picture from the edge of the present parking lot. As soon as we start parking in back, the front parking lot is scheduled to be dug down 14 feet to accommodate most of the 60,000 square feet of the new facility.

They may be rain delays in paving the East parking lot as the pavement does not do well in a downpour. The cement cures rather well but not the asphalt, phew! I can almost smell it now.

SIDEWALKS

2011-03-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

This leads from the parking lot headed toward the emergency room entrance.

This one had to be widened to standard width just past the emergency room entrance, see the orange cone? One of the ladies from the business came back from lunch and was so busy avoiding the cones, she stepped right into fresh cement, her witness was one of the cute guys on the crew.

This one leads to front entrance, which is where everyone will be headed to once they start parking in the East parking lot, the structure that looks like a covered patio? That is where the outside table used to sit just outside the dining room, it is where the BBQ's are held, the grill will go into storage for a while until they figure out where to hold the future BBQ's.

IT AIN'T MOUNT RUSHMORE....

2011-03-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

The drillers spent Friday and Saturday HAND CARVING the rock face for our retaining wall. Lots of dull gray granite look.

Sunday a crew showed up and sprayed white paint on the wall, looked a lot like snow. Hmmmm

After the white coat dried they came back and sprayed on a more dirt like look. Ah, much better.

My new Kindle arrived on St. Patricks Day, Slancha !

2011-03-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

About a week after my old Kindle died, I ordered the 3G version. I was delighted to turn it on and discover all of my archived books were there, all I have to do is highlight the title, wait a little bit and the book is loaded for me.

It took me 48 hours before I learned (by reading the manual) how to turn the Kindle OFF. Hold on off button for 7 seconds. Oy!

Didn't take very long to fully charge the battery.

I rather miss the first generation roller ball that allowed navigation up and down the page to make notes, and I made a LOT of them particularly on POORLY TRANSCRIBED E-BOOKS. Are you listening Amazon?

So by process of trial and error I am able to make notes , open Symbols to make use of numbers which are not on the physical keyboard. Most arduous. One must be really angry to go to the lengths to make a note. One can also make highlights and these can be publicly shared. Oh GAWD no, NO PUBLIC SHARING!!

I find it much more difficult to select a word to look up in the dictionary, unless there is a short cut I must select menu, select dictionary, type word and THEN definition pops up, I find that very laborious. New Kindle I can select ONE word. Old Kindle would look up entire line. So, there is a trade off.

Also I can adjust type size to amazingly large, almost one word per page.

Apparently I have built in thing that will read to me. I will test that as well. I can load music and have background music while I read. No thank you, I would find that annoying.

Under experimental, I can browse the Internet. New Kindle much better, I typed in URL for my blog and there it was! Not sure if I liked the navigation within the blog but I could view it quite nicely.

I also have the capability of "sharing" with my social network; face book, twitter etc. NO THANK YOU!!

Lastly I splurged and ordered the lighted book cover. The cover is very clever, first generation book cover relied on a couple wimpy corners to keep the Kindle in place. Someone engineered a couple of little brass hook things that the Kindle snaps onto which affixes the cover very nicely. It took me a bit to actually find the light. It is located in the top right hand corner, looks like a reinforced corner, pull out corner, itty bitty light slides up and casts reasonable amount of light on screen. Next power outage we have I will read in the dark and let you know if I find it beyond irritating or not.

What's shakin' bacon?

2011-03-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

As it turns out my desk shook, rattled and rolled most of the day. First the dump trucks brought in a good dozen full of nice large rock.

Then, the steam roller went over the rocks and flattened them into a nice compact surface. It was noisy and shook the windows and if a real tsunami/earthquake had happened yesterday, I would not have felt it one bit.

Weather report for Sunday 3-13-11

2011-03-13T15:29:00.000-07:00

Oh looky, it's the new sidewalk, must have been poured sometime Friday or Saturday. This leads from back door down OB hallway and goes across what is left of the lawn. Next step, probably more sidewalk and build up the parking lot. East retaining wall still needs work.

Weather: Weather man has been warning us that Friday was our last sun break for a week and boy did he ever MEAN it. Today it rained, it hailed, it blew sideways, it THUNDERED, and the power went out twice. Don't forget your raincoat!

Oh dear a couple of VERY BAD THINGS happened last night....

2011-03-11T11:53:00.000-08:00

First of all I downloaded a couple sample books from Amazon and turned on my Kindle to start reading.

Okay fine, page two...

um no go right,

no go left,

no go up,

no go down,

no NOTHING. AND I can't turn it OFF! Creeps me out!

KINDLE. IS. DEAD. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amazon help page for Kindle is obviously for third generation only, not antiques like mine. I sent off an email and am encouraged to make a PHONE CALL to a real live technician. Jeez. I think it would be easier to just ORDER. A. NEW. KINDLE.

NEXT, I was awakened at 6:30 this morning by a phone call from my Idaho brother to be on the look out for a Tsunami due to an 8.9 earthquake in Japan. Thanks, Bro!

Local TV coverage was very good, however, the most we got was some muddy surf. Husband knew about the earthquake last night but he thought that since I was snor...um sleeping yeah sleeping that he would not disturb me.

HOLY MOLY! The backyard is starting to look like...like...

2011-03-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

A PARKING LOT!

LOOK THERE ARE FORMS FOR POURING A CEMENT SIDE WALK. Better get those "No skateboarding" signs ready.