SUNDAY LUNCH AT WORK

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...

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

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....

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

 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

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!

IS THAT A BLOSSOM I SEE?

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...

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

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

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

 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!