The Abbot of Unreason

Return to Norman

2012-01-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

It looks like we have some apple crime scene investigators.

Uh-oh.

Oh, dear, a sad crab.

Wonder what happened.

I wasn't going to bring out the wee toaty explorers on this particular trip because it was so close to the last trip, but I walked past the site on the way to the customer. The crab was gone, but he left his suitcase behind.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

Room with a View: Norman, OK

2012-01-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

This time, I'm on the other side of the hotel.

All Aboard!

2012-01-22T16:30:00.000-08:00

Well, we finally got some weather up in these parts, and though it only rained down here, I figured there'd be snow up the hill, so we got to finally do something I've wanted to do since we moved here: take a train ride from Colfax through the snow to Reno. It was a lot of fun, and here are a bunch of pictures of the ride. Stick with me to the end to get the little bit of fame that was added to my list on the trip.

We started at Colfax. There's one train a day. Ours was 45 minutes late.

The station in Colfax is not an active Amtrak facility (the train stops, but there is not an agent here); instead, it is filled with museum-stuff, like this beer that Wile E. Coyote would love.

At first, we were treated to some views of an un-snowy American River valley, which was draped with clouds.

But we soon got up into snow country, with dramatic skies. We had to find regular seats first and have our tickets validated, but then we could rush down to the viewing/lounge car. The car gave great views, with windows in front and above.

But not everybody was interested in the outside world. They just took up viewing space.

The best pictures came from the other side of Truckee. This is the Truckee River.

The snow started to smear the windows a bit on the downside.

We stayed at Harrah's, where we played a little poker. We were too early to see either of these excellent acts (Steelin Dan and Aeromyth are scheduled for February, it seems).

But we did stop by the Hash House A-Go-Go restaurant, which was fun. This is the breakfast menu. I didn't try the O'Hare of the dog.

On the return trip the next day, we started with a bit of sun. The Nevada side of the Sierras is very different from the western slopes.

The blue sky made for dramatic contrast.

Interstate 80 cuts a nice line across this hill.

By the time we got back up to Donner Lake, the skies were less congenial.

And it was hard to get a good look at Spaulding, but it looks like there's a little bit of ice on it.

So the trip had a volunteer from the California Railroad Museum along to narrate. He told us many interesting things. At Lake Spaulding yesterday, he mentioned that some interns had told him it was a great source for trout. When I saw him in the snack area, I told him that I thought Lake Spaulding was the best lake for kayaking in Nevada County.

The next day, when we got to Spaulding, he told the passengers: "Yesterday, a man stopped by to tell me that he had been kayaking on every lake in the Seven Western States and Lake Spaulding was by far the best."

Not sure how we went from best in the county to this inflated view of my kayaking experience, but I guess that's how legends are made!

I overheard the woman next to me saying on her phone that he hadn't yet told the bear story, and she was very, very disappointed. I'm disappointed, too; I have no idea what the bear story was.

Room With a View: Reno, NV

2012-01-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

Not a work trip, but I'll stick it in this series anyway because I thought the sky was so lovely this morning.

Intersection Question for the Locals

2012-01-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

OK, here's a question: Say you're coming out of that Walgreen's down at the intersection of Sutton and Brunswick and you want to turn right from Sutton onto Brunswick. They put in that new lane and put up a traffic light. Are you allowed to turn right on red there? On the one hand the light is a solid red like the normal light and so one might think a right-on-red is appropriate. On the other hand, the light is obviously just for that lane because there is no opportunity to go forward and the green light is an arrow.

Beeping motorists want to know!

Must Be Nice

2012-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

So Assemblyman Dan Logue needs to find a place to live so he can be in a district that he wants to represent. He was going to live in his Penn Valley house. But maybe the 3rd Assembly District is more attractive.

"I have 10 houses in the 3rd Assembly District, so I am just going to pick one of the houses that I already own and we will be residing there," Logue said.

(Emphasis mine.) I try not to get too political here on my pinko-commie blog, but geez, that 10 just jumped out at me. Ten houses in one district alone, but that's not all the houses he owns. We've gotten used to our "representatives" being all rich and stuff, but wow.

And, sure, I move around a lot. But I'm having trouble believing that the spirit of the law requiring you to be registered in the district you'd like to represent was about making sure you have a proper mailing address. I've now lived here in Nevada City for two years and I wouldn't claim to understand enough of the community to try and represent even just the city let alone the district.

But I'll have lived in my house longer than that rep will have "lived" in his.

What a world.

Art Elsewhere: Movies from an Alternate Universe

2012-01-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's because we just released the Team Movie Retrospective Podcast for the 1960 original Ocean's 11, but I think this project is cool.

So I went forward with this theme; what if movies we were all familiar with were made a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it?

Follow the link to see other posters.

A Trip to DisneyLand

2012-01-16T15:22:00.000-08:00

A quick trip to Disneyland over the weekend meant an extra set of wee toaty explorers.

Any time you travel with a flock, they tend to get separated.

Click the "Read more" to get an idea where in the park they wound up.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

A Long Way from Home - Norman, Oklahoma

2012-01-12T05:40:00.000-08:00

Norman, Oklahoma is just outside Oklahoma City.

It's a long way from home for this wee toaty explorer.

I think he wanted to take that left in Albuquerque.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

A Room with a View: Norman, Oklahoma

2012-01-11T19:22:00.000-08:00

Another in my series of pictures taken through my hotel window. I'm looking forward to the days getting long enough that I have time to take a full daylight picture, though I can't say there'd be much of a view no matter the light.

It doesn't help that it's cold enough to put a fog on the window.

Pseudo Science

2012-01-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of pseudonyms in social networks. I blog under a pseudonym, I refuse to facebook under my name, and I comment consistently under the same pseudonym. If I were not operating under a pseudonym, at least half of the material on this blog would not exist (decide on your own whether that's valuable to you or not) and I doubt I'd have left a comment on anybody else's posts anywhere.

There are a lot of reasons to be pseudonymous, but for me the main one is the way in which it encourages honesty and openness. Isn't that weird?

Over at Disqus, they believe they've got the data to show that pseudonyms lead to more and better conversations. What do you think?

found via Flowing Data

Renovations Orphaned

2012-01-10T08:27:00.000-08:00

The story I wrote that took place in Nevada City and was accepted for an anthology but then the anthology publisher closed down but then the editor took to another publisher and they started planning has just been orphaned again -- the new publisher got skittish about contracts and now the book will not be published. Still, I think I might call that two acceptances, though not two sales.

I have one other acceptance from last year, so we'll see if it makes it to payment/publishing.

Life is a Highway

2012-01-09T13:29:00.001-08:00

Last week, Google Maps started defaulting to different routes for getting down the hill. Used to be, it would suggest going all the way down 49 through Auburn to get to 80 on the way to Sacramento, but this weekend, it told me to go through Colfax.

Today, it's telling me to jig off onto Dog Bar Road to get to Auburn.

Is the construction that bad?

And So Another Birthday Blows By

2012-01-09T02:12:00.000-08:00

It turns out I have the same day of birth (though not date of birth) as Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. She might be better known to you commoners as Kate Middleton. I'm trying to figure out if this means I should go into my lifelong dream of making hats.

I'll spare you that for today. It is time for a quick review of birthday activities.

This year, my birthday tree is bound to befuddle the deer. That's right, I bought a stick and planted it. This poor tree has no branches at all. That has to mean it will fare better than last year's apple, which had branches that were apparently awfully tasty. I hope it does better than the almond tree from two years ago: I planted this walnut tree in its hole.

So, what's a birthday without a little exotic flavor? In this case, it was a strange combination of American and Peruvian: the Waffle Kings/Machu Picchu restaurant down in Sacramento. Is it waffles or is it Peruvian? The answer is YES. But don't mix them. Oh, no. There are two separate menus and you have to ask for the one you want.

Still, it was very good.

After that, we took a drive around and wound up farther down 49 at Jackson. It's a nice little town that looks a lot like Nevada City without so many hills (but plus a huge casino just outside town).

It also had a huge lawn statue store.

Which had weird bears and huge turtles.

And there are creepy little children.

The real gem of Jackson is its used bookstore, Hein & Co.

After the used bookstore, we took a long drive along 88 and into Nevada, up through Carson City to Reno and then back home along I-80. There are some very interesting terrain changes along that route. And the moon was awfully bright.

Meme for Me

2012-01-05T12:54:00.000-08:00

Now that last year is done, I can properly do this meme. (Is it a meme any more if it is just some exercise someone thought up four years ago? Do we do memes any more? Remember when one blogger would do some task, call it a meme, and then tag another blogger to do the same? Whatever happened to memes? Is it just that I don't do Facebook and they've all moved over there? Maybe it's that Facebook and Tumblr have made us more likely to copy and link than to do? How many sentences can I put into a parenthetical without taking over the entire post?)

At any rate, the idea here is that we go back through the posts of last year and tie the first sentence of each month's posts to the last sentence in that month. And wa-la we have a magic thing of somethingness.

That's writer talk for go back and put in a good turn of phrase later.

January: I think that tweeting has done something to my brain so that I'm not able to think in long form any more. Lovely morning.

February: I have a bad case of bachelor fridge today. Yeah, I think I'd want to turn the channel, too.

March: Well, we got us a big ole dump of the white stuff, didn't we? But at least that's where you'll see the metal creatures hanging out.

April: (Colfax, Please Explain.) I removed a screw. The hills here, people, are brutal.

May: Well, I'm back in Campbell, almost exactly a year after my last visit. I'll bet this sign is not up today!

June: So there's a Twitter feed over there on the right side of this here blog site. No curry pizza for me this trip.

July: Well, the rain finally stopped, which means this little explorer got a rude awakening. And I feel much better.

August: Where do you have to be sitting to take this picture? I have to say, though, that Spaulding is still my favorite Nevada County lake, if only because Lake Valley Reservoir is over in Placer County!

September: There's a rather nice path in the woods in the county. Nobody know where to get money off the ceiling up on the mountain?

October: OK, I think this is going to be hard, partly because it's moving fast. We'll see what the year looks like 12 months from now.

November: Hey, folks, time for another exciting indiComic (indiToon?). I'd ride it, for sure.

December: Another episode in my current series of taking pictures from my hotel rooms: When I heard the Safeway had some heirloom green tomatoes, I knew there was only one thing I could do.

Where in Nevada County: Blimp

2012-01-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Wizard Extreme

2012-01-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

So, a little over a year ago, I had a gig in Germany and the participants very very graciously gave me a game as a gift. I was so touched, but I haven't played it yet because it came with instructions only in German.

I did try to get Google translate to let me know what the rules were by typing in a paragraph at a time. Sadly, a lot of the result looked like this:

And as if predicted of the passes would be not already difficult enough, gives it additionally still the figure of the incalculable Schwarzmagiers. It has the task, the play of the others associates to disturb. Who has the few points of punishing after several play rounds, is winner and to the Magier of the first stage is appointed.

Well, yesterday I finally took some time to sit down and sift through the rough translation and the card deck to see if I couldn't make a better go of the rules. The game has a structure similar to one my family played a lot when I was growing up. It was called Stab or Do Your Wife Dirt. It's a trick-taking game that requires some prediction and also has one player performing a spoiler role. In Stab, it is always the dealer playing the spoiler role. In this case, the role is voluntary. Since my friends are relatively nice, I'm betting we'll not see it played much.

Here are my interpretation of the rules (as first translated from German by Google and refined by me):

Wizard Extreme

Translated Game Rules

Caveat: keep in mind that I don't know German! This is a best guess. Also, I was pretty loose switching between calling each player a "player" and a "wizard."

The Task

The wizards at the magic academy face a new challenge. Each wizard must predict the number and color of tricks he/she will take. This would be difficult enough, but there is also the Black Wizard who has the job of disturbing the other wizards' plans.

Preparation

Shuffle and deal out the following cards, depending on the number of players:

3 players: the 1-9 cards
4 players: the 1-12 cards
5 players: all 75 cards

Place the Black Wizard (Schwarzmagier) and 27 seals in the center of the table.

Play is divided into two sections: Prediction and Trick-taking

Prediction

Starting with the player to the right of the dealer and continuing clockwise, each player will either

Collect the number of each color of seals that represent the tricks the player thinks he/she will be able to win (it is allowed to take no seals; it is not allowed to take the white seals), OR
Take the Black Wizard (only one player can take the Black Wizard; the Black Wizard does not have to be taken)

The white seals act as jokers, but a player cannot take a white seal directly from the pot. White seals come into play when a player wants a certain number of colored seals, but there are not enough left in the pot. In this case, the player takes the number of colored seals he/she wants from another player and replaces that player's colored seals with white ones.

Trick-taking/Card Play

After the predictions are made, the player to the dealer's right can play any card from his/her hand. The next player clockwise will play a card from his/her hand. The played card must match the color of the first played card if the player has one. Otherwise, the player may play any card from his or her hand.

The red cards act as trump.

The trick is taken by the wizard who played the highest trump card. If no trump card was played, then the trick is taken by the wizard who played the highest card of the color that was lead.

The player who wins the trick puts a token of the lead color back into the pot and begins the next round with any card in his/her hand. If the hand was won with the red trump, then the player can put a red seal in or a seal of the lead color. If the wizard did not have an appropriately colored token (or joker), then the player must take a black token from the pot. The exception to this is the Black Wizard. The Black Wizard takes no seals. Keep in mind that there are only six black seals, so only six can be collected.

Scoring

Take score when all hands are empty. Players who did not take the Black Wizard are given:

2 points per colored seal
3 points per black seal

The Black Wizard player (if there is one), begins with 4 points. Subtract one point for each black seal another player ended with, to a minimum of 0. (The Black Wizard cannot be given a negative score.)

Deal moves in a clockwise direction.

Ending the Game

The game is ended after a set number of hands ( 6 rounds for 3 players, 4 rounds for 4 players, 5 rounds for 5 players ). The player with the fewest "points of punishing (Strafpunte)" wins.

I didn't type any of the alternate rules. I think I might suggest that the dealer always has to be the Black Mage, since everybody deals the same number of hands.

Books Read in 2011

2012-01-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

Not really in the mood to do the annual review of my activities, but here's a picture of the 52 books I read last year.

BSFGT

2011-12-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

So, I have a confession to make. I don't particularly like tomatoes. Oh, I love tomato sauce and ketchup, but I don't like tomatoes in their natural state. Usually, I order a BLT without the T. But if I'm lucky, I can find a place that will replace T with FGT. (This one below also replaced the lettuce with spinach.)

A good green tomato is tangy and solid. A fried green tomato is delicious. When I heard the Safeway had some heirloom green tomatoes, I knew there was only one thing I could do.

Room With a View: Grants, New Mexico

2011-12-28T17:37:00.001-08:00

Where in Nevada County: It's Not a Disney Ride

2011-12-26T08:34:00.000-08:00

Where in Nevada County can you find Flume 27?

In Search of Alpha

2011-12-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

So a while back I went on a fruitless search for the Omega mine. I was much more successful on the 23rd in finding the Alpha mine. Alpha and Omega were mines just the other side of Washington, California. The mines in our area, for the most part, were not the sort of square-shaft coal thing I grew up believing in. Instead, we had the surface destruction of placer mining, where huge water canons washed away layers of mountainside, pushing the run-off into long sluices.

So when you find the remnants of one of these mines, it's generally a pile of rocks with some water features. What caught my eye first, though, were the manzanita. I love the way the red and gray branches twine. (It's worth clicking on to make it bigger.)

Of course, the Alpha diggins had plenty of rocks.

And a water feature.

But really, it's just beautiful to walk around inside the National Forest.

And so my streak for the December Photo Project comes to a close on the 23rd. Both the 24th and 25th failed to remind me to take pictures and tomorrow I will be spending most of the day traveling to a remote part of New Mexico, which is so covered with snow, I'm not really expecting to find any wee toaty explorers.

SMF

2011-12-23T19:52:00.000-08:00

The only pictures I took yesterday were at the very poorly designed new terminal for Sacramento airport. I was stuck at the end of this crowd:

It was a little bit after midnight and only one of the two tiny trams was working. There is no other option for civilians to exit the terminal except by these cars.

It took about 30 minutes for this whole mess to clear on the one tram. I waited to keep from getting squished. (Some employees snuck around to the exit side of the cars to get first crack at entering the trams.)

I'm sorry, SMF, but your terminal stinks. When you enter from the garage, there's no way to see which airline is at which ticket counter without walking in front of each one, there is not a direct escalator from the baggage claim back up to the garage level, every line has the nekkid TSA scanners, and these trams are already too small even before they break down.

Des Moines, Iowa

2011-12-21T19:24:00.001-08:00

This little guy has decided to brave the snow.

Looks like he's making the crew work.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

Room With a View: Clive, Iowa

2011-12-20T18:56:00.000-08:00

This time of year, it's hard to be in the hotel when it's still light enough to take a picture out the window.

For both the room with a view project and the December Photo Project.

Airport Wreath

2011-12-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

My 19 December offering for the December Photo Project. With all the traveling, I didn't get much of a chance to take pictures. Still, here's a holiday wreath at the old terminal.

Where in Nevada County: One Dollar Rooms

2011-12-19T03:56:00.000-08:00

Where in Nevada County did Dan Smith provide $1 steam-heated rooms?

Accepted!

2011-12-18T19:11:00.001-08:00

Submission accepted.

Cookies

2011-12-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

More cooking!

I had a hankering for my grandmother's candy cane cookies. So I bugged my aunt and got the recipe.

It was a lot more work to roll out and twist them then I thought it would be. Plus, I got red food coloring all over my fingers.

Somehow, the red was harder to get off my skin than the blue I used for the dreidels I made with the same dough.

After a bit of baking and a dusting with powdered sugar, they came out tasting fine.

The powdered sugar tended to obscure the letters on the dreidels. Also, the blue food coloring gave me green cookies!

But they still tasted just as good!

Harvey?

2011-12-18T12:59:00.001-08:00

The wicked cool photos from the indicommons world-wide museums & archives feed continue with this 1946 picture of Sharon Monts-DeOca and her first Christmas present.

Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida, 500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250 USA. Contact: 850-245-6700. Archives@dos.state.fl.us Persistent URL: www.floridamemory.com/items/show/64833

Some Kind of Aztec Symbol?

2011-12-17T21:42:00.000-08:00

Nope, it's just another bit of mining paraphernalia, covered with Christmas lights.

My 17 December offering for the December Photo Project.

MicroLending

2011-12-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I tried to go to a micro-lending party, but I was stymied. Grass Valley is overrun with folks tonight. In a fruitless search for parking, I nearly ran over 16 kids, almost got hit by six drivers not paying attention, and something else bad. I don't know what that was, but you should have a list of three bad things for a sentence to be funny.

I hope that they got the foot traffic they were after and that some dream-filled entrepreneurs found some funding.

Baby Burger Bites

2011-12-16T19:46:00.000-08:00

On days where I don't make it out of the house, you get pictures of food for the December Photo Project.

Today I had a craving for those little tiny burgers you can get at White Castle or Krystal (or in the olden days, at Little Tavern). Not having one of those around, I made my own.

And I made them double burgers! Buy 'em buy the sack.

The easy way to make these is to squish down meatballs and serve them on dinner rolls.

Top them off with tots, and you have a meal fit for a king, if the 1% knew how to live.

Yes, Virginia

2011-12-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

Oops. I forgot to upload yesterday's offering for the December Photo Project. I did, however, take this picture yesterday. This is in one of our local shop windows. Nicely set up.

Nature's Water

2011-12-14T21:18:00.000-08:00

My 14 December offering for the December Photo Project is a bit of Nature's Water. Drink it at your own risk, people.

I Made a Book Print!

2011-12-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

It seems that Scholastic is going to donate one book to a school for every "book print" generated on their website. My book print is the list of five books that influenced me most. I had a lot of trouble separating my favorite books from the ones most influential for me. I also had difficulty distinguishing between books that influenced me and books that I simply resonated with. I'm not sure I can really separate the two, so these five truly reflect the books that most say something about me, I think.

Here's mine:

In roughly chronological order of entry into my life (note how I subtly get around the limit to five books; also, the links are all to librarything):

The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster)

This is the first book I remember re-reading as a child. I selected it because I think it is a key example of books that are a source of the sense of wonder with imaginary worlds as well as playing games with language. I'm sure I loved Harold and the Purple Crayon, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and The Great Brain nearly as much, but this must have been the first. I think it's a direct predecessor to me of the kind of things I liked in A Wrinkle in Time, in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe and in The Hobbit.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles)

This book about friendship and envy is the earliest book I remember reading as schoolwork and finding myself unable to wait to read it at the same pace as the teacher directed. I may have done the same with Great Expectations. It's also an example of a book that I could dive into based completely on its atmosphere alone. There's another book that meant a lot to me around this time -- early high school/late junior high -- but I have no idea the title or author: it was a book about a kid who moves to a new town and interests a gang of other kids in playing with him by providing maps for imaginary driving in their broken-down car. I wish I knew what that book was.

Parable of the Sower (Octavia E. Butler)

This book reflects both my concern that the entire world is slowly tearing itself apart and my hope that small, self-organizing communities are a real answer. I think this rounded out my understanding of community and tolerance/compassion that (surprisingly) started with Speaker for the Dead.

Slapstick (Kurt Vonnegut)

I can't really put every single Vonnegut book into a list that's supposed to be five books long. Kurt Vonnegut taught me that important things could be said with, and people could be influenced by, a mix of humor and intelligence. Vonnegut's writing is what I most want my own writing to resemble. If I could mix together Vonnegut with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, PG Wodehouse, and Neil Gaiman, I'd have the perfect output.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (M.T. Anderson)

I so wish this book had been available when I was young. This is an amazing example of how much depth, world-building, and importance can be woven into a young adult or even middle grade novel. It had been a long time since I was overwhelmed by a book when I found this recently. Other books I wish were around or I had discovered when I was younger include The Book Thief, I Capture the Castle, and Northern Lights.

So that's my list. The only book I couldn't find a way to fit in was Diamond Age, which I love for its world building but also for how much it makes me want to make things.

What books influenced you?

In Search of Omega

2011-12-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

If there's one thing that the December Photo Project is doing for me, it's getting me out of the house. These next two weeks I'm doing a lot of coding from home, so an excuse to go outside (to take a picture) is probably doing wonders for my posture, if nothing else.

So in the middle of the day today, I wandered into the forest to try to locate the Omega mine. I never found it. It's so weird to be able to go somewhere so close to home where my phone loses signal so completely and I can't get a map. I think that Omega was down a side road that was marked No Trespassing -- Danger!

I know it's shocking, but one thing I found up there was a tree. It was this wicked cool dead tree, all alone in an area that was otherwise seemingly cleared of trees.

What was really neat was the same tree's innards.

Turns out I might have been wandering around on private land. It's so weird how the Tahoe National Forest is checkered with one-mile-square private reserves.

Cooking with the Abbot

2011-12-12T17:13:00.000-08:00

Well, this entry has a bad word in it, but you can blame my mother for that.

This is my 12 December offering for the December Photo Project, an attempt to take at least on picture every single day of the month. Today, I decided to cook.

Here are the ingredients:

This is a no-bake cookie recipe, but it does involve some boiling in a pot. It's probably the easiest cookie in the world to make.

The world calls these peanut butter-oatmeal-chocolate no bake cookies.

Mom called them turds.

I'm sorry.

Where in Nevada County: Signs of the Times

2011-12-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

Here's an easy one: Where in Nevada County can you yell at this duct tape?

Victorian Christmas

2011-12-11T23:40:00.000-08:00

Every year, Nevada City has a series of capitalistic nights and a few days, where they close the streets, a few people dress up, and a selling frenzy begins.

We call it Victorian Christmas.

This guy roasting chestnuts is my 11 December offering for the December Photo Project.

As a bonus, here is Father Christmas and presumably his wife. They are definitely taking seriously their responsibility for determining who is naughty and who is nice.

Put a Bow On It

2011-12-10T18:55:00.001-08:00

My 10 December offering for the December Photo Project.

Minding Your Ps and, Well, Just Your Ps

2011-12-09T08:21:00.001-08:00

For the December Photo Project, I'm uploading full-sized of all the pictures for the month. So for this 9 Dec offering, you get full-size Wee Toaty Explorers at no extra charge.

There are protestors everywhere these days. And that's a good thing. The only thing we are all born with is a voice to raise.

These little guys must be really agitated to be out in 30° weather on a grim Seattle morning.

I didn't think about placement and how it was going to be easier in this location to shoot everybody from the wrong side. Everybody has a good side for pictures and a bad side. Letters of the alphabet will usually look better from one side, though the As, Is and Os of the world are born with a natural symmetry. Damn them!

I learned an important lesson this time out: super gluing cardboard to toothpicks is not good enough. There isn't enough surface area on the toothpick to hold the cardboard. And a little breeze will rip that sign right off. I suppose it's just as well: those signs would have acted like sails if they held better and the wind was any stronger at all. Even when you don't think there's a wind, it's there, lurking.

Of course, you might really be wondering (or perhaps you've already guessed) what these little guys are protesting.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

Space Christmas

2011-12-08T19:06:00.001-08:00

This is my 8 December offering for the December Photo Project. There's a Christmas tree on top of the Space Needle.

Room with a View: Seattle

2011-12-07T21:25:00.001-08:00

Two projects at once: my own year-long project of pictures from hotel rooms and the December Photo Project.

It's a dreary day. I'd wait to see what tomorrow turns out to be, but really the dreary day and that electric bus really say "Seattle."

Farewell to Thee, Terminal B

2011-12-06T19:50:00.001-08:00

This is my 6 December offering for the December Photo Project. Click on the dpp link to see my entries for the month.

Album Cover

2011-12-06T19:37:00.001-08:00

More random fun with GIMP. Here's an album cover for the imaginary band Big Purple Enemy. I saw them on Names for Things and thought they deserved one.

With apologies to Creed and Grimace.

Lifting an angel statue

2011-12-06T10:47:00.001-08:00

There has been a good stream of interesting photos from the indicommons project this last week or so. What a wonderful project.Via Flickr:This photograph is from the Robert Hope collection.

Main Street Lights

2011-12-05T18:53:00.001-08:00

This is my 5 December entry for the December Photo Project. Click on the dpp link to see my entries for the month.

I love this house at the top of Main Street. I obviously need to learn how to take night-time pictures.

Saint Nicholas visiting mother and child

2011-12-05T08:27:00.001-08:00

Santa Claus is a peeping Tom in the Netherlands.

Where in Nevada County: Missing Lake

2011-12-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in Nevada County, there's a lake that's gone missing:

In June, I know that field was covered with water.

I suppose somebody opened the dam:

Where in Nevada County was that lake?

Berry Christmas

2011-12-04T19:52:00.001-08:00

This is my offering for the 4 December edition of the December Photo Project. These berries are up in the pine trees in the back yard of my house. Do you know what they are? I want to believe they are mistletoe. On the one hand, this plant seems to be growing on the branches of a tree like mistletoe does, but on the other hand mistletoe berries are white, IIRC. I have a memory of going into the woods in the Smokies as a kid to shoot mistletoe out of trees. I wonder if that's one of those implanted memories that plague me so...

Cemetery Rides

2011-12-03T20:48:00.001-08:00

Here is my 3 December offering for the December Photo Project. Click the DPP link to follow along this month.

Honestly

2011-12-03T20:33:00.001-08:00

Ira Glass was in Grass Valley tonight? What the? Wha? Why didn't anybody tell me? Honestly, usually the Twitter feeds and blogs I track are enough to warn me of this kind of thing. Internet, you have failed me.

Thanksgiving

2011-12-03T15:16:00.001-08:00

I just realized that you are all probably hanging onto the very edges of your seats waiting for me to tell you about the exciting Thanksgiving I had. I'm sorry to have taken so long to provide a recap. I've been traveling a little more again, which is nice for me, and I also have been forgetting things more often, which is probably not due to my steadily increasing age but rather to my what was I talking about again?

As many of you know, when we moved to the west coast, we started a new tradition of visiting places here that are named after places back there. The first year was a trip to Washington. Last year was a trip to Alleghany. This year, the Brunette is in Africa, so I let myself drive a little farther away to find a properly named place. I drove all the way to El Dorado County. (Yes, I was humming the Eagles song the entire time.)

El Dorado isn't an eastern name of course. But I've spent many nights in a place called this:

An interesting thing about going to a small town on Thanksgiving is that it means the place is usually deserted. It's like going to some ghost town that has only very recently been abandoned.

I don't know why, but I find the parking scheme in Georgetown to be fascinating. Of course I've seen parking in the center before, but usually with a raised median, never just against a double line like this. I guess it means that neither side gets the advantage of the parking.

Apparently, Georgetown was the site of a Civil War morgue. I didn't realize there was any fighting out this way back then.

I really liked some of the old machinery sitting around, too.

I saw a sign for a place just outside Georgetown.

How could I not check that out? I followed Volcanoville Road for a long, long time until it just sort of petered out. There wasn't much in the way of volcanic activity. There were a lot of signs showing concern about littering. And finally, there was this lonely desk:

Very-long-time readers from Maryland will understand that when I saw that I was driving on this road, I had to keep going to see where it went:

Not only have I lived in several places along Maryland's 193, but my paternal grandparents lived just off of it as well, though in a different county. Granddad built that big church at the intersection of 193 and 29. So, this Thanksgiving got a double-dip of nostalgia.

This year's trip completed the weather trifecta: first year was sunny, last year was snowy, and this year was full of rain and fog.

I wound up doing a big loop back down to Route 49 and came back through a place I like to call Steve McQueen:

And I stopped for a quick hike under the Foresthill Bridge, California's tallest.

Next time, I'll have to bring along my bike. There seem to be nice paths on both sides of the river. When it's not so foggy, getting under the bridge might give a pretty good view.

So, there you have it, my 2011 American Thanksgiving adventure on the other side of the American River. How was your Thanksgiving?

DPP - 2 Dec

2011-12-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

I'm late to the game, but I'll make it up! This is my first picture for the December Photo Project 2011. (I'll back date another one for the first.) It's what I found in the garage when I returned from Boulder.

Room with a View: Boulder, CO

2011-12-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

Another episode in my current series of taking pictures from my hotel rooms: This time we find a change in the weather. My first morning looked like this:

And a few days later, it looked like this:

Want

2011-11-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

Surely one of the nearby ski resorts could put one of these in to make some money in the off-season. I'd ride it, for sure:

Where in Nevada County: Please Come Again

2011-11-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't normally look at the backs of these signs, but I was sitting at a wee table waiting for lunch. Where in Nevada County can I see this sign?

Man, just sitting here gave me the munchies. (You might read that as a hint!)

Danger

2011-11-27T10:07:00.001-08:00

Something about the order of the words in this sign from the indicommons collection disturbs me. Should it be dangerous that they love their children?

Submission Transmitted

2011-11-24T20:10:00.001-08:00

Noted for future tracking. Submitted to the Bugs! anthology at Pill Hill Press.

Talk Crazy To Me

2011-11-24T17:10:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it feels like I have a sign on my back that says, "Talk crazy to me." Have I told you about these recent encounters?

Woodland

A few weeks ago, I used a free room to stay at the Hampton Inn in Woodland so I could ride my bike in the flatlands around Davis. People, there are places where the land is flat! And you can ride forever without getting out of breath, where your legs get tired before your lungs do. It was so nice.

But on the second day, the rain was too much and I took a walk around Woodland before driving home. In this little plaza in the middle of town, I was approached by an older woman. This is the exchange that happened:

SHE: Excuse me, I'm in need of some common sense.

ME: Ah.

SHE: Do you have any?

ME: A wee bit, maybe?

SHE: Well, I live in Woodland. But farther over that way. [Gestures with her hand in what seemed to me a random direction.] I had to turn onto Main Street and you know it takes forever at that intersection. There was a man there. He was dressed nicely. He asked for change. I offered to take him to a restaurant and buy him some food. He said he already had food. He wanted change for a blanket. He was dressed nicely, but I told him I didn't have any change and I drove into town. Now, I don't know what to do. Should I get some money and go back and give it to him? I don't want to. I feel terrible.

ME: Well, uh, I don't know. I guess it was pretty nice to offer to buy food. I don't think you should feel terrible.

SHE: OK. Thanks. My name is Helen. If I were running for something I'd ask for your vote.

ME: Yes.

SHE: The world's a mess and everybody blames it on the government.

ME: Yes, we've somehow forgotten that in a democracy the government is not really separate from the people.

SHE: Exactly! I found this article once called "We are the Nation." It was in a railroad magazine. I wrote to the railroad and got a lot of copies of it to give out to people. I'd give you one, but I only have one left. Well, I found a second one while cleaning, but it's all wrinkled.

ME: That's OK.

SHE: I'm not following you around, you know. I'm actually walking to my car.

ME: OK

And sure enough, she got into her big car parked at the curb and drove off.

Colusa

After leaving Woodland, I drove north and hit California 20 to follow it home. I hadn't been over this way, so I thought it would be interesting to see what lay on the road that goes through our fair city. I stopped in Colusa, which seemed like a nice small place, though it was kind of deserted. Everything seemed to shut down at 3, except for the bowling alley which opened at 4, with a happy hour! Since I had just watched The Big Lebowski again, it seemed only fitting to go in and take an hour on a lane. I think you can get away with bowling alone if you are any good, because it just looks like you're practicing. But I found myself wishing for the gutter bumpers. Still, I enjoyed it, Dude.

The place was run by a nice young guy who was friendly. We had this conversation:

HE: Where are you from?

ME: Nevada City. I wanted to see what was on the other end of 20.

HE: Yeah. What's the bowling like up there?

ME: I don't know. It seems like every time I go in, it's filled with league play. It was nice to get an hour in here.

HE: Oh, yeah. In a big prosperous place like Nevada City, you can support leagues. It's pretty dead here.

ME: OK

For out of towners, this is funny both because I don't think of us as all that prosperous and because the only bowling alley (which is in Grass Valley) is called "Prosperity Lanes."

Auburn

Today, as I was headed out on the annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage (more on that later), I stopped in the grocery store in Auburn for some cheese for tonight's tamale pie. (The picture is of the Best Buy in Auburn. At about 10:30 this morning, there were all these people already forming a line. Is the sale really that good? Are there really things left to buy that are that interesting?) At any rate, as I was coming out of the grocery store, a woman ran after me asking me to stop. I figured I had dropped something:

SHE: Sir! Sir!

ME: Yes?

SHE: I was searching on-line and I thought you looked familiar. Are you a doctor? I think I saw you.

ME: I'm sorry, uh, but no.

SHE: Oh. I was needing a doctor for my aunt and they're all off today.

ME: OK

Apparently, I end every conversation with, "OK." I am not a doctor, and I figured if there were some real problem, she could hit the hospital. I really, really wish I had said, "No, but I play one on TV." Staircase wit, people, staircase wit.

Colfax

2011-11-23T16:47:00.000-08:00

Where in Nevada County: Pictures from the Sky

2011-11-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, I had a bright idea: Go down to the party store, buy some helium balloons, attach my iPhone and take some pictures.

It took a lot more balloons than I expected. I did like one of the pictures I got, though. And it's even of me! Where in Nevada County am I standing?

What we learn from this image is that the Abbot is not so great at parking. How shameful.

The woman at the party store was helpful and at first we tried two dozen regular sized balloons, but they couldn't get the iPhone off the ground, so we added a few of her biggest balloons. (The best part was that she knew this was just for lifting a phone, but she insisted on doing that scissors stroke thing to get the ribbon to be curly.)

They still weren't strong enough to pick up my iPhone and the platform I had made. (It's just a picture frame with eye hooks, but it was still too heavy.) So I used two velcro straps (only one is in this picture) and attached the balloons to these metal shower curtain hooks.

And that was enough to get off the ground!

The wind was rougher than I expected (this is probably more of a summer activity in these parts), so the balloons would rise, but the wind would actually push them down (because of the force from the tether, I guess). Once, they got up pretty high.

So I went back to the party store to get two more big balloons. Then I went down to the park in Penn Valley, where the wind was harsher and the balloons immediately impaled themselves on a tree.

The balloons started popping and the line got tangled. I thought I'd lost my phone! But I eventually got it back. Not a single picture worked because the straps had covered the lens! And now I didn't have enough balloons to lift the phone any more, so I went home.

Mountain View

2011-11-19T15:29:00.001-08:00

Wow. I haven't done one of these since WorldCon in August? I'm just not traveling like I used to.
Well, this set is probably my favorite since the angry apples played with a doctor.

This is another in the continuing series of wee toaty explorers, a project to keep me busy while I'm on the road. A nice summary is here.

Room with a View: Mountain View, CA

2011-11-19T15:27:00.000-08:00

Can't really see any mountains. Most of the time it was too dark, anyway.

Where in Nevada County: Not Dan, I Assume?

2011-11-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

This ought to be on my street, but is not. Those quail (quails?) are so funny when they run. They'd be more graceful if they'd just use those wings to get out of the way of my car.

Where in Nevada County: Mooooooooo

2011-11-07T04:30:00.000-08:00

Where in Nevada County is there a house that always has a cow on the front lawn?

Sunday Cleanup

2011-11-06T17:28:00.000-08:00

Just going through pictures from this weekend and wanted to pull a couple out for your enjoyment.

You might remember my recent trip up to see the Basque tree carvings. On Saturday, I took the Brunette for another stomp through the snow and we found a few more. I'm pretty sure this one is not from the early part of the 20th century:

After dropping off the Brunette for another trip to Africa (she'll be back next year), I wandered over to look at Lake Berryessa because I've always wanted to see its famous spillway. Well, the spillway was fairly uninteresting because the water is so low this time of year. But on the way, I had to stop and take a picture of this place. I wish it was in Nevada County so I could make it part of that series...

Click either picture to make it bigger and take you to the slide show.

Whistling Season (Ivan Doig)

2011-11-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

I stare out the window of my home office and wonder. The ground that was brown for all the summer is, here at the edge of winter, green as Emerald Bay. Well, I think to myself, as green as I suspect Emerald Bay is, since we didn't quite make it there because of the crowds at the park and we went to Meeks instead.

Speaking of crowds, one seems to be forming in my very own back yard. Sure, it's only one wee lad, but still. One is the beginning of an infinite string of numbers, people. I stomp down the steps and out the back door.

"Oy!" I yell. "What is this, Occupy the Abbey?"

The crowd has doubled in size. Prasad, the boy I saw from the window, stands at the foot of a fence on which is perched that kid whose name I can never remember. Prasad adjusts his tie and stands as tall as his three feet will allow. I can tell he has been looking at my dead birthday tree and judging me.

"Have you come to visit my shrine to birthdays past?" I snarl.

"Our appearance before you today, sir," Prasad is always so polite, "was not a matter of our own volition. We are such stuff as dreams are made on."

"What?"

"He means," comes the voice atop the fence, "that we are not real."

"Well, that's what I've been trying to tell you for years!"

"Prasad's theory is that we have no existence aside from when you want to talk about a book -- "

"What's the first thing you remember?" Prasad wants to know.

"What? I don't know. I think it's my parents going off to a Redskins game and leaving me with my sister at --"

"Don't bother with that. Prasad is showing off by quoting plays."

"Oh, I liked Bye Bye Birdie, though I don't remember much of it."

"What was the last book you read?" the boy without a name asks. These kids are so inquisitive.

"I guess it was Whistling Season."

"There you go."

"What?"

"A key theme in that tome is that names are important and powerful things, more vital than mere labels. For example, there is a scene where the discussion of professional fisticuffs --"

"What?"

"Boxing."

"Ah."

"Different predictions for the outcome of the bout are proposed: when simply comparing skill and when comparing the assumed stage names."

"Hmm. And I have always resented that my friends never liked me enough to give me a nickname. I hope you are not here to invent a nickname for me."

"Actually, Prasad's theory is that your inability to remember my name is somehow significant here."

"Who says I can't remember your name? Perhaps I simply choose to eschew our culture's bondage to traditional nomenclature-assignment rituals. See what I did there? That use of 'eschew'? I can use big words, too."

"Six letters! It's not even a bingo in Scrabble."

"Look, it's not that I don't think you're important --"

"No, you're just not smart enough to remember."

"I forgot the question," Prasad says.

"Exactly," says the kid who chooses to insult me.

"Or maybe," i suggest with a huff. "Maybe the book is yet another example in a long line of American West stories where people who sound all smart and use big words and stuff are not to be trusted."

"You are thinking of Twain's Duke and Dauphin?"

"Actually I was thinking of The Great Brain, but you get my drift."

"There is certainly a level of flimflammery in the tradition," the unnamed boy remarks. "In this book, the high-falutin' characters have hearts of gold, no? I think you are simply feeling over-matched."

"There is no sin but ignorance," quotes Prasad.

"Innocence," the other boy corrects.

"Stop it," I say. "What I really wanted to talk about with respect to this book are the blurbs. I was having trouble seeing how the book could possibly be described as "courageous," as one of the reviewers does. But I think talking to you people takes a certain kind of courage."

"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than -- "

"Stop it! I'm going back inside. You two can leave or do whatever. Just don't break the fence or knock over my dead tree."

"When shall we three meet again?"

"I'm not listening!"

"Careful the things you say, Children will listen."

"Aaagh!" I slam the door and run upstairs. It takes a special kind of courage to run away from your imaginary friends.

Weird Weather We're Having?

2011-11-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

So I wrote a couple of little widgets for geektool to put information on my desktop. I started it because having multiple Google accounts was really confusing Google in a single browser and we use Google for our work email. One of the geeklets is a ruby script to pick up the weather and print out the current temperature. For a while, the XML feeds from Weather.com weren't providing current information for 95959 (which is Nevada City), so I was using Rough & Ready's zip.

Yes, we have a place called Rough & Ready. It is not named after a TV show, unlike some towns in New Mexico I could mention.

At any rate, yesterday the XML started returning some interesting temperatures:

I'm having trouble believing that it's so much warmer down there, unless there's a new volcano I haven't heard about.

Can't imagine what would return such a weird temperature for two days running, but at least the feed now seems to have Nevada City data, so I can switch to a closer zip.

Update 13 Nov 2011: Ugh. The weather channel now wants $18 to access current weather conditions, so I now have to switch to some other provider for data I already get for free just not in a convenient format. Looks like the closest NOAA is either Truckee or Beale, buh.

The Elegance of The Kitty Cat

2011-11-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I'm on a little GIMP kick. I saw this site called The Kitten Covers, and I thought maybe we should give it a try with a literary slant:

Nobody, I Mean Nobody Puts Ketchup on a Hot Dog

2011-11-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hey, folks, time for another exciting indiComic (indiToon?). Add your own caption/speech to the comments below.

An indiComic (indiToon?) is a photo that I yank from the inimitable indicommons project and add cartoonish speech/thought bubbles to. I know it's not exactly high-brow, but it is wicked cool that museums and archives across the world are putting their collections of old photographs out there for unrestricted use.
The original is from the State Library of New South Wales. This is Ballet star Helene Kirsova, at a train station in 1937 with a puppy and a bottle of tomato sauce. Can you guess the origin of this post's title?

Room with a View: Campbell, CA

2011-10-31T18:56:00.000-07:00

This might be interesting. For the next year, I'm going to take a picture from every hotel room I visit. We'll see what the year looks like 12 months from now.

Where in Nevada County: Landslide

2011-10-31T08:34:00.000-07:00

Where in Nevada County can you find this almost-overwhelmed hiking path?

While littering is reprehensible, you have to give them some credit for not taking the can of beer beyond the "No Alcoholic Beverages" sign.

By the way, this picture was taken before the earthquake.

Earthquake

2011-10-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I experienced my first California earthquake last night and thought I'd write something about it today. Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunately), there's little to say. It was fairly minor and it really didn't feel much different than when I was a kid living in a trailer next to the train tracks. The weird part was getting the rumble without the sound.

The center was 70 miles up the hill. Here it is on the google.

If You Were a Tree, What Kind of Tree Would You Be?

2011-10-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

Hey, folks, time for another exciting indiComic (indiToon?). Add your own caption/dialog to the comments below.

The original is from the National Archives of Norway on indicommons. This is actually Dagfinn Mannsåker, National Archivist, in his office in the 1970s.

Where in Nevada County: Monkey Rock

2011-10-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person who thinks this rock looks like a monkey face?

Yeah, I'll bet you see two people kissing, but I can't look at it without seeing a monkey.

This rock is just upstream from this bridge:

Which is near this painted rock:

So, where is this bridge in Nevada County? And for extra-special-bonus-bragging rights, what's the name of the beach closest to the monkey rock?

Room With A View

2011-10-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

This week's quick overnight trip might have given me the best work-trip hotel room view so far.

A Can of Cat

2011-10-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

Look what I made!

It's a thing for the cat. There are three levels inside.

All of the bits (except the fasteners) came from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, probably the most interesting store in the county.

The shell of the can once contained mustard.

The mustard might explain why the cat is not excited about visiting the new house I built him. (This is as far as he'll go inside it, and I had to put cat treats in there for him to get that far.)

Or it could just be because he's a cat.

Keeps on Ticking

2011-10-19T04:42:00.000-07:00

Another caption for an indicommons picture. Please put your own alternate caption into the comments.

The original is from The National Library of Ireland on The Commons. This is presumably Sady Anne Lloyd's pug.

Face the Final Curtain?

2011-10-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

I love this sign. Where can you visit The End in Nevada County?

How It Took Me Nearly 2 Hours to Go Five Miles

2011-10-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Folks, if you hadn't guessed yet, the 5 Mile House is doing German for October. Not really a big surprise.

I rode my bike up to the Harmony Ridge Market today. It's just on the other side of the road from the 5 Mile House. It took me 1 hour and 50 minutes to get there. But, in my defense, the route I took was longer than 5 miles.

It was 6 and a half.

I went up North Bloomfield Road and cut across Cooper Lane to Harmony Ridge Road to get back to 20 at the top of the switchbacks. Harmony Ridge Road starts off looking like this:

And then it gets worse. I wouldn't drive a car up that road; there's a good mile with 6-12" ruts running through it. I bonked about the time I got to the portion that's paved, which was a bad time because the road seems nearly vertical at that point.

The important number to focus on is not the 6 and whatever miles. It's the change in elevation. And when you take a route like North Bloomfield, it's up and down as you climb. I think 5 Mile House is about a thousand feet higher than my house. The best number to help with that is this: It took nearly two hours to go up the hill. The 5.03 miles back along 20?

16 minutes, 53 seconds.

I'm going to lay down now. Or maybe it's lie down. Who can remember when they're this beat?

Speed Racer

2011-10-13T16:18:00.001-07:00

There's a temporary speed sign at the intersection of East Broad and Main. In general, my car hits just under 20 coming around the corner (9 turning left from Main). I just blew through there on my bike.

Not bad. 'Course, I averaged about 3 mph the rest of the trip.

Forgot a Title

2011-10-12T16:55:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday, I was tromping around in the snow. On Sunday, I was out on the water on the kayak.

The water is low at Bullards Bar. This is the boat ramp:

The water is an interesting green:

Bullards has these neat outhouses on the water, for your convenience.

Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head

2011-10-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

Another caption for an indicommons picture. Please put your own alternate caption into the comments.

Lots of words! Click on the image to make it bigger like.

The original is from The National Library of Ireland on The Commons. We have Mr. Flood (of the Dublin Zoo) holding a lion cub. ~1936

Police Blotter

2011-10-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

I love the police blotter. I just forget to go look. Whenever I do, there's at least one that makes me smile. This is the one:

7:37 a.m. — A woman from the 400 block of Broad Street reported a dog had been barking all morning. Then she said it had been barking for three minutes, but she couldn't take it anymore. She said her husband, who is a nice guy, had written a letter, but the residents didn't care.

There's probably something sweet about her saying her husband is a nice guy, but what I hear in my head is sarcasm: That bozo is too nice for his own good. He wrote those losers a letter! Can you imagine? In this day and age, a letter! Hasn't he heard of Facebook? If I were a man, I'd go over and poke those folks, let me tell you. I should have run off with Ty the biker dude instead of marrying a nice accountant. I can't take this anymore.

Now, this is the woman she wishes she could emulate:

9:23 a.m. — A woman reported hunting on her property on Austin Ranch Road and finding people on her land, guarding a marijuana grow, who were armed. She reportedly took a gun away from someone.

From someone?

Dendroglyphs? Arborglyphs?

2011-10-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Old carvings in rocks are called petroglyphs. ("Pointing a finger at eternity. I'm sitting in the middle of this ecstasy.") So what do you call ancient carvings in tree trunks?

I read on the Outside Inn's website about the Basque shepherds who carved into the aspen trees up the hill a bit. I thought it would be a fun little drive, so I drove up to just north of Truckee and took a wander through the woods. I had hoped that this would give me something interesting for the Where in Nevada County series, but these trees are in Sierra county.

At least the ones I found were in Sierra County. And it was snowy:

I found a few symbolic carvings.

But for the most part, I just found names and dates.

Some things I couldn't decide whether they were human-made or not.

And there were a few that I wondered if they weren't a bit more modern than the '30s-'70s.

Keep in mind that it is illegal to carve into trees in the Tahoe National Forest. But they do staple dingos to the trees up there.

It was fun to take a walk around the woods, but it might be worth finding a guide who knows where the more interesting ones are.

Where in Nevada County: The Count

2011-10-10T06:22:00.000-07:00

I was served a sugar-dusted sandwich with jelly on the side while overlooking this waterfall. Where in Nevada County can I do that?

Getting Ahead

2011-10-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Another caption for another indicommons picture. Please put your own alternate caption into the comments.

The original is from the National Library of Ireland on The Commons. The photo is from 'Street Life in London', 1877, by John Thompson and Adolphe Smith.

The Enemy's Gate Is Down!

2011-10-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Since this week's WiNC was so easy (though I thought it would be impossible), here is some more general trivia.

Yesterday, we celebrated Cucumber's birthday with a laser tag picnic. I brought flags. Several people asked what the "Renaissance Faire-looking one was."

So, what do you think these two flags are? Perhaps one is more obvious than the other.

When we gathered my team around one of the blow-up obstacles, I shouted out the title of this post: "The enemy's gate is down!" Everybody looked at me like I had grown a second head. Actually, that's not true. A few just continued whatever conversation they were in. At any rate, without Googling, tell me the reference.

Where in Nevada County: Destiny

2011-10-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

OK, I think this is going to be hard, partly because it's moving fast. Where in Nevada City was I when I took these pictures?

Partial credit for just guessing what the heck is happening in these pictures.

Fall

2011-09-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

Another sign of fall: The water at Scotts Flat Lake is very low and the trees are growing rocks:

Hey, there aren't any guesses for this week's "Where in Nevada County" entry. Nobody know where to get money off the ceiling up on the mountain?

Get Your Motor Running

2011-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Another caption for another indicommons picture. Please put your own alternate caption into the comments.

The original is from The State Library of Queensland on The Commons.

Où est la Banque?

2011-09-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

Was this already a branch of Tri-Counties Bank or did they really get a sign up this quickly? Bank failures aren't good, except maybe for the sign companies.

Maybe This Should Be the Team Movie

2011-09-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Playing Horse

2011-09-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

Last week was the annual Draft Horse Classic.

Enjoy!

This is either the latest in equine superhero attire or a way to keep flies out of your eyes.

The flowers were bright this year.

I was going to use this as the front page, but the masked horse was too much to pass on.

We may not have a Polish festival, but I can still get a Polish sausage.

This cupcake from Cake for Giants was amazing. It was a moist chocolate cake with caramel and sea salt. I want three more.

Where in Nevada County: Money

2011-09-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here's some money on a ceiling. Where in Nevada County can you find this money?

You Know. For Kids!

2011-09-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Another caption for another indicommons picture. Please put your own alternate caption into the comments. Let's see if I can keep this up as a weekly task, too.

The original is from the National Library of Ireland on The Commons.

Italian Festival and Constitution Day

2011-09-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we wandered over to the Italian Festival, where there was bocce ball!

Those are some nice courts over at Gateway Park. There was good food and even a bit of cannoli. The Goomba's booth was the most conscientious about keeping money separate from hands that touched food. Good job Goomba's!

But mostly I just sat and watched the bowlers:

A lot of people would come over and stand behind me as they watched the matches. They'd invariably try take guesses at the rules. I tried to explain that bocce is like curling without the sweeping, but that didn't seem to help anyone.

There was one wee kerfuffle on the court about the rules.

But all involved seemed to conduct themselves with adequate composure.

The only real question left to me now is: Where is my Polish festival? I'd like my heritage honored, too! I'm not sure what game is particularly Polish. Grandma never really stressed her Polishness. She never even made pierogies. Of course, we would also require a Scottish festival (caber tossing!), an Irish festival (road bowling!), and a German festival (Settlers of Catan!)

As I downloaded pictures from the bocce tournament, I realized that I hadn't ever posted the Constitution Day Parade pictures. The parade was pretty much the same as last year, so I didn't take a lot of pictures. I think Senator Sargent was added to the group of marching presidents to celebrate his writing of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution this year, but I didn't get a picture of him.

I did get a pretty good picture of the fife corps warming up:

As well as some Vikings wondering when their festival is going to be held:

And finally, there was a nice fly-over:

Where in Nevada County: Flowers

2011-09-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

Aww, pretty metal flowers. Where are they?

It was hard to position so that the pictures didn't catch an identifying road sign or two.