Monthly Archives: June 2008

Cooled Down & Powell Butte

It has cooled down nicely.  It didn’t get nearly as hot as it did yesterday.  Yesterday we got up to 100degrees and today about 87….so much better. And it didn’t last, it started to cool down around 6pm.  Yesterday it was getting hotter at that time…icks.

The clouds moved in and it started to rumbled.  But since it was finally nice, I went for a walk which meant of course that it started to rain.  On the way back there was a huge clap of thunder.  Next thing I know my hubby was calling me to make sure I was on the way home.  I just heard it, but he saw the lightening.  I felt perfectly safe and not worried, but some folks south of us got hit :  Two men struck by lightning while standing under trees in Damascus =(

We got through this heat a lot better then last time.  But we were better prepared…we had our 2 fans and got air moving, then spent the hottest part of the day downstairs.  That was a pain, because I can do some work but the work that I needed to do is a hard to do down there…..I need my desk and chair, a proper set up.

Tomorrow and the next day will be nothing but focus on work…..icks.

Bizarre origins of wedding traditions

Talk about your runaway brides — the original duty of a “Best Man” was to serve as armed backup for the groom in case he had to resort to kidnapping his intended bride away from disapproving parents. The “best” part of that title refers to his skill with a sword, should the need arise. (You wouldn’t want to take the “just okay” member of your weapon-wielding posse with you to steal yourself a wife, would you?)

The best man stands guard next to the groom right up through the exchange of vows (and later, outside the newlyweds’ bedroom door), just in case anyone should attack or if a non-acquiescent bride should try to make a run for it.

It’s said that feisty groups like the Huns, Goths and Visigoths took so many brides by force that they kept a cache of weapons stored beneath the floorboards of churches for convenience.

**That is kind of whacked.  I’m so glad that the meaning of the best man as changed…..

This are pictures that we took while at Powell Butte I think most of them are Harold’s work, I’ve put the our pictures together and have lost track.

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Mt St Helens

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Daisy Field

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 Mt Adams Hiding in the background.

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 Mt Hood through meadow grass.

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 More daisies

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 Mt Hood

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 Meadow Field

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 Mt Hood zoomed in.

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 Mt Jefferson

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 A young buck with velvet antlers

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Wooded area of Powell Butte.

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Self portrait.  =)

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How can you not fall in love with this scencery?  And we are just addicted of trying to get that perfect picture of Mt Hood.

Babble & Politics

Some of my muscles are feeling a little better.  My ass and thigh muscles still hurt, then my trainer worked out my arms today…..so I bet I’ll be feeling them tomorrow.  That is ok, my trainer spent most of the time laughing at me as I winced to move around…..lol

It was cool this morning, but you could feel it warming up.  My browser weather add on is saying it is 87 degrees…suppose to hit 100 tomorrow, the record for this date is 95…not fun, without air.  =(

I got some work done today, not as much as I needed to do.  I may do some tonight, not sure.  I have a bunch of pictures that I want to edit from the park we went to the other day.   Either way, I do have to get some work taken care of this weekend since payroll will need to be ordered Monday night.

I kind of want to go downstairs and kind of don’t.  Uphere is it a little warmer, but you get some sun and the fact that starting tomorrow we will be downstairs for the weekend due to the heat.

My mom called yesterday to chat and say hi.  =)  But then she had to rub in my face that she has lost more weight….meanie….lol

Clinton barbs resonate among working women

 Gatta, of Rutgers, thinks one very positive thing to come from Clinton’s campaign is that working women saw that the kind of things they experience in the workplace — whether it is overtly sexist jokes or more subtle barbs — are also experienced even by a woman at the highest career levels.

“I think women related to Hillary on that, that in their own lives they’ve experienced different degrees of sexism,” she said.

Similarly, if a woman can rise as high in her career as Callan and still find her appearance being discussed, it resonates with working women who face similar issues in their own jobs, Gatta says.

The days when women were routinely called derogatory names or overtly denied promotions because of their gender are largely over, and women now enjoy more protection from discrimination in the workplace.

Still, Gatta thinks Clinton’s campaign highlighted the more subtle ways in which women are undermined in the workplace. For example, Clinton was often referred to by her first, rather than her last, name — the same thing that often happened to Carly Fiorina during her tumultuous tenure as head of Hewlett-Packard. Gatta, who has the same experience herself sometimes, thinks that can be a way of taking a woman less seriously.

**Maybe with this campaign younger women will finally start to be able to see that sexism still exists and it effects them.  Many of this generation of women take it for grant how far we have come, but don’t seem to see that there is still so much farther we need to go for true equality.

Is media skewering badly behaved female stars?

But Negra said the coverage of women is more judgmental, casting wayward female celebrities as “cautionary tales.” She said coverage of female celebs is less likely to celebrate a troubled star’s triumphant comeback, the way Downey has been lauded for “Iron Man” or Owen Wilson has been shown returning to work after a reported suicide attempt.

“We seem to have a lot more fixed ideas about what women’s lives should be like than we do of men,” she said.

“When we use female celebrities this way, we see them failing and struggling, they serve as proof that for women the work-life balance is impossible. Can you have it all? The answer these stories give again and again is ‘absolutely not.”’

**More on sexism in the media and society.  As far as I’m concerned people enjoy seeing women brought down.  Because it enforces the culture that women shouldn’t want it all and shouldn’t put themselves higher then men.  They aren’t suppose to be to have ambition or success….that is a “man’s” place.   Heaven forbid if a woman doesn’t stay in the kitchen and make babies.

Now I sure in hell don’t care of the Paris Hiltons and Spears, they totally push feminism back.  But the gossip feeding public loves to tear women down….they barely touched on men when they screw up.

Supreme Court Shoots Down D.C. Gun Ban

Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to keep and carry a gun. The decision will affect gun control laws across the country.

“We hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violated the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

He addressed the “problem of handgun violence” by saying there are a “variety of tools” such as “measures regulating handguns” available. But he said that the “enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” which includes measures such as an “absolute prohibition of handguns.”

**This does not surprise me.  Absolute prohibition of handguns never seem like it would hold up…..but they have stated that measure regulating handguns as a tool for the problem of violence.

Now I firmly believe in the right to own a REASONABLE gun/rifle.  I do not believe in the right for everyone to own a frigging AK-47….that is nuts.  That is not for self-defense and that is not of hunting.  Unless you are a collector that has had a background check and mental evaluation….you shouldn’t own one. Which brings up something I do believe in, background checks with waiting periods, and mental evaluations (within reason…nothing way out there).  Things within reason.

I also believe in gun education and handling.  To me, there is no issue in families to raise their kids with guns if they teach responsible handling.  And many families that grew up with them usually do.  It has been the right of passage for many generations in families to teach the kids how to hunt.

John Roberts’ Favor To Obama

It’s still too early to judge Roberts’s tenure, but it seems increasingly clear that liberals dodged a bullet when President Bush nominated him to be chief justice. Instead of siding with conservative extremists like Clarence Thomas, who are eager to press the limits of the so-called Constitution in Exile, resurrecting limits on federal power whenever possible, Roberts prefers narrow opinions that can attract support from the center. Liberals ought to applaud this instinct because, even if Barack Obama gets to appoint the next justice or two, it’s the only thing standing between them and a Court eager to roll back progressive reforms.

Why was Roberts successful in uniting the Court this year? Part of the reason, as Orin Kerr of George Washington University recently observed, is that he has done exactly what he said he would do in 2006: namely, convince moderate liberals and conservatives that unanimity is in their interest. In particular, Roberts has been more willing than his predecessor to assign plurality (rather than majority) opinions. In these cases, Roberts begins with the three center-right conservatives (himself, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito) and tries to attract liberal justices to a narrowly reasoned decision, while letting the hard-line conservatives (Thomas and Antonin Scalia) write separate, more extreme concurrences. In cases with no majority opinion, the narrowest opinion for the winning side has to be followed as if it were the majority opinion. Roberts has followed this strategy–finding a “sweet spot,” as Kerr puts it, by “aiming toward the middle”–in the recent 7-2 and 6-3 cases upholding lethal injections and voter ID requirements. In both cases, the Court issued a moderately conservative controlling opinion joined by one or two liberal justices, followed by more extreme concurrences by Scalia and Thomas. In general, Roberts was willing to trade a slight decline in fully unanimous opinions without dissenting votes (30 percent this term, as opposed to 38 percent last term) for a dramatic decline in polarized 5-4 splits. And a mark of his success is that he voted with the majority in 90 percent of the cases – more frequently than any other justice.

Roberts has also promoted unity by encouraging the Court to hear more business cases, in which the justices tend not to divide along ideological lines. Roberts told me that unanimity in less high-profile cases could promote “a culture and an ethos that says, ‘It’s good when we’re all together,'” and that’s exactly what the business cases–which represent about 45 percent of the court’s docket this year–have achieved. 

**I love to read things about the Supreme Court.  Even though a huge amount of everyday Americans don’t give them a second thought, they really do effect our everyday lives.  And I really wish more people would care and really take more interest in it.

This article was interesting in that it seems that Roberts is trying more for the center then down partisan thinking.  Which seems to give the impression that both sides will be given more thought.  We will see.

2008 06 15 023

Ouch!

Ok, just one quick whine…..my muscles hurt!  Especially my ass…..2 & half hours on trails on top of a workout that focused on my legs yesterday did it.  I now smell of bengay….

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Powell Butte

Pauline and I went to a local Nature Park in the area today and what an incredible day it turned out to be. I think it was in the low 80’s, but hardly a cloud in the sky so we both got some sun since we forgot to take sun lotion.  

 

**Double click on the pictures to see them at full size, they get cut off on the blog.

Mt Hood

Caught this guy eating, he watched us for a few minutes and went back eating and a few minutes later he laid down under a bush in the shade, I took some pics of it but it was too far and too dark so nothing worthwhile came out of it.

Portland…. even our trees are stoned…

How Do I Feel?: tired tired

Finally

Torn_Rose

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/basketball/nba/specials/draft/2008/06/25/oneal.traded.raptors.ap/index.html

The Toronto Raptors have agreed in principle to acquire forward Jermaine O’Neal from Indiana for point guard T.J. Ford, center Rasho Nesterovic, the 17th pick in the draft and a player to be named, The Canadian Press reported.

While The Canadian Press reported the deal Wednesday, citing an unidentified person close to the negotiations, Raptors general manager Bryan Colangelo said he was in the midst of “four or five” conversations with teams involving Ford and a combination of Toronto’s No. 17 pick and/or other Raptors players.

A deal can’t be finalized until July 1, when Ford’s base-year compensation tag comes off the books.

O’Neal is a six-time All-Star. He averaged 13.6 points and 6.7 rebounds in 42 games last season
________________

Now you can sit on the bench trying to heal that bad back you got from tying your shoe…

TOUGHEN UP YOU PUSSY!

This is good news, Ford is a good player who has his own history of back issues, but at least he tries to play while hurt. Of course this could have been great news and we could have had Kevin Garnet or Allen Iverson 2 years ago…. But noooooooooooooo…….

I still miss Reggie Miller, but this is a start…. now just 1 more left from the “brawl” team…. Jamal Tinselly….. Who I am sure is packing his bags now.

THIS WILL BE THE REBIRTH OF THE PACERS!How Do I Feel?: pleased pleased