Apparently, the military is hunting down new/old bodies. Amy's father, the exceptional retired Colonel Varo, twice a military judge and currently a federal judge, says that it's way over the line. I think he's right.
Makes me glad I yelled at that recruiter who called me at 8am one Saturday when I was 18, 'cause I'm just the kind of guy who would neglect a signature by mistake.
So they're putting sidewalks, sewage, and new water lines in our neighborhood. We've been anticipating the time when they roll across our lawn and destroy everything. It's here!
They're parked on our front lawn, for heaven's sake.
Since jeremy posted the shot of that monster pickup, I thought I'd share my favorite truck photo. This is from a guy in New Zealand that collects photos of what he calls "housetrucks" and it uses a Bedford (same truck that I drove in Africa, more or less) as a base.
Pretty sweet. Great little commuter vehicle!
hmmm, just tried to load the photo here and blogger's little upload tool doesn't seem to function with my browser (Firefox)....so here's the link instead.
You guys'll appreciate this.
Unfortunately we don't have any ultra-conservatives in our midst to write up a scathing rebuttal. Maybe that's not really a bad thing.
It's here.
No, not my 30th Birthday. International Talk Like A Pirate Day! September 19, 2004
Get your pirate name
http://www.froggynet.com/cgi-bin/pirate.cgi
learn the historiography and even translate to German.
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html
and the most fantastic of all. floregonian in Pirate.
Does this thing get censored? Just curious. I love this blogging thing. Getting the smack and lowdown on Rhino Expats. Here's the Larkin Family pics. We bought a house in May and fixed it up for a month before moving in. The house had a grease fire in '97 so it was completely brought up to code, then some guy turned it into a vanilla resale project and lost his shirt to the insurance company. We came in at the right time and got a sweet deal. 970sqft, 3bd, 1 bth. We took up the carpet and had the floors redone in the living/dining, hall and spare room [aka Den]. Painted everything non-off white eggshell, totally revamped the kitchen with new counters, flooring and appliances (the stainless facing on the counters isn't installed yet but imagine its glory). Sici is 2 1/2 and loving life. She and Ash take adventures and work at making our house livable each day. Ash is doing well and considering starting up some writing projects now. We'll be working towards baby #2 in the near future, can't have too much normalcy. Oh yeah and I got my real estate license for work and did the Cycle Oregon Weekend (130 miles over two days) first day was 85 miles in 103 degrees, miserably hot but it easily tripled the distance of any ride I'd done before that. Felt good.
On with the show. Forgive me I've forced into a PC world with zero adequate photo software.
Larkin
Florida--which in case you all have forgotten, is one of the flattest states in the continental US--is also brimming over with SUVs. It's one of the great ironies of this place. I'll bet I see one of these here in the next year.
Just so you guys know, Doug has and excellent excuse for not chiming in yet. He and Erika were in the hospital last night.
Erika's water broke, I guess, but she's not showing signs of imminent labor. I think they got sent home, but who knows when he'll fire up his 56K modem. I think he has to prime it first.
Brian, I think you're probably the only guy in this crowd who hasn't seen these. Frances came to visit. That was a wild ride.
I'm in, still a neophite so guide me oh bloggers. Love the pics etc. I'll have to get some digitals of Sici in here to show off.
More to come about my sexual exploits. That's what these things are for right?
Larkin
Hi all,
Good to hear your voices again. I haven't really kept up with Rhino alumni, apart from a quick email from Ray now and then. I wrote to Ranjy to congratulate him on Shine's pregnancy but he never wrote back.
What's up here? lesseeeeee.......
Lucia started kindergarten a couple weeks ago and seems to be digging the scene. She's riding a bike and swimming and we've bought her some skis for the rapidly approaching winter.
Gemma is jabbering and wandering around like a badly trained monkey. I mean, she doesn't fling her pooh at people or masturbate in public, so she's not THAT badly trained, but you know what I mean. You can see photos here.
Helen's loving her job and her research is going well. She got a grant funded this year, which was pretty huge for a first-year fellow, and she's applying for more. Something to do with rats and cervixes (cervices?) and the rest is mad Greek, believe me.
I'm doing "marketing consulting" and I have no idea what that means. I have some local clients who keep me busy at a healthy hourly rate and that's all that matters, right? It's a little of this and a lot of that....project manager for a new website here, content creation for a marketing piece there, etc. One client has even asked me to help them design and have installed some product display shelving in their offices....a strange little project. I'm not really big on interior decoration (insert your favorite homophobe joke here), but we'll figure something out.
I'm also on the board for the March of Dimes here in Vermont, which is taking more and more of my time. FAIR WARNING: everyone I know will eventually be asked to donate some money to the March of Dimes cause (premature babies and associated research).
We've been loving the summer here in Vermont. It's a bit like living in Sweden: the summer's are so short that you appreciate them more and everything seems more highly charged. People wander around congratulating themselves for a lovely day. Everyone seems keen to drop whatever they're doing to rush outside on a nice day and head down to the lake.
come on up for a visit....we're only half an hour from a decent ski hill and an hour from Stowe or Sugarbush....
brian
Elwood, recently fostered out to us. We're planning on getting him adopted into the Varo household. We've already got our share of birds.
I have always wanted to do one of these group blogs! Anyway, I've been pretty busy with life and work.
Home is good. Living with four females has its list of challenges, as you might imagine, but the goings are all-in-all good. Did I say four? I can't forget our two female dogs and seven fish (all of whom are surely girls as well.)
This weekend I met up with Larkin and Jamie Haggerty at Ray's house to record some more audio for the Mills malls projects. It's always great reconnecting with them. After the initial, "How's it going? How's this and that? How's the hemerroids treatin' ya?" type bullshit, things tend to loosen up and get fun. Larkin is simply a genius, comically speaking, and still.
I directed the second of three HP photoshoots for Via today. We're launching a largish initiative on the site for some new digital entertainment products this fall. It's rather uncharacteristic. Today's shoot featured a DINK couple — double income, no kids. Yah, it was new to me too. We chose a nice thirty-something asian couple from the talent agency and rented a SWEET house up on the West slope. The location cost just under 1k for around seven hours. Yikes. It was worth it. Check for yourself here.
I want to make a place where I can interact with my friends from Portland, though many of you have moved elsewhere.
I hope everyone is well!
come put your feet up in the green room
