Pottery 101...Harry actually

I'm picking up where I left off in August reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I had kind of fallen off the book reading track I'd been on with other of life's distractions diverting my attention - you know, work, family, TV, football. I did manage to read through one of my Asimov's magazines. I'm behind on those again, I have four left and one is a double issue. It seems they send them out in clusters, after I caught up the last time I had a stockpile a couple of months went by and I didn't receive an issue then it seemed I received one every week for a month. Between those and the books I've acquired I may have a couple of months of continuous reading, maybe longer if I stopped to eat. Back to Potter & the Bird; I've been in no hurry to keep up with the series of Harry Potter books but with the hype of the concluding volume I figure I need to pick up the pace. Also, Carol has finished reading the series and I refuse to hear any discussion of things from the ones I haven't read which I get some grief about when she wants to talk to Ian and Taylor about them while I'm around. Carol had been a bit behind me in the series when I bought the Order of the Phoenix paperback (for traveling use, the thing is still almost 2 inches thick), our other volumes are hardbound. With the movie version out I wanted to have read the book before seeing the movie on DVD when it comes out. So Carol started reading the Prisoner of Azkaban (she took it on the Brit-Swed trip) then kept on going through the rest of the books. The way things are going I'll be happy to finish the one I'm on when the DVD is out.

Hey, what happen to summer?!?

This just in - It's cooler, the trees are duller and with the end of Daylight Savings Time it's darker earlier but the good thing is the star show begins earlier too. After supper I'm out in the back yard with the dogs, I walk up to the end of the driveway away from the yard lights and look up to the sky. It's not even 7pm and I'm staring into the Milky Way, picking out airline's blinking lights and every once in awhile see a meteorite. While looking up I think about how cool it would be to actually be in space, not just this orbiting the earth stuff like the millionaires going to the International Space Station though looking back at the earth would be great. No, I want to see nebulae and star clusters with my bare eyes like the telescopes show us. That my friend would be the ultimate sight seeing trip.


Here are a few of the Earthbound views I passed on today's walk.

Down side street on Mudjoy Hill, the blue in the
distance is Portland Harbor, closer views coming up.

This is looking out to the entrance of Portland Harbor
from the top of the Eastern Promenade.

A couple of the island ferries waiting to board passengers
traveling to the nearby islands.

Some of the fancy boats and yachts moored near
Commercial Street.

Until next time - to the stars and beyond!

Not easy to be irritated when you walk

Since the beginning of the year as part of my diet I've made it a priority do extra walking everyday. It's become a sort of an addiction. If I don't get my walking in it adds to my normal level of irritability. Yeah, I'm irritable at least a couple times a day, if you're not maybe you should be. People who seem constantly happy make me irritable. The goal is 10,000 steps a day - I have a pedometer which I keep in my pocket all day. It's a nice device, keeps track of steps, distance, calories burned and keeps the time of day. I use it as my regular watch. When at work I walk at lunch time, at home I just pick a convenient time and go. I'll walk about 3 miles (±6,400 steps) always the same route at home. In town though I have three basic routes which I alternate through. The Western Promenade, the Eastern Promenade and down and around the Portland campus of USM. Now that I have a camera phone I occasionally snap a couple of pictures here and there.

Here is the shore at the East End, behind me is a beach, ahead of me the rocks increase in size so you need to walk carefully but I like it a lot. There is a trail up along here to the right which is where I usually walk but sometimes when the tide is out I'll walk the rocks. The trail takes me to the marina area and then the Portland waterfront. This is my favorite walk.

A year or so ago the YWCA went out of business, this is what's left. They'll probably put up another condo building. Lots of them being built around here.

As I head for the West Prom yesterday this was the view as I proceeded along Deering Avenue. Sunny and cool.

I have a couple of variations of where I walk, there's always something interesting to see and I haven't been bored yet which I'm sure contributes to my motivation to go for walk whenever I can.

a Saturday in New Hampshire

Wasn't hard to find where we wanted to be.

As the northeaster that was a tropical storm that was Hurricane Noel approached the region, Lois, Carol and I headed out for the Woodsman meet at Ian's UNH. Jim, as a public works employee needed to stay behind in case the incoming inclement weather necessitated getting called in to work. Cloudy, cool and breezy when we arrived the participating colleges (U Maine, Unity College, Colby College, and Dartmouth) were all in attendance as the pre-meet meeting was about to begin. Ian spotted us and came over to greet us briefly as his attention was needed in preparation for the meet. As the host and being a club team they have spent a lot of time preparing and setting up for this event, then when it became apparent that there would be a storm coming in they needed to move the venue from where it was held last year to a nearby location the had an open-sided barn. There were a few events that could be held indoors so that solution turned out to work very well. Besides competing in several events Ian and his teammates would take part in running the different stations so they were very busy all day which ultimately would include cleanup. The rain came in around noon and it didn't take very long before everyone broke out the rain gear. Ian competed in the obstacle course, and three team events - pulp throwing, crosscut, and log rolling. It was a lot of fun watching him and everyone else - Maybe Ian can post the days results in a comment to this blog.

Lois and I are ready for the "hamming it up" event. This isn't your typical equipment at a college event is it?

Ian, Lois and Carol as Ian describes the days events.

Ian preparing to flip a skidder tire in the pulling relay. Once Ian gets the tire twenty feet the next teammate has to drag the skidder chain the same distance as well as the last teammate who will chain drag the 10 foot log the same distance. Each of these items are dead heavy.

It's just a fantasy... not the real thing

I've been participating in a fantasy football league on Yahoo.com. This is about the sixth year I've been doing it. When taken seriously it greatly affects the way I pay attention to football. As a fan of the NFL I keep up to date on all the teams (the Green Bay Packers in particular) and many of the players. It's something I've been into for forty years (did I write 40?!?) so when online fantasy sports came along it was a natural thing to get into the pro football version. For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with FF here's a short explanation: after finding and joining an internet league each member creates a team name (my usual - Best Damn Badgers). The names of active football players are assigned among the various teams. There are a set number of positions for each week's game and points for the team's performance are based on what your chosen starting players do in the real games. With our FF teams made up of players from a variety of real teams we get some strange matchups such as my quarterback's favorite receiver could be on the team I'm against, etc. While watching the games on TV I'll watch the statistics shown at the bottom of the TV screen from other games to see how other players are doing as well as watching live updated stats on the web. Yes, it is a little intense. I took last season off after spending 4 years in a league with other people in the company I work for. As fun and interesting as I found it to be I liked stepping back from it and just watching the games for a season with nothing extra associated with the action on the field. So now I'm back into it. I joined a "public" league, I do not know any of the league members personally but there's a message board where we can exchange thoughts about each others abilities to beat one another (smack talk), badgers can be a little belligerent, at the end of many of my messages I urge the readers to get off my message and maybe get a life while they're at it. I've been in the middle of the pack (10 teams) for most of the season and last week I moved up to fourth place which is the last playoff spot, now I need to hold on or move up to stay in position to be in the playoffs. My opponent this week, the "Schrutes' Beets". I hope I win,...wouldn't want to get beat by the Beets!

This is where it all begins.

Bloggers Block

BOO! Surprised ya didn't I? Nothing worse for a blog than inactivity. Between office and side work my creativity has been toasted lately. So, I've decided I'll push a little and try to get back on track whether what I write makes sense or not. My goal is to get back to more timely writing. You may want to don safety glasses at this point, this may not be pretty.


OK, this is what I have to put up with just to sit in front of my computer. Scotia is 1 year old this month and she has become a vital member of the household since we brought her home in February. Sometimes she dozes on my lap in front of the keyboard tray. For a female she is one large cat, long in particular and I can bend her like a pretzel, quite trusting in that regard.

Here's our camper beside the exhibition hall at the fairgrounds where we store it for the winter. As with the other regulars the association that runs the place has developed a way of arranging the items people store there. Our camper will be the last one that goes in this particular building as everything is put in to utilize every square foot. Our's will fit in just ahead of a fifth-wheel and is the final item that fills the building. In a way it is kind of nice to get the rig out of our driveway for awhile. Whenever I look at it I want to hook it up and go somewhere. This was last Saturday, a rainy day. After leaving the fairgrounds Carol and I stopped at an orchard, picked up a couple of bags of apples then drove to LL Beans. I bought a new pair of shoes there and then we went to a Brit store where Carol bought some oatcakes. After that we grabbed a bite to eat and headed home.

Saturday we are planning to go to the woodsmans meet that Ian's college club team is holding at the campus. Lois and Jim will be going with us. The weather forecast at the moment doesn't look good for that day. Wind driven rain from Tropical Storm Noel may happen if Noel tracks too far west as it travels up the Atlantic seaboard. If all goes well I'll post some pictures.