Sunday September 20 2007

Home finally from 2 weeks working out of town. Boone is a really nice small town. We were able to finish our work so I’ll be in the office for a couple of weeks.

Nuke’s up for a week or so.

We went to the game Saturday. Another loss. Hard to win a game against a quality opponent when you have 5 turnovers. In spite of the loss, we saw some positive signs. NC State moved the ball well against Louisville. We just shot ourselves in the foot too many times with turnovers.

The defense played well too. They kept Louisville’s high scoring offense in check and gave our own offence plenty of opportunities – we just couldn’t cash in.

It’s going to be a long season. Rebuilding is always tough.

Thanks to Nuke, Geoff and Fritz for going to the game with me.

No plans for today. Just going to putter around the house.

It Was Only A Matter Of Time

Very hot and humid Saturday at the game. Miserable. Including on the field.

News reports say over 100 people were treated for heat exhaustion and dehydration. Some were taken to the hospital. Plus, the concessions ran out of bottled water before half time. During the second half, when I went to purchase some water, the kind lady at the counter gave me a cup full of ice and pointed me to the water fountains.

11 players on defense were also treated for heat effects. The defense was on the field a long time and it must have been awful for them.

We got the dickens beat out of us. I’m wondering if we’ll be able to win another game this season. Maybe UNC – they’re about on par with State this year.

Still – fun to go to the game and hang out with Chip and Weeble.

Work

Heading back to Boone this week.

It will be cooler in the mountains.

Today

Today – doing nothing. Just puttering around the house – cleaning – laundry – the mundane.

The Lee County Airport is about 2 miles from my house. I get to watch the small planes fly around on Saturdays and Sundays. They give flying lessons so there’s always a planes flying around and up and down and varying speeds.

Got a call from a friend last night who wanted to go fishing today at the coast. Had to turn down the invite. Out of town next week so I’ve got to get laundry and house chores done today.

Bummer.

Hot Tub

I haven’t written about the hot tub in a while – re: not being able to get the service technician out here.

Here’s the short version of bringing the story up to date.

The circuit breaker kept tripping and the light switch wouldn’t work. I thought the problems were related.

The light switch seemed to sort of fix itself. It now works.

The circuit breaker kept tripping. Danny the electrician replaced the breaker. At first – it would work for a while then trip off.

Danny came back – traced the fault to the tub. One of the three pumps was causing the circuit to trip.

While I was gone last week Danny removed the suspect pump and is seeing if it can be repaired. If not – he’ll replace it.

Right now the tub is sitting on blocks on the deck.

Seems like the tub problems have been a combination of things going wrong all at the same time. Or maybe they’re related. Who knows? Anyway – hopefully with a repaired, or new, pump – things will be working again.

I hope.

It’s been too hot to get into the darn thing anyway.

It Was Only A Matter Of Time



Had breakfast at the café in Pittsboro this morning. Veggie omelet ($5) plus coffee. When I went to pay I handed the young girl cashier two 5 dollar bills. She rang it up, handed me back on of the fives and a quarter.

Me: “Excuse me, I think you’ve made a mistake. The omelet is five dollars plus coffee.”

Cashier: “It comes to $4.75 with the senior discount.”

Me: stunned silence

I think I’ll watch TV to take my mind off that. I’m sure there’s a rerun of Matlock on one of the channels.

Maybe I’ll take a nap first.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Working at Appalachian State University this week. Nothing noteworthy to report so far nor any great photos yet.

We had dinner at the Cove Restaurant Tuesday evening where I took these 2 shots.

Wonderful late summer September weather. Cool mornings – warm afternoons.

Joke

Oh - I did hear a corny joke today (remember, I'm at ASU which beat Michigan in football 2 weeks ago).


Question: How many batteries does it take to beat Michigan in football?

Answer: Just one double A.


(snicker snicker - I love corny jokes)

Weekend Update

Saturday

Sister (GH) and brother-in-law (AH) drove down from NoVa and went to the game with me and Nuke Saturday. State finally got their first win this year. Granted against a Division II (or whatever the NCAA is calling it this year) school – but a win just the same.

The offensive line finally opened some holes to establish a running game. Well see just how real the improvement is next week against Clemson.

State is going to struggle this year. Hopefully, new coach Tom O’Brien will build up the program into one that is consistently a solid top 25 contender.

Speaking of rankings – here’s a pet peeve.

Year in and year out - Notre Dame is consistently the most over rated football program in the country. Usually they are an average to very good program. But no where near good enough to have their typical pre-season top 25 over ranking. And certainly not good enough to justify an exclusive national TV contract with NBC.

Yesterday they scored 0 points in their loss to Michigan. ND is now 0 and 3.

So far this year, ACC football just isn’t what it could be. Teams that should be national powers (Florida State, VT, Miami) are just average at best. Teams that should be in a position (financially, fan base, program commitment) to be on the rise (NC State, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Carolina, Maryland) are bad to average.

Boston College (small school, small fan base, questionable commitment to football) is the front runner so far along with Clemson (big time program mentality – average results). It’s still early in the season so who knows how things will evolve?

State and Carolina have new coaches who’ve been successful at other schools. I firmly believe that we’ll both be joining the ranks of the top 25. Possibly top 10. But that’s a couple of years away if (when) it’s going to happen.

That’s the way college sports is. Every year there’s new kids – new learning – luck of the ball bounce. College sports are a lot of fun to watch.

Now if State could just pull off the upset against Clemson and Louisville in the next 2 weeks . . . . .

Sunday

Met up with GH and AH this morning and read the paper and had breakfast at their hotel. Later, we spent some time sight seeing around Pittsboro.

Did chores around the house this afternoon and evening. Later, I have to pack – I’m working out of town next week.

Just put out the food for the raccoons. They’ll be on their own next week while I’m away.

Nuke’em is headed back to Southport in the morning.

All in all – a very nice weekend.

Feeding The Raccoons

I’ve been feeding the raccoons almost daily due to the extreme drought. Normally, if you’re going to feed raccoons, it’s best to just do it 2 or 3 times a week – to avoid dependency. Still, I’ve noticed the mother raccoon still makes her family hunt.

I’ve had to put out 2 plates to spread the food out. When they were smaller, they’d eat out of the same bowl. As they get older, their survival instincts kick in and they fight viciously over 1 bowl of food.

There are tiny pea ants that are all on the food by the time the raccoons arrive. They don’t bite or sting – but raccoons have such sensitive paws that the ants tickle them. Thus, as you’ll see, the raccoons dance around and are annoyed by the ants.

I had been spraying around the deck with insecticide but I was worried that it would harm the raccoons.

Actually, the ants help insure fair feeding. One of the offspring is very dominating and would stand in the plate and bite any of the others that tried to feed. With the ants, the dominate one can’t do that.

The food is dry dog food with some left over potato chip pieces and some left over diced up tomato.



Dessert

Tonight - a special treat - crackers with peanut butter. They LOVE peanut butter.

Here comes the do as I say, not as I do part.

Do NOT hand feed raccoons under any circumstances.

Camera

The only light for this video came from the small deck light at the back door. I had to 'brighten' the video up quite a bit in processing. That resulted in the washed out look. If the raccons ever come by during daylight, I'll try and get a better video.

This video was shot using a Casio Exlim EX-S600. Quality was set on normal. Focus was set on multi-point automatic.

This little credit card camera is great. It's a great point and shoot camera with more features than you'll ever use.

Video length is limited only by the size of flash drive and battery life.

I set the camera up on a Joby mini Gorillapod tripod wrapped around the arm of the deck furniture.

Only One

Only the Mama Raccoon and one baby raccoon came up tonight.

Where are the other two?

Where is my little tribe?

Addendum - Tuesday AM

False Alarm. Turns out, that was a different raccoon with one offspring. I thought they looked a little different. The baby raccoon was smaller than my regular crew.

My raccoon and her 3 kits showed up later.

Whew.

I was worried that something had happened to them.

Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich

It's Sunday evening and I'm watching Being John Malkovich on IFC.

I've only seen it a couple of times before - I don't want to watch it too often as that might ruin it for me.

What a bizarre, strange and very interesting movie.

TOB Must Be Going Nuts

Boston College 37 - NC State 17. Twenty points is a big win. Still, NCSU did everything it could to make the difference even bigger – 5 interceptions and 2 lost fumbles. Yikes!

Two interceptions were when State was going to score – yeah – we found receivers in the end zone – but they were BC players. And another returned down field for a score. And a fumbled punt that gave the ball to BC almost on the goal line. So right there is 28 points we gave BC. Of which 21 points could have (should have) been ours.

We’re moving the ball – but then giving it away.

Make no mistake – BC is a top 25 team this year. Probably even better. But watching the game it looked like we could be right in there with them. If we could just hold on to the ball and quit shooting ourselves in the foot.

Our running game is still AWOL.

The offensive line is just not giving our running backs and quarter back the protection and blocking they need to make plays.

Coach O’Brien must be going nuts.

In spite of the 37 points – our defense is coming together.

LSU 48 – VT 7

What happened there? Sure, LSU is ranked second in the nation – but VT is right up there with them. The Hokies were plain and simple awful. It really was a rout.

Oklahoma 51 – Miami 13

Like the LSU – VT game – the score says it all.

UNC 31 – ECU 34

Over in Redneckville the purple hooligans got their win over an ACC school. They’ll probably get another win in November when State plays them.

Nebraska 20 – Wake Forest 17

That was a fun game to watch on TV. Wake Forest almost won the thing. Sort of sums up the ACC when Wake Forest gives the best game of the day to an outside conference foe.

Cell Phone

My cell phone died. Actually, the battery died. And had begun to swell and kept pushing the back phone cover off. I’ve never seen a battery actually expand. Probably was getting ready to explode or something.

Headed over to the Alltel store Saturday morning. A replacement battery will be $40 thank you very much. A replacement phone was $50.

I was hoping for a freebie replacement phone – but I guess since the phone companies saw all those idiots lining up days in advance for a $600 iPhone, they figured they don’t have to do give-aways anymore.

(Being a first adapter is one thing. Standing in line to buy a $600 telephone is being a, oh what’s the word I’m looking for - Loser? People, people, people - next time you feel the urge to stand in line to pay an exorbitant amount of $ for something when you can wait one day and waltz in and pay an exorbitant amount - well - just think it through.)

The thing I really hate is having to figure out how to work a new phone.

This one has a camera. Asked for one without a camera but it seems all phones nowadays come with a camera.

This new phone also has a blue tooth.

It should brush more. I recommend a Sonicare.

The new phone also says it’s a razor – but I have yet to figure out how to shave with it.

This new phone, and my old phone, are supposed to be able to able to recognize speech. I never learned how to do that with the old one (either).

This new phone is also supposed to be able to talk back. Just what I need – a phone that’s gonna give me some lip.

According to the manual, you have to speak to the phone so it will learn words and such. Well, it sure had the opportunity yesterday when I was trying to get all the settings on it figured out.

If it starts spouting some of that language back – I’ll never be able to take it out in public.

Odds and Ends

Labor Day Weekend

I had minimal plans for the weekend.

Nuke'em came up Friday.

Friday evening we had a small roast beef and rice for dinner. Fed the leftovers to the raccoons. While feeding the raccoons, Nuke went out and sat on the back deck.

The young raccoons were curious and interested in the other big creature that wasn’t the one that usually feeds them. They nosed around him a lot but didn't try and climb up on him like they do me. I guess beer doesn't smell like food.

After a few minutes the mother raccoon decided she wasn’t having any of it and took off – giving the danger grunt / call and the offspring followed her pretty quickly.

We watched a Netflix movie Friday evening and a TV movie Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon, I watched football and Nuke went upstairs to watch more movies and ponder world situations. Saturday evening we went to the game with some friends.

This (Sunday) morning I got up, fixed a pot of coffee, sat on the porch reading the newspaper and composed the previous Happy Appy blog entry. Showered and went into Pittsboro for breakfast (western omelet, hash browns, biscuit, water).

On the way home I stopped and picked up a 40 lb. bag of sunflower seed for the bird feeder, milk, eggs and some other groceries. I need to stop at the Farmer’s Market next week for peanuts for the other bird / squirrel feeder.

I just got home. Nuke is up and glued to the computer. Pretty much a good ol’ typical lazy Sunday in the making.

The weather is beautiful today so I’m going to pull some weeds out of the wood chip beds. Weeds and grass are growing on top of the fabric – no real roots - so they’re easy to pull up. But there’s just so darn many of them.

I might take a nap first though.

Weather

Speaking of weather – this year NC is in the midst of a prolonged severe to extreme drought. Plus, we’ve just had the hottest August on record. The average temperature for August is 80.6 Fahrenheit.

From today’s paper – here’s the temperature ties and records set this month:

97 tie
102 record
104 record
104 record
99 tie
101 record
103 record
105 record
99 record
98 record

Should only get up to 90 today. Feels downright cool.

Labor Day Monday

No plans.

Excellent!

Happy Happy Appy

Stunning. Shocker. Awesome. Unbelievable.



Use all the clichés and accolades.

Division 2 Champions Appalachian State University Mountaineers 34 – No. 5 ranked University of Michigan Wolverines 32.

Complete with last minute heroics – a winning field goal made with 26 seconds left – a potential winning field goal blocked with 6 seconds left.

And to pull off the win front of 109,000+ stunned fans at Michigan’s storied Big House! Goosebump city. Heck, there aren't 109,000 humans within 75 miles of Boone, NC. And that's even counting the various and assorted Eric Rudolphs hiding out in the hills.

In Boone, NC – the students went to their field, collected a goal post, and delivered it to the Chancellor’s house.



Congratulations ASU!

Wolfpack

Back in Raleigh, not quite so festive.

The University of Central Florida came into town and simply manhandled and pushed the Wolfpack around for the entire 1st half.

I’m watching the game thinking, Good Lord, are we really that bad?


25 – 3 at halftime.

Our vaunted running game? Negative 14 yards at the half. WTF?

I had already decided to leave at the end of the 3rd quarter. I wanted to see if half-time adjustments would show us anything or if we’d come out as awful as we were in the first half.

25 points is too much to overcome. You expect the other team to score some more – maybe 10 or 14 more points. Let’s just see how the Pack comes out and plays.

Totally opposite game in the second half.

The Pack came out and went from porous defense to furious defense.

Nebraska transfer Harrison Beck came in for starting quarterback Daniel Evans and proceeded to march down the field and put points on the board.

NCSU shutout UCF in the second half and put up 23 points of our own.

Darn near won the game too. But with the new rules that don’t stop the clock like they used to (which I happen to agree with) - it’s almost impossible to mount a last minute scoring drive.

(Unless you’re Happy Appy!)

Stayed for the whole game. In the end – we liked what we saw. The team didn’t fold up. Far from it. We came out and played like we were supposed too. You can see that the work ethic and discipline that Coach Tom O’Brien is instilling works.

Mental mistakes and undisciplined play are no longer part of this team. Coach TOB’s stern but calm approach kept the guys in the game.

Despite the loss, I ended up feeling good with the end result.

The program is clearly headed in the right direction.

Go Wolfpack!

(Thanks to Nuke, Chip and DX for going to the game with me.)