Check them out here.

Okay here's where I reveal my patheticness and pass along as "newsworthy" the fact that Paige Davis has released two new galleries of photos over on PaigeDavis.com.  Yes I think Paige Davis is adorable.  Sue me.  The pictures are very tame, but cute, and were shot by the photographer Phil Kessler.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

Two more such galleries are scheduled to be released at some point in the future.

Well, we're back! Pat and I went on a weeklong trip to lovely Papoose Pond in Maine. I've posted the various little articles I wrote on the trip on the dates that I actually wrote them, so now they are intermingled with all the other articles that came out last week. Here's a list of them in chronological order...   more »

I posted a new photo to Photos/Nature.

We made our long journey home today. For me this doesn't really count as "a day at Papoose Pond" because we were packing from the moment we got up and needed to vacate the site before 10 AM. The packing went smooth and without incident. We had some firewood left over and didn't want to leave it at the site, figuring the campground staff would bundle it up and resell it. So I wandered around until I found a guy who wasn't leaving today and offered it to him. He was only too happy to come by and pick it up...   more »

Those of you who remember "Special Agent Underpants" will probably get a kick out of this story.

And now in the truth is weirder than fiction department, the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan has become very concerned with the advent of hard-drive-enabled DVD recorders which allow viewers to skip commercial breaks with ease on playback. Their take on it? It's against the law to skip commercials...   more »

After rockhunting I was parched, dusty, sweaty, exhausted, and sore. I decided, as today was our last day at Papoose Pond, to go splash about in the pond... onlookers be damned...   more »

While we were at Shoestring Books the other day, we spotted some amethyst chips for sale near the register. The proprietor mentioned that his daughters had mined the chips themselves at a nearby quarry that was open to the public. We were interested in the idea, particularly myself, for I was something of a "rock hound" when I was a young boy. Today we went there with my sister in law Barbara and her kids. There are in fact five quarries in and around West Paris, ME, most of which are owned and maintained by Perham's of West Paris...   more »

This is a subject I've commented on before. Basically the idea is that there is beauty in everyone. I don't buy into that one-size-fits-all mold of beauty (i.e. waif-thin-big-tits) and I generally find that many women that are idolized as beautiful look somewhat freakish to me. Because most women do not look like that, and I know many women I think are beautiful and yet none of them are supermodels. While walking through the Burlington Mall the other day I saw an ad for something called the "Dove Soap Campaign for Real Beauty"...   more »

The scene opens with Carly and Chad sitting on a park bench. Behind them we see a stand of trees and a small fountain. Before them is a path and the edge of a playground. Chad is hunched over a book that says "Logic Puzzles" and Carly, wearing sunglasses, is stretched out and leaning back with her face toward the blue sky. The lighting suggests midafternoon...   more »

Today I relaxed mostly, but in the evening my sister-in-law Kris, her husband Mike, and a number of other Papoose Pond Regulars put together a clam boil. I wasn't really keen on going because I am largely a stick in the mud who is happiest when left to myself. Big parties usually aren't my idea of fun. This time Patty informed me if I didn't want to cook my own dinner, I had better come. So I came...   more »

I am spending most of today playing Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath on the xbox, a bizarre game from EA Games...   more »

Wow... here's a story that captures the imagination. Astrophysicists have long believed that the more stars a solar system has in it, the less likely it is that planets will form. Thus a world three suns (like the world in the sci-fi/action/thriller Pitch Black), would be extremely unlikely. In fact you could go as far to say that it is generally believed that planets cannot form in trinary systems... until now, because one has been found...   more »

I posted a new photo to Photos/Miscellany/CarPictures.

On the way back from Snow Falls we stopped in at a wonderful antique bookstore called "Shoestring Books" at 497 Upper Main Street in Norway, ME...   more »

Sometimes there is an unintentional confluence of things that ends up making a funny. Here's onesuch. Look at the street signs next to this fire station in Fitchburg, MA...   more »

Today we stopped in at Snow Falls in Paris, ME to do a little more geocaching. Today "Team PlasteredDragon" was myself, Patty, and Lynnea. The falls were quite lovely but not exactly waterfalls. More like a natural rock sluice through which the water rushes rapidly...   more »

Telemarketing firms are pretty unhappy about the Do-Not-Call-List, and everyone else thinks it's the cat's meow. However these firms are now petitioning the FCC to get the rules loosened or in some cases abolished altogether...   more »

My kid has taken to the water like a fish this year. Every single day: "can we go to the pond and go swimming?" Most days we've obliged but I haven't gone in the water yet. (I am quite flabby... a white whale really, and I have no desire to flop around in the water and gross everyone out. The last thing people want to see when they go to the beach is hairy man-boobs...   more »

Pat's Dad was looking for a nice hike today and so I suggested he and I go geocaching (Pat either didn't want to or wasn't able to come). We decided to do a cache on Hawk Mountain in Waterford, ME called "The Jimmy Buffet Box". Apparently the cache was on an outcrop with nice water views that is oft used as a party spot. The cache description suggested one should bring a few brews and enjoy a private "Margaritaville"...   more »

I've been playing this XBOX game "Mercenaries - Playground of Destruction" by Pandemic (same folks who made Destroy All Humans). I didn't have high hopes for it but it turned out to be pretty fun actually. You're a Merc taking contracts with a number of different factions fighting in Korea (there are the South Koreans, North Koreans, Allies, Russian Mafia, and the Chinese). I've been enjoying myself up until this latest mission where a really annoying bug is ruining the experience for me...   more »

Hey everyone, and welcome to installment #49 of Name That Movie on Unbecoming Levity.  Today's movie should be a special treat... I expect some of you will get it very early, and a guarantee everybody will get it from the last image.  Sadly work is crazy this week and I won't have a chance to comment on NTM today, but do post your guesses, have fun... tawk amongst yourselves.   Okay, on with the show...   more »

Really nice fire tonight! I built the core in two layers between two thin pieces of pine bark with thin hardwood kindling as props and then stuffed it with several rolls of newspaper, more pieces of kindling (pine) across the top and then large logs over those. I added a little lighter fluid to the top center rolls of paper, just to help the fire spread quick and hot through the core.

Me, Patty, and some of Pat's family sat about the campfire while Lynnea and her cousins toasted marshmallows and made "smores".  A very pleasant evening indeed.

About two weeks ago I decided to get back on track walking, as I sort of hit a slump with all the rain and then the heat. So I walked from my office to the neighboring office park and did about two miles. At the far end of the office park is a building which currently has no tenants, and it was in the back parking lot of that building that I came across the box...   more »

Here's a guy who is rediscovering "forgotten technology" techniques that allow a single person to move large, extremely heavy objects, without the aid of anyone else. Surprisingly he often doesn't use wheels or rollers at all, but instead uses counterweights and balancing points.  Using this technique he plans to build a modern day stonehenge largely by himself.

...my son needed a pole barn moved, due to a desired property split. I decided to put my technique to the test. The wood building was a 30 ft. by 40 ft. and 16 ft. tall. It weighed over 10 tons. In order to move the building, we added another 5 tons of bracing and reinforcement.

The conditions were not good. At first, the field was muddy and I could only work for a few hours a week. Working by myself, I still found that I could move the building at a speed of 6 ft. per hour. With my son helping, we doubled that speed. After 40 man-hours of labor, we moved the building over 200 ft...

Check it out!

 

This morning I went for a walk on the access roads and trails just south of Papoose Pond Campground. The walk was brief but refreshing...   more »