I’ll likely tune into the game about half time to see how the Spurs are doing but otherwise I’m skipping the pain and stress of the game. I can’t believe they’ll be able to win three games in a row - so for the first time there’s some disbelief from me for the defending champions.
Go to ProtectSpurs.com for coverage and a likely podcast.
I just started watching Arrested Development 2 - and in the first five minutes had two guffaws, a belly laugh, one snort and a prolonged giggle.
I watched the first season on DVD a few months back and the first one was dull as I acclimatized to what was going on and then it was a laugh riot.
Intelligent, sly and, as I was warned you have to watch one joke as it will come back later. Like the model homes and Saddam Hussein.
So I will watch them continuously and Season 3 follows. “I have no problem with that.”
And no one has to touch my Charlie Browns. …
OK, if you’re a Spurs fan, you’re pumped up and are expecting a win. Your confidence has been restored, however, you are still wary whether Manu can be Manu again because one awesome game doesn’t erase the load of manure play in the playoffs. Nope, not quite.
if you’re a Lakers fan you’re a little disgusted about the Lakers’ performance and are likely mixed on whether they can come back to win in the AT&T Center, where the Spurs haven’t lost in the playoffs.
Spurs win by 18 is my prediction. They pull away late 3rd and early 4th and Lakers come back a little but never enough. Never enough!
This article about Americans curtailing their gas use in light of higher prices has been the biggest highlight in my life in recent weeks.
Thinking big picture, price really does get people’s attention. This is not news, but the fact that gas consumption has remained the same - or higher - in the face of huge hits in the wallet, seemed to ignore the conventional wisdom.
The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.
Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.
According to AAA, for the first time since 2002, Americans said they were planning to drive less over the Memorial Day weekend than they did the year before.
The reasons for consumption and prices are complex and varied. Auto manufacturers should get a lot of the blame for not mass-producing electric and hybrid cars. The technology existed 25 years ago and they could have shaped people’s buying habits for the good. And, in doing so they could have helped keep land and sky cleaner.
And oil companies are raking in greater profits than every before. CLEARLY, this means their own expenses are not increasing proportionally or much at all. They’ve NOW slowed research and development because they know what maximizes profits.
But that consumers are limiting their travel is a big plus. That was my silver lining for the high prices, which does also hurt me personally, being currently unemployed as i am. So when I need to travel to an interview across town it’s a financial investment every single time.
I finally realized that if people’s driving habits could be changed this was the only way. Painful yes, but it’s actually part of the sacrifice for the greater good that the country and its citizens used to be so good at. And it’s not taking wartime - not strictly - to get it done.
Feel good about driving less. Bike and carpool when possible. Walk to the store if only picking up a couple of things and buy a couple of canvas bags. If carrying more, well, yeah, use the car.
I didn’t want to make the comment at Flickr on a person’s Flickr site who I don’t know, but I will display the swollen, deeply hued orchid here and just marvel, unoriginally, that certain orchids exude sexuality in le jardin parfumé.
photo by aprilholle
This purple passion is a Paphiopedilum or Lady Slipper orchid. And with its wet, spread, anticipating minora petals how can one not think of petite mort mons veneris and not want to see the liquid continue to flow until it continuously drips. Anthers and stigma fuse together into a singular spot that demands attention.
I’ve been offline all day as my Mac went into a safe mode.
Of course, I didn’t even know it had a “safe mode.”
Anyone who followed my last live moment online last night before my Mac shut down involuntarily would have seen me type in something along the lines of “oops just spilled whiskey and coke and it made my keyboard act funny.” Except there were typos due to the keyboard acting funny. I’d press a key and other letters would come up.
So, I went to bed last night not quite knowing whether I’d lost everything. I did have a fan running high speed with the open iBook leaning against it. The screen itself did work and the keys that made the screen brighter and dimmer also worked, so I was hopeful.
Today is when it actually turned on - but only in safe mode. But looging in required me to type in the password and that wasn’t working. I brought a spare keyboard down, and I’m typing on it still.
Safe Mode meant that everything but iTunes and Airport worked. I couldn’t go online. Not knowing what would happen if I turned it off again, I spent a few hours backing up 14 GB worth of photos and documents that I couldn’t afford to lose if I wanted to keep my sanity.
Having done that I lifted the keyboard panel up one last time with the computer now of and cleaned up the detris that has been there. It looked there was some lingering dried W&C around he battery.
I didn’t get into the guts of the computer to clean because that to me is a last resort step. The Caps Lock button has a light and that wasn’t working. That’s how i could quickly tell something was still wrong. Took a breath and turned the iBook on again.
I had a flashing blue globe within a square; something I’ve never seen before in the 12 years I’ve owned Macs and the 14 or so years I’ve used them. So at that point my back up was sounding like an inspired move, but then the rest of the log-in process engaged and I didn’t need to log in.
My wallpaper showed up and then the rest of the process took an extra long time, just enough to extend the worry.
And then boom, the Internet popped back on - and it works.
It was the wrong circumstances to be offline, but I actually enjoyed not being online. I had a couple of other computers in the house I could have logged on, but the backup was more important.
I typed this first so i could let the “outside world” know what was going on in case the computer fritzes. Now I check my e-mail ….
UPDATE - Spurs kick Lakers’ butt. 103-84 win for Spurs.
And I forgot to include this quote in the LiveBlog, which hangs in the Spurs locker room. Manu, Mr. Unpredictable, gets a groove, finally. Scores 30. Duncan 22 points and 22 rebounds !!!!
“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” — Jacob Riis
Starting Game 3 of the semi-final series against the Hornets the Spurs were down two games to zero. Well, that’s where they are again, and like the last series Game 3 is the first they play at home. At the moment, that’s all Spurs fans have to hang onto. Against the Hornets, before the pattern truly established itself, Spurs fans had even less to hope for. Then like now, the Spurs look awful, and have lost big.
That’s pretty much the state of being for the Spurs. I didn’t liveblog the last Game 3 because, as a Spurs fan, I was disgusted. I’m equally disgusted this time but they’ve earned the right not to be discounted. The Spurs come back. If they don’t they’re down 3-0 and I’ll soon after be doing what is likely to be my last liveblog of the season.
So, Spurs or Lakers fan check in, write in, about 5:30 PDT and enjoy.
By the way, though I wish him good health I’m ecstatic that Bill Walton is nowhere near a microphone. My happiness cannot be underestimated. He’s a verbal tool.
A few weeks ago, there were two small eggs in a nest with a very attentive mother.
About a week or so ago there were two small baby hatchlings in that same nest.
They may die was my thought.
There’s a life cycle spinning on my back patio.
The nest was built and grew bigger in a box within a box on two other boxes on the patio. The eggs hatched inside a ring used to raise a wok off the flames.
I’d seen baby pigeons in an older stage in the gutter above my shed. They are not pretty.
But they’re very adorable as small, very white eggs. And right when they’re born, they look like they don’t have eyes and are small, almost featherless and helpless.
They rely on mom to come flying in with nutrition and they rely on mom to keep them warm on cold nights, even if their Phoenix nights up until the last few days were at least in the high 60s.
But then mom disappeared. Two days ago, because she was ever-present and because I haven’t seen her out there I began to believe she had died. There is a dead pigeon over by the neighbor’s car but it’s real hard to tell if it’s the same one. This is especially true since many pigeons loiter around, and spin around in the air, mostly waiting on the telephone wires across the way.
But the baby pigeons, as if they were up in a tree are stranded. They’re about one week old.
The eggs were my Twitter.com avatar for a while, because it was twitter and they were birds and it made sense.
So tonight, Thursday, I gave them a little water in a little plastic container. It’s really cramped in the box and the mom - and dad - brought in a forest’s worth of twigs, packing it out. So there wasn’t any room for a flat surface for the water - and certainly not inside the wok ring. So, I jammed it in there hoping they’d be able to move the four or five inches and over the metal rim to gulp.
Right now all I gave them was an apple core, but I don’t think they can eat solid foods yet. Can they peck? They do have eyes now, which is an improvement.
Since the temperature might actually hit the 50s and they’re used to staying warm with pigeon posterior over them, I also covered the box with an old coat and a towel above them an inch or so to provide warmth, but left a square to make sure I wasn’t going to deprive them of oxygen.
DIVERTED FLIGHTS
In college a bird found itself into my dorm room and I heard it under my bed. it may have been what woke me from my mid-afternoon slumber. I believe I literally scared it to death as I tried to direct or pick it up and take it back outside. Having died, I did pick it up and took it outside, placing it at the base of a very small, not yet grown, conifer.
A few years ago, visiting my parents, another bird found its way into my brother’s previous room where I was sleeping. My room had been converted into a library soon after I found my first job. The bird was banging away at the undersized windows, but when I opened them, gesturing and gently trying to guide it to the land of the free, it wouldn’t leave. It was cold and windy and I didn’t want to leave the windows open overnight. So I closed the curtains.
The next morning I woke up and didn’t see or hear the bird. I thought it might have escaped under the door where there was a big enough gap. And having woken up later than my parents I knew that many doors to the outside had been open and shut. I was happy that it had escaped. It’s feathers were an eye-popping dark blue and I had looked into its small blackhole eyes as it perched right at the end of the bed, feet talons squeezed into the cushioned comforter so it wouldn’t fall off.
So when a little while later as I was making the bed I gripped the corners of the covers to shake them loose and remake the bed. As I did so the bird went flying, distressingly so. It landed about 8 feet away, on the floor but didn’t move. It didn’t move because except on rare occasions the dead don’t move. Or fly.
I believe it had cozied up to my warmth during the night, and, hard to tell, but I think I rolled over and killed it at one point. I took some paper towels, and thus wrapped I walked it outside. So air could also wrap the body, I placed it on Evergreen tree limbs about six feet off the ground.
When I was a young teenager, I saw a small-sized crow, though still being a large bird, fly very fast into a patio door at a relative’s house. It made a huge noise, like a glacier cracking under the warmth of a cloudless sky. It dived and flew and hit and crashed back into the basin of a wheelbarrow on a back porch.
Who knows what it thought it was going to reach on the other side?
The glossy, shining crow - thought a mere pest of a bird - never moved itself again, though was rolled out to a flower bed at some point, I’m sure, to breakdown and start a life cycle for tulips and English roses.
FLUTTER
When I woke up, I went downstairs to see how the baby pigeons had fared through the night. From the window, I push my face close to the glass. Usually, part of the box lid obscures them, so I have to go outside. They’re now dark coloring hides them within the shadows, as well.
One of the pigeon chicks is smaller than the other but the smaller pigeon does all the moving. The only thing that assures me the other is alive is its breathing that seems to move its entire body at once. But the bird is all body.
There’s some serious shit in the water. Actual shit, so obviously they got around. The apple looks uneaten but the water is more important, at least for a while. I’m thinking of bringing the birds in, with the whole box. Except it’s covered in poop and likely bird regurgitation glue because the entire nest moves as one or none.
I bring the water out there and, because it’s soft and smooth and seems swallowable, a spoonful of peanut butter. The smaller chick sharply stretched it’s neck up as if I would be useful to its survival and as if it expected to be fed. The next day I dropped in small segments of tomato, which seemed to be much more popular than the peanut butter, which I brought back inside. It had been sat on and there was more shit intermixed.
Later, after I brought the water out, a friend said she saw the mom - maybe the mom? An adult bird in any case - sitting atop the box, separated from her children by the coats I had put on top of the box.
But then the friend forgot about the birds again. I never saw any adult pigeons that close. On a wall, I saw two birds, who seemed like a couple, sit and look over at me looking at them. But there were different chicks again in the shed guttering and they flew over there. In close proximity where babies, attended to, and loved, nurtured and kept war, and there was me, figuring out what was best for the chicks.
I knew animal control wouldn’t come out to save a couple of lowly pigeons. They, too, are pests. Fine and understood, but, they didn’t have two chicks likely to slowly die of starvation just outside their window.
My next plan was to buy some puree or make some puree - something - leaning towards apples - but don’t know whether I should put that in a little container, too, or buy a pipette and actually feed them.
I imagined somehow gripping them enough to still them but not kill them so they could suckle the pipette teat of life. They have large, thick bills, sized out of all proportion to their heads. Having never been a pet owner or had pets around as a child I was willing to injure pain in however vain an attempt to help these guys live.
Having seen what could be the mother, however, I was now very hesitant about approaching the birds again or handling them. Human scent, whether from a caring or threatening skin, can make make many of nature’s parents ignore their babies. I pretty much ignored them all day yesterday, only to give them more tomato pieces at the end of the day, as the sun and the rain fell. I arranged the coats so if it got cold they could move over, but I left the rest of the box open to the elements and hope.
This morning I cursed softly under my breath.
I did so with a smile on my face.
I slipped outside and the bigger bird was more active now. The little one was, literally, under the wing of the other. They’d survived another night.
But still I cursed. And smiled.
It was a wonderful sight when a few hours later I looked outside and saw the two chicks, excitedly devouring from momma bird’s open beak. Three sets of wings were all aflutter and Mom was home.
But damn it, I didn’t have a camera to capture nature’s moment.
So my mind’s been in a bit of a mess today.
i just realized why but it took all day.
A phone ring early started it all.
Not a yes, no one in enthrall.
Three hours of sleep, I’d had.
Usually don’t care, today bad.
Work. Work. Work. Hey. Hey.
No Pay. No Pay. No Pay. No Pay.
That’s just the start.
Oh feint of heart.
So much, don’t touch.
So few right things to do.
©2008 TEMPLE A.STARK
UPDATE 10:57 5/24 to add the couplet about how little sleep I’d had - which was the original inspiration for writing a blog post. Then I turned it into a short poem after the deliciousness of the opening two lines. I probably should have left those and launched into a paragraph or two explaining the day away. But, I wanted to see what pithy production I could patter, though it didn’t altogether matter.
Doing the live blog though I’m exhausted. Spurs don’t NEED to win, but it sure would be nice and put them back in control going home.
The thing that came out of this series that may be everlasting is, respect. The New Orleans Hornets didn’t only not disgrace themselves in the playoffs at any point, they looked like a team of destiny going into Monday night’s game.
The shine was a little dulled after they lost all the games in San Antonio but they were back home and had made The Spurs look, at times, like a bunch of amateurs with no answers.
Then Game 7 erupted and The Spurs were deified with another miracle. They pulled out a win when everyone thought they would lose. And why not? This time they had earned the right to be dismissed. The series had a very definitive pattern of home-court domination.
I never said they would lose, and I feel proud of never giving up. But I thought it unlikely.
They’ll play the Lakers and I feel confident they can contain KObe and get to the finals.
The Spurs just gained a lot of new fans. There’s a lot of Laker-haters out there. Including me and everyone I know here in Phoenix.
It’s a funny ole game innit?
The victory over New Orleans didn’t have a lot of hate, just a fair amount of mutual respect. The fun will begin here about 5:45 p.m. PST.
The draft lottery was held today.
The drawing for the 14 worst teams this past season were as follows:
14th pick - Golden State Warriors
13th pick - Portland Trailblazers
12th pick - Sacramento Kings - fan was there to represent.
11th pick - Indiana Pacers
10th pick - New Jersey Nets - Jay-Z there, part owner
9th pick - Charlotte Bobcats
8th pick - Milwaukee Bucks
7th pick - LA Clippers
6th pick - New York Knicks - New Coach D’Antoni there
5th pick - Memphis Grizzlies
4th pick - Seattle Supersonics - Glad they didn’t get higher. Current owners deserve NOTHING!
3th pick - Minnesota Timberwolves
2nd pick - Miami Heat - Had best chance this year but has never won a 1st pick
1st pick - Chicago Bulls
Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley expected to be the Kevin Durant and Oden of this 2008-2009 draft. Point guard Rose is from Chicago so it would seem a likely fit.
UPDATE 20:25 - I’ll update in a few. I’ve got to eat dinner, which has been sitting next to me for a couple of hours as I live blog. And my willingness to update means 1 thing - Spurs won.
Spurs fans are worried tonight.
They’ve already seen one miracle - snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat - in their first game against the Phoenix Suns. Twice really in that game as Michael Finley and Tim Duncan threw the hail Marys full of grace - here’s a trey in your face.
So, to break the pattern of blowout home wins, would be another miracle and Spurs fan, I think, are more set to face a loss than they been in years.
Most people - fans and basketball fans alike - also know that if anyone can find a way to break out of this predestination it’s the Spurs. Often thought of as staid as unchanging, they are in fact highly able to transform themselves into any form they need to take.
What that form needs to be is balls to the wall from every single player. The Spurs can fight rough and I think we’ll see a little of that - cue Horry and Bowen. We’ll need to see a third quarter where the Spurs don’t worry about scoring - letting it come to them - and expend their energy on defense.
Who might show up and play lights out is hard to predict. A new day for Brent Barry would be nice. If he doesn’t do something noteworthy, he’ll no longer be playing for the Spurs; which is doubtful anyway.
Though it may be painful to swallow $80,000, LifeTouch is redoing a Yearbook that their company or someone particularly in their company completely weirded out.
They put the wrong heads on the wrong bodies, cut out limbs and also left one girl “nude” - with someone else’s body, obviously.
In other words, though high school students and teachers CAN be hell on earth to work with because of disorganization, it was the company who screwed up.
And a yearbook, of course, like a wedding is all about memories and good memories if you’re lucky, but memories regardless. A company that doesn’t recognize this and realize when they are 100 % at fault, is one that doesn’t deserve to exist.
The explanation from the company spokesman Sara Thurin Rollin is still kind of odd, but that is secondary now to doing the right thing:
“We take full responsibility; this is certainly not standard practice,” she said, as reported in the Star-Tribune “Our people misinterpreted guidelines for the yearbook,” she said.
How can you misinterpret making a girl look naked and moving people’s heads around and more? The Texas High School had previously won awards for its yearbook, as well.
