Nobody 705
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Nobody #705
Nobody Asked Me But:
Eighteen years ago Friday last, (7/20/89) James Mateland Turner and Barbara Alice Burson were married at the Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda.
The following is from Nobody # 610, written on August 7, 2005, and refers to Seattle:
With coffee one must have doughnuts. One of our very best discoveries on the trip was a doughnut shop called Top Pot. Great doughnuts in an ultra-modern environment – a two-story glass wall at the front, with bookshelves lining the side walls, the table and chairs, modern but comfortable and a loft covering the back half of the store. If we had one within 20 miles of home, I would spend as many mornings as possible there.<<<
Imagine our surprise when we walked into the Starbuck’s in Los Altos last week and Barb noticed that their doughnuts (picture below) were flown in from Top Pot. Now why can’t they do the same in Souther
n California?<<<
Later: They are. I saw them at my Northridge Starbucks Thursday.<<<
I started the Nobody above (610) with this message written by Elizabeth and George in case anything was to ever happen to the both of them. I believe now, as I believed then, that it belongs in any and every book of great quotes:
“Please raise our kids with love, direction and dreams.”
JIM’S WISDOM – TRIP EDITION
UP: The Los Altos Art And Wine Festival – the entire event was nicely staged with excellent examples of art and cr
afts.
UP: Dennis Barloga – (showing his art) He was the artist we went to see and his art was everything we expected. We bought these two works from this very nice man. The cottage is a digital photograph copied onto canvas and stretched. The flower screen, also digital, is copied onto wood.
UP: Arriving early. We drove from our hotel to Los Altos early S
aturday morning to find parking, and then spent the waiting time at a table outside a Starbucks with coffee, our doughnuts and the SF Chronicle, reading about the Dodger win the previous night. (Actually Barb mixed sitting with wandering. I just sat contentedly.)
UP: Doing the same thing at a different SB’s, this one across from the Stanford campus, on Sunday morning.
DOWN: No televised baseball. Much to our
surprise the television at the hotel where we stayed did not carry the Giant/Dodger games being played only 30 miles from where we stayed.
UP: The hotel itself, the Dinah, very retro-tropical and very well maintained with lots of foliage, pools and fountains.
UP: The weather, which was warm enough for me to sit on our patio next to one of the decorative pools at
6:30 in shorts and tee while Barb slept, but was never too hot.
WAY UP: The small peninsular
towns, especially Los Altos and Palo Alto. They would be delightful places to live – if one were delightfully rich.
DOWN: Traffic on El Camino Real, the main surface street running the length of the peninsula. It was bad man, bad.
UP: Attending a Saturday afternoon signing at M Is For Mystery bookstore in San Mateo. The authors, Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, are married but write separate detective series. Muller is one of the three great pioneers in women-detective crime fiction. (The others are Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton.)
DOWN: No job offer. Once more we drove through the Stanford campus without anyone stopping our car to offer me a semester visiting professor’s position tea
ching America, The Sometimes Beautiful.
Their loss.
UP: The food. Friday we ate at the Palo Alto location of the Fish Market, one of our favorite San Diego restaurants. The view couldn’t compare, but the food was just as good – fried shrimp for Barb and pan-fried sole for me with au gratin potatoes, one of my favorites. Saturday we ate at the Creamery in the Stanford shopping mall – my chiliburger and Barb’s patty melt were delicious but our mocha malts were even better.
(Confession – Friday evening we stopped at the Creamery’s main restaurant in downtown Palo Alto and split a hot fudge sundae, which I liked better than did Barb)
And, of course, our Sunday on-the-way-home stop at La Super Rica in Santa Barbara was excellent as usual, eve
n if we did have to wait in a line stretched far out the door.
UP: Three new Starbuck’s, which takes my total to 330.
WAY, WAY UP: Getting away.<<<
JIM’S WISDOM - IRAQ
DOWN: Our president, for lying twice last week about Iraq.
Lie # 1 - "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty.”
Truth - The group doing the most spectacular bombings in Iraq, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, is a splinter group with no real connection to bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
Lie # 2 – “"We just started [the surge]."
Truth – the operation to secure Baghdad has been going on since February.
DOWN: Harry Reed, for playing politics with the lives of Americans. He could pass a possibly veto-proof compromise that places the Senate on the side of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but he prefers to force reasonable Republicans to side with our unreasonable President in the hopes of winning their Senate seats in 2008.
Bad moral move, Harry, bad political move too.
Down: Friendly enemies – 45% of anti-American fighters in Iraq are Saudis and al Qaeda gains strength while finding safe refuge in Pakistan, two countries that we count among our “friends.”
DOWN: Our president’s sense of geography. Al Qaeda is housed in Pakistan, so we fight a war in Iraq.
UP: Oy, what a mess, which is the way Joe Klein in Swampland, Time Magazine’s daily political E-blog, summarizes all the possible scenarios in a 3-part partition of Iraq. S
ideways: The National Intelligence Report, which says that we are less safe now then on 9/11. UP because it tells the truth. DOWN because the truth hurts.
DOWN: George’s timing – our President gives the OK to the CIA to resume its use of semi-torture in questioning terrorism suspects. (If he really means to stay within the Geneva accords, why do you think he is outsourcing the places at which the questioning will take place?)
Meanwhile in the same week a new book is out, (“Legacy Of Ashes, The History of the CIA,” by Tim Weimer) which details the ineptness of that organization throughout its history. Romanticized or demonized in fiction and the movies, it has been the last to know in everything from the invasion of Korea to 9/11.
JIM’S WISDOM – MISCELLANEOUS
UP: The latest anthropological hypothesis – that humans evolved to walking on two legs because it saved energy, which could be then used for hunting and sex. Or was that hunting sex?
SIDEWAYS: Joe DiMaggio’s diary is being offered for sale. UP if he would have wished it, DOWN if he would not have. He was such a private man that I suspect the latter.
DOWN: Bathroom problems, as in I couldn’t use any of ours for long periods last Thursday because we were having what seemed to be an open house for Time-Warner repair men. They were here from 1:30 until 7:30 and still couldn’t fix the problem.
UP: Al Franken, who raised $300,000 more for his Senate campaign than did his Republican opponent. It would be good to have a professional comedian in the Senate amongst all the amateurs.
UP: Shutters – Our bedroom looks so cool since these 4” beauties were installed last Tuesday.
DOWN: Jury summons – Can you believe that they want me to report to Chatsworth on August 27. That’s a lo
ng commute from Kauai.
UP: None of the above, which was the leader for the Republican nomination for President in the latest AP poll.
DOWN: The so-called New Great (religious) Awakening in the Democratic Party, which is putting me to sleep.
DOWN: Equating morality with religion. I’m as moral as the next guy. Hell, I’m more moral than most of the next guys.
UP: Your writer, for already being on page 150 of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
DOWN: The New York Times, for its policy of banning HP books from its main best-seller list.
ALL THE WAY DOWN: Those sick bastards who try to spoil the surprise by giving away the ending of “Deathly Hallows.” (No I haven’t heard anything except lies and/or guesses. Nor do I want to)
WAY, FAR DOWN: Kopi luwak, the new, and very expensive, Indonesian coffee made from the droppings of civets. If this shows up on Starbuck’s menu board, I’m switching to Seattle’s Best.<<<
Tolstoy vs. Bush on Iraq:
Bush – Great leaders make history, which he is doing in by staying the course.
Tolstoy – History is made from the bottom up and because we did not win the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq, we have no chance.
Personally, I think Leo is dead right on this one, but putting Iraq aside for a moment, with which theory of history do you agree?<<<
EXTRA UP: The inside-out sundae that we shared for dessert after our anniversary dinner. The restaurant applies hot fudge to the outside of a large frozen glass, fills the inside with 3 scoops of Dandy Don’s ice cream topped with whipped cream and adds a circle of fudge and pecans on the plate around the stem of the glass. You take a spoonful of ice cream, scrape the hot fudge from the side of the glass, dip it in nuts and enjoy!
Blame my daughter. She sent these to me.
1. A site called "Who Represents" tells where you can find the name of the agent that represents a particular celebrity. Their domain name?
www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers exchange advice and views at:
www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at:
www.penisland.net
4. Let's not forget the Italian Power Generator Company:
www.powergenitalia.com<<<
Nobody #705
Nobody Asked Me But:
Eighteen years ago Friday last, (7/20/89) James Mateland Turner and Barbara Alice Burson were married at the Elbow Beach Hotel in Bermuda.
The following is from Nobody # 610, written on August 7, 2005, and refers to Seattle:
With coffee one must have doughnuts. One of our very best discoveries on the trip was a doughnut shop called Top Pot. Great doughnuts in an ultra-modern environment – a two-story glass wall at the front, with bookshelves lining the side walls, the table and chairs, modern but comfortable and a loft covering the back half of the store. If we had one within 20 miles of home, I would spend as many mornings as possible there.<<<
Imagine our surprise when we walked into the Starbuck’s in Los Altos last week and Barb noticed that their doughnuts (picture below) were flown in from Top Pot. Now why can’t they do the same in Souther
n California?<<<Later: They are. I saw them at my Northridge Starbucks Thursday.<<<
I started the Nobody above (610) with this message written by Elizabeth and George in case anything was to ever happen to the both of them. I believe now, as I believed then, that it belongs in any and every book of great quotes:
“Please raise our kids with love, direction and dreams.”
JIM’S WISDOM – TRIP EDITION
UP: The Los Altos Art And Wine Festival – the entire event was nicely staged with excellent examples of art and cr
afts. 
UP: Dennis Barloga – (showing his art) He was the artist we went to see and his art was everything we expected. We bought these two works from this very nice man. The cottage is a digital photograph copied onto canvas and stretched. The flower screen, also digital, is copied onto wood.
UP: Arriving early. We drove from our hotel to Los Altos early S
aturday morning to find parking, and then spent the waiting time at a table outside a Starbucks with coffee, our doughnuts and the SF Chronicle, reading about the Dodger win the previous night. (Actually Barb mixed sitting with wandering. I just sat contentedly.) UP: Doing the same thing at a different SB’s, this one across from the Stanford campus, on Sunday morning.
DOWN: No televised baseball. Much to our
surprise the television at the hotel where we stayed did not carry the Giant/Dodger games being played only 30 miles from where we stayed. UP: The hotel itself, the Dinah, very retro-tropical and very well maintained with lots of foliage, pools and fountains.
UP: The weather, which was warm enough for me to sit on our patio next to one of the decorative pools at
6:30 in shorts and tee while Barb slept, but was never too hot. WAY UP: The small peninsular
towns, especially Los Altos and Palo Alto. They would be delightful places to live – if one were delightfully rich. DOWN: Traffic on El Camino Real, the main surface street running the length of the peninsula. It was bad man, bad.
UP: Attending a Saturday afternoon signing at M Is For Mystery bookstore in San Mateo. The authors, Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, are married but write separate detective series. Muller is one of the three great pioneers in women-detective crime fiction. (The others are Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton.)
DOWN: No job offer. Once more we drove through the Stanford campus without anyone stopping our car to offer me a semester visiting professor’s position tea
ching America, The Sometimes Beautiful. Their loss.
UP: The food. Friday we ate at the Palo Alto location of the Fish Market, one of our favorite San Diego restaurants. The view couldn’t compare, but the food was just as good – fried shrimp for Barb and pan-fried sole for me with au gratin potatoes, one of my favorites. Saturday we ate at the Creamery in the Stanford shopping mall – my chiliburger and Barb’s patty melt were delicious but our mocha malts were even better.
(Confession – Friday evening we stopped at the Creamery’s main restaurant in downtown Palo Alto and split a hot fudge sundae, which I liked better than did Barb)
And, of course, our Sunday on-the-way-home stop at La Super Rica in Santa Barbara was excellent as usual, eve
n if we did have to wait in a line stretched far out the door.UP: Three new Starbuck’s, which takes my total to 330.
WAY, WAY UP: Getting away.<<<
JIM’S WISDOM - IRAQ
DOWN: Our president, for lying twice last week about Iraq.
Lie # 1 - "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty.”
Truth - The group doing the most spectacular bombings in Iraq, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, is a splinter group with no real connection to bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
Lie # 2 – “"We just started [the surge]."
Truth – the operation to secure Baghdad has been going on since February.
DOWN: Harry Reed, for playing politics with the lives of Americans. He could pass a possibly veto-proof compromise that places the Senate on the side of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but he prefers to force reasonable Republicans to side with our unreasonable President in the hopes of winning their Senate seats in 2008.
Bad moral move, Harry, bad political move too.
Down: Friendly enemies – 45% of anti-American fighters in Iraq are Saudis and al Qaeda gains strength while finding safe refuge in Pakistan, two countries that we count among our “friends.”
DOWN: Our president’s sense of geography. Al Qaeda is housed in Pakistan, so we fight a war in Iraq.
UP: Oy, what a mess, which is the way Joe Klein in Swampland, Time Magazine’s daily political E-blog, summarizes all the possible scenarios in a 3-part partition of Iraq. S
ideways: The National Intelligence Report, which says that we are less safe now then on 9/11. UP because it tells the truth. DOWN because the truth hurts.
DOWN: George’s timing – our President gives the OK to the CIA to resume its use of semi-torture in questioning terrorism suspects. (If he really means to stay within the Geneva accords, why do you think he is outsourcing the places at which the questioning will take place?)
Meanwhile in the same week a new book is out, (“Legacy Of Ashes, The History of the CIA,” by Tim Weimer) which details the ineptness of that organization throughout its history. Romanticized or demonized in fiction and the movies, it has been the last to know in everything from the invasion of Korea to 9/11.
JIM’S WISDOM – MISCELLANEOUS
UP: The latest anthropological hypothesis – that humans evolved to walking on two legs because it saved energy, which could be then used for hunting and sex. Or was that hunting sex?
SIDEWAYS: Joe DiMaggio’s diary is being offered for sale. UP if he would have wished it, DOWN if he would not have. He was such a private man that I suspect the latter.
DOWN: Bathroom problems, as in I couldn’t use any of ours for long periods last Thursday because we were having what seemed to be an open house for Time-Warner repair men. They were here from 1:30 until 7:30 and still couldn’t fix the problem.
UP: Al Franken, who raised $300,000 more for his Senate campaign than did his Republican opponent. It would be good to have a professional comedian in the Senate amongst all the amateurs.
UP: Shutters – Our bedroom looks so cool since these 4” beauties were installed last Tuesday.
DOWN: Jury summons – Can you believe that they want me to report to Chatsworth on August 27. That’s a lo
ng commute from Kauai.UP: None of the above, which was the leader for the Republican nomination for President in the latest AP poll.
DOWN: The so-called New Great (religious) Awakening in the Democratic Party, which is putting me to sleep.
DOWN: Equating morality with religion. I’m as moral as the next guy. Hell, I’m more moral than most of the next guys.
UP: Your writer, for already being on page 150 of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
DOWN: The New York Times, for its policy of banning HP books from its main best-seller list.
ALL THE WAY DOWN: Those sick bastards who try to spoil the surprise by giving away the ending of “Deathly Hallows.” (No I haven’t heard anything except lies and/or guesses. Nor do I want to)
WAY, FAR DOWN: Kopi luwak, the new, and very expensive, Indonesian coffee made from the droppings of civets. If this shows up on Starbuck’s menu board, I’m switching to Seattle’s Best.<<<
Tolstoy vs. Bush on Iraq:
Bush – Great leaders make history, which he is doing in by staying the course.
Tolstoy – History is made from the bottom up and because we did not win the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq, we have no chance.
Personally, I think Leo is dead right on this one, but putting Iraq aside for a moment, with which theory of history do you agree?<<<
EXTRA UP: The inside-out sundae that we shared for dessert after our anniversary dinner. The restaurant applies hot fudge to the outside of a large frozen glass, fills the inside with 3 scoops of Dandy Don’s ice cream topped with whipped cream and adds a circle of fudge and pecans on the plate around the stem of the glass. You take a spoonful of ice cream, scrape the hot fudge from the side of the glass, dip it in nuts and enjoy!
Blame my daughter. She sent these to me.
1. A site called "Who Represents" tells where you can find the name of the agent that represents a particular celebrity. Their domain name?
www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers exchange advice and views at:
www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at:
www.penisland.net
4. Let's not forget the Italian Power Generator Company:
www.powergenitalia.com<<<
posted by jmt | 6:28 AM
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