I understand that the game of life has its ups and downs.  If this were Monopoly, I'd be that broke fool who invested too much in the wrong squares.  A few bucks from bankruptcy, the game has lost all fun, and I'm dying for a "Go to Jail" card.  Quite comfortably, I'd park my silver little pawn in the Jail.  Sitting in time out, safely watching the game of life proceed, protected by the bars of my cell...  Then, when the world was finally on my side, I could come out and play.

Better yet, I'd like to cheat patience by hibernating through all of life's current frustrations.  Wake me up when enough time has passed to heal my heart, calm my soul, and freshen my outlook.  Life has been so exhausting lately, that I could surely use the beauty sleep.

Fall time activities we are looking forward to: Picking out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch (even though we have 3 giant ones in the yard); making pumpkin seed brittle (I'll share the recipe when I dig it out, but I believe it's from Martha Stewart); visiting the animals at the cider mill and buying apple doughnuts; celebrating Tony's 36 birthday; hosting a chili and pumpkin carving party at the end of October; jumping in colorful leaf piles; trick or treating with our little clown; the election (only two months left of this drama filled affair, although I'll be a little sad to see it go); and, if all goes well, potty learning for Mogs.

So, I guess we won't be hibernating after all.  If you don't see us out and about, give a call.  We'll love to have you over for some hot cider and a cup of chili!

The madness of summer.  The terror of tourist season.  And I am worn out.  From work.  And life.  Death, too.  Even writing.  Much I hate to do this again...I need a break.  Without one, I will crack and break and shatter.  I have worked 105 days straight.  So I'm going into hibernation.  Again.

-And I am going to the beach.  To feel the cool sand and the cold saltwater waves beneath my feet.  Without the tourists who always take over this town every summer.

-I am going to watch every Red Sox game until we are eliminated or champions--again.  Because I have not seen The Red Sox play nine full innings since Game 4 of The 2007 World Series.  And winter is coming up fast.

-I am going to sleep as long as I want as much as I want until my back doesn't stab me every time I get out of bed or tie my shoes.

-I am also going to play with my dogs.

-Hang out with some friends.

-And leave my notepad at home.

Now, I know that I have made commitments to The Bloggers' Bible Study, but don't worry; I have already written those posts and they will be published on time.

Also, I'm sure you've noticed the new header, but I just want to draw your attention to what I think will be an exciting series for the month of September--Mandy Thompson's "DO something"--which will feature posts by Christians who...Well, who DO something.  You can find the complete schedule and all the links by going to mandythompson.com.  I am scheduled to post my Essay on September 30th, but don't worry; I have already written that one, too.

You might also want to check out a new blog by a new believer:  OceanSunrise.

In closing, I just want you to know that I will be lurking every now and then, but I actually seriously literally need a break.  So help me, I have been writing so much I had a dream about prepositions!  Aaahh!

Wake me up when September ends...

• Install service pack 1

The first thing to do is to make sure you install service pack 1. This includes all the small performance updates that were released, including some vital ones that increase multi core and memory performance.

• Turn off automatic hibernation

When you use your pc for gaming you often need to download large files. This could be the game themselves (if digitally purchased) or patches for games. It seems vista by default sets you pc to hibernate after 20 minutes (I think) of idle time. This is obviously no good if you want to leave you pc downloading big files while you do something else.

To turn this off go to control panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options -> Change when the computer sleeps.

Change the put the computer to sleep option to never to turn off auto hibernation.

• Install the gamertag gadget

If you have a 360 or play a lot of the games for windows titles then you may want to show off and keep track of your gamerscore. There are a few gamertag gadgets but the one I have been using is called compact xbox360 gamercard. To install a new gadget that is not in the gadget list go to get more gadgets online. From there search for gamertag and you should find this nice little gadget.

• Install the Steam gadget

The steam gadgets displays your favorite servers in the sidebar and shows how many people are in them as well as what map the server is on. To get his gadget simply go to get more gadgets online and search for steam. When you click a server the gadget expands to show the players, scores and an image of the map.

Tulog?

Umalis?

Lumayas?

Nagtanan?

Busy sa school?

Sumakabilang bahay?

Humihingi ng balato kay Pacquiao?

Lumagok ng Joy Antibac at natuluyan?

Kumukuha ng mga pictures sa Friendster?

Nag-o-organize ng wedding ni Ryan at Juday?

Naipit sa away ng mga taga Ateneo at La Salle sa Araneta?

o

SADYANG TINATAMAD LAMANG?

For those who already have the password, I have added a few things to The Visible Spectrum.

In other news:  Got your message.  Everything you said is true.  I just don't know where to go from here.  Quite the mystery that.

From Wikipedia: Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

Love this concept! ;-) I was photographing my new sprinkler head (very cool design; photo worthy!) and ended up with the cool pic of a dandelion. When my eldest son was a young boy, he would remind me that "What some people refer to as, weeds, are sometimes really flowers. Like dandelions!"

Thus, every time I see a dandelion, I am reminded that most of what Life is depends upon one's point of view. And while this morning has not gone as I originally thought it would, I have happened upon so fab photo sites ...

• Josette Myrick
• -Teddy (enjoyed reading Change and his blog)

... and my cluttered mind is clear once again.

Recharged.

Refreshed.

Um, return to the tasks of today ...

Yes, after I whip up a mug of café mocha (with extra whipped cream!) ;-)

♥ The essence of pleasure is spontaneity. ~Germaine Greer

A still of my fix-of-the-day!

O.K. Today I figured it out. I do not like green eggs and ham, Sam-I-am. However, I have determined that hibernation, compulsive cleaning and a homemade glass of iced café mocha is a cure-all for life's challenges — big and small! ;-)

• Blogger Note: Green eggs and ham is merely a metaphor for a situation in which I seem to take on both the resilience of Sam-I-am (try it, you will like it!) and the resolve of the unnamed character (who consistently refuses the offering). However, I seriously doubt the proverbial ending of my personal green eggs and ham story will model itself after Dr. Seuss's story.
• Final Note: Said mental duel between my ears has now come to a halt via the yummy jolt of a iced and flavored espresso! ;-)

One of our out buildings is a large, barn-shaped shed. We use it to store paddles, life jackets, garden tools, kids toys and games, strollers, ropes, light fixtures and various other odds and ends. And of course, garbage pails.

Each Sunday, before heading home, we place the weekend's garbage in the plastic garbage pails. Part of our routine is a dump run each Saturday the following weekend.

This Friday, after arriving at around 8:30 p.m., I went to put something into the shed. Upon opening the door I was shocked to see that the garbage pails were on their sides, one was partly crushed, garbage was strewn about and many other items in the shed were out of place.

This is what the shed normally looks like:

It was obvious that a large animal had done this. All signs pointed to one or more bears. Specifically, a dog food can had teeth punctures, the edges of one of the garbage pail lids was chewed and the way things were knocked about could only have been done by a large animal. We quickly ruled out coyotes and thought it was unlikely that a cougar had done it. We don't think a feline would have made such large sweeping actions to move things like the large oak rocking chair, a very heavy case containing a bocce ball set or the strollers that were lying on the floor.

So, we're pretty sure we had a bear visit our property this past week. This is the season when they are coming out of hibernation. My understanding is, they're pretty hungry at this stage. We also know there were elk ribs in the garbage from a delicious recipe my wife made. That was likely enough to entice a bear to search for the origin of that scent... and just maybe get a little angry when there was next to nothing left to satisfy his hunger!

The shed door has not shut completely since we got the place... and it was never much of a concern. The door stayed shut and that seemed to be good enough! Before leaving tonight I adjusted the door jamb so it now shuts properly. So unless the bear has opposable thumbs, he or she is not likely to get in.

See this page for more about living in harmony with wildlife at your rustic or country home.

We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.
~ Alfred Adler

I just returned from a glorious (albeit hot) run. My last run was when Shirley and Jon were in Hawaii, but before their flight home went bankrupt.

I was making daily trips to Woodland for my grandkitties and, to prepare a stress-free homecoming, light housekeeping. The grinder on the coffee pot I gave Shirley and Jon for Christmas was broken. I'm good at fixing things, so I thought I'd fix it for a nice surprise. I went in search of the operating manual.

I found something of interest, but it wasn't the owner's manual.

It was the owners' marriage certificate...

...dated last June.

Early marriages and eloping run in our family the way diseases run in others. So, I won't go into it further—except to say, the day I found out was April 4th.

The last day I ran was April 3rd. Like a skipping record, I got stuck.

My last crumbs of parental hope scattered like a puffball of dandelion seeds on the breeze. While I was fast-forwarding through this tsunami of emotions, Shirley announced a positive pregnancy test. (The last I heard, children weren't even on her radar screen.)

My daughter is a Mama Bear through and through. She listened, considered options, and ruled out alternatives. Remember that empty radar screen I mentioned? It's now saturated with Mama, Papa and Baby Bear Duggers. She moderates her fear through knowledge, voraciously educating herself about pregnancy, labor and parenting.

Mid-winter, Jon's scrambling to find and awaken his Papa Bear. He's reading resources for fathers. Prematurely catalyzed into a life stage Jon desired a few years from now, he is alone in facing understandable inner resistance and, at times, consuming fear. A caterpillar, cocooned, dissolution the price of flight.

Both Jon and Shirley are children of divorce, rendering them, in many ways, mature beyond their years. They've stopped smoking. Shirley moderates caffeine intake; Jon supports her by drinking Earl Grey tea, when the aroma of coffee might be tempting. They're a team, committed to the baby in their evolving commitment to one another, divorce not even on their life's table. Two Baby Dugger websites have been set up for family and friends. Shirley and Jon receive individual and collective support through an online village of other expecting families.

Sometime in February, Baby Dugger implanted him or herself on earth unplanned, into a family with 7 grandparents, 3 great-grandparents, 1 great-great (sort of by adoption), a host of aunts and uncles, and even some cousins.

All the while, sweet Papa Bear continues to awaken out of season.

He's even out of his den.

If you computer goes blank and hangs on exit (shutdown, logoff, hibernate), and you are using an intel driver (if you used to use i810 or 915resolutions), here is a brief howto for the non-technical folks:

1. sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
2. Change the line Driver "intel" to Driver "i810". You can just comment it in case you want to change it back later.
3. sudo yum install 915resolution

If you want hibernation, you need add the following file into your /etc/pm/sleep.d/ directory.

4. sudo echo '/etc/init.d/915resolution start' > /etc/pm/sleep.d/915resolution.sh
5. sudo chmod a+x /etc/pm/sleep.d/915resolution.sh
6. restart (or logout and login)

For the technical folks:

I have a Dell 700m with the following video card auto-detected "Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device." I read that the intel driver is now recommended, and thus default on Hardy. However it is having trouble exiting X. You'll get a blank screen and system will hang when you do the following:

• shutdown
• hibernation
• ctrol+alt+backspace

The last one leads me to suspect that it is the driver that is causing the trouble. So, my solution, for now, is to switch back to the old i810 driver and use 915resolution. However, in Hardy 915resolution don't auto-run on resume so you have to make it do so yourself. See #4-5 above.

If anyone is having a better solution, or if you know what the intel driver issue has been fixed, please let me know.

The Brother always felt somewhat disorientated when he awoke from his five month hibernation but he gradually swam back to the here and now. He made a list of priorities - to first open a window, then find some food and then to eat. He pushed his frail body up with the energy he could muster. The window would not open. Whether this was because it was stiff from lack of movement or because of The Brother’s weakness, he could not be sure. Either way the window, the room’s only hope for some fresh air, would not budge.

It was at this point that Brother Hoffman-Mole heard the noise. The only noise in the stillness of a warm four o’clock in the morning was a deep buzzing noise that seemed to come from down the back of his desk. He peered down into the murky dust at the back of the desk and found a bee which was roughly the size of a ten pence piece rummaging around there.

Looking down into the piles of dust the Brother wondered what else had happened in the past five months, what other events were piled up for him to discover. He wished he had managed to wake up during the day so that he could launch himself back into life straight away. But he was stuck awake in the middle of the night now and there was no way to escape that or the bee which had doubled in size in the last few seconds.

What? How was that possible? Alarmed by this sudden growth Brother Hoffman-Mole’s first instinct was to reach for a handy rolled-up newspaper. He drew his arm back, carefully watching the bee and THWACK! As he hit the bee he remembered something five months earlier, just before he had gone to sleep. Was that… was that the same bee? It was certainly the same newspaper that he had used to hit a bee with, and the bee, stunned, had fallen down the back of his desk but…

The bee was still rummaging around in the dust, buzzing to itself. Brother Hoffman-Mole realised with horror that it had grown even more. THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! The bee remained conscious as the Brother’s blows rained down on it. THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! It continued to grow in the diminishing dust, reaching the size of a digestive biscuit. THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! The brother’s arm hurt. It was only the pain in his arm that stopped him from believing that this was a dream. The bee stopped buzzing and growing and seemed to be looking up at the Brother as if to say, “hello, can I help you?”

Brother Hoffman-Mole couldn’t deal with this on an empty stomach. If he was to fight this demon bee and win he would need to eat first. There was probably a shop open somewhere at this time of night and he pulled on the first clothes he could find in order to go out. He was reluctant to take his eye of the bee as he dressed and was distressed that it continued to grow, now similar in size to an apple, a cooking apple. It was now so big that the Brother did not dare give it a quick thwack on the way out.

In a raincoat, shorts and sandals, the Brother drew some odd looks as he hurried through the humid night. He quickly found an all-night garage and spent five pounds on crisps and breakfast snacks, night time food had not changed in the past five months. He hurried back home and as he approached his flat knew that something was wrong. A deep buzzing was audible before he had opened the door and when he did so he was in for a big surprise.

Brother Hoffman-Mole could not get into his flat. He could not get into his flat because the side of a bee was in the way. Its fuzzy, black and yellow mass now filled the whole flat and was vibrating off the walls and the floor and the ceiling. The Brother had no idea what to do now - the situation was a long way past thwacking. He did what anyone would do at quarter to five in the morning - he sat down outside and ate some crisps. There was surely nothing to be done until the morning and he was not quite sure who should be approached for help when dealing with strange, growing bees. Anyway, his phone was inside.

Brother Hoffman-Mole crunched his way through a packet of crisps, listening to the buzzing. He would check at regular intervals and found the bee pressing closer up against the walls of his flat, still defying rational explanation and growing ever bigger. The Brother fished for explanations - Had the bee escaped from a dream and followed him into the land of the awake? Was it perhaps a zombie bee which feasted on anything it could find? Had all bees become like this in the five months he had been asleep? And then more questions came to mind - Would it eat the walls of his flat and escape and would that be his fault? How much honey could it produce? Why couldn’t it just go away?

And as he had that thought the air shook with a loud

POP!

and the buzzing stopped. The crisp-full Brother stood and walked anxiously to the door. He opened it slowly and it creaked into the early-morning flat, the first sunlight beginning to creep in. Oddly, the first thing he noticed was that the room smelt much fresher than it had when he first woke up. The second thing he noticed was the dead bee on the floor.

It was difficult to miss it, taking up, as it did, most of the flat. But it was no longer the oversized buzzing monstrosity it had been. It lay deflated and split from one end to the other, a gaping hole into the beast. Dust was spilling out of it like a burst hoover bag. It’s fuzzy body now looked like a strange rug rolled up on his floor.

The Brother made his way over to the bee and began work on clearing away the dust-stuffed carcass.

We sent a rocket up to nudge the sun
And bring our early mornings light.
It made it so the days were longer
And brought us a warmer, shorter night.

We woke sleeping tortoises early
And tempted out hibernating hedgehogs,
Shouted at butterflies until they emerged
And forced spawn from unwilling frogs.

We put our clocks one hour forward,
Cleaned our homes for no reason.
It was only January but we all agreed
To make a user-generated season.