sobo

flippant: impudent, saucy, smart. See also 'rude' (altho there are several meanings of rude). More like glib, casual, insincere. A thesaurus is a wonderful thing.

This'll prolly get me in trouble here, but my wife is 5'-5", 125 lbs, 36-25-36, and she wears a Lowe pack that is a smaller version of the Contour IV (which is what I use for expeds), made especially for wimmin. I forget what teh actual model name is, but I think it's a copule of initials and a number, something like ND 40, or like that. It's built with a hipbelt and shoulder straps made for her body size and shape, she likes it a lot, and used it quite frequently until we got the kid. Now I haul all the shit for a day hike in my Contour IV and she hauls him in one of those Kelty kid carriers on her back.

From the Olympian article... Under state policy, cougars that attack humans are tracked and killed. No allowance made on the cougar's part for human Darwinism...? If you walk around with bait on your back, expect to get bit.

That book about Ernest Shackelton I give it 5 on a scale of 1 to 5. 28 guys stranded on a frozen mass for what- like 14 months after the ship broke up? Then overland for hundreds of miles, then another boring encampment, then setting sail in whalers for a tiny island 800 miles away across the Drake Passage. Then landing on the wrong side of the island and making the first overland traverse of Elephant Island. Then returning after a few unsuccessful attempts to rescue the remaining crew And everyone survived the entire ordeal! Their ship was appropriately named... the Endurance.

kitten, I buy Barbara Kingsolver books for my wife when I see them. She lieks them for light reading (when she's tired of the parenting books). Thanks for the tip on the Love and Logic book. Sounds more like my style of parenting guide, what being an n-gn-eer and all.

That's exactly what we're going to try and avoid (the aggressive ly serious coach/teacher/whatever. It's OK for kids to have expectations put upon them. It's also OK for a kid to strive. It builds character and teaches life lessons. But it's also OK not to be the best at everything. What must not be overlooked is the age-appropriateness of the expectation. Expecting 8-year-olds to play like World Cup champs is a way bit over the top. Likewise with SATs in teh fifth grade (to use my earlier example). Age-appropriate expectations, behaviors, rewards, and punishments are what we're going to try first. Wish us luck!

RobBob, We aren't trying to de-instill competition in him; not at all. Friendly competition is healthy. What we don't want is to be like so many other "soccer parents" that stand at the sidelines exhorting their kid to "win at all costs" or pressuring him through the young years to excell like a brainiac and getting him to take the SATs in the fifth grade or something like that. That kind of pressure on a kid is not healthy. He will win, and he will lose. He will get things right, and he will get things wrong. And it's all OK. I will look for that book you mentioned and possibly give it a read. Thanks for the heads up. You, too, Muffy!

No Doctor Suess yet. We do have Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Bunny My Honey, and Nut Brown Hare. And a bunch of others I can't remember right now.

Oh! And How to Grow and Make your Own Organic Baby Food. Yeah I know, a bit over the top, but we have a garden, adn my wife likes gardening and hates pesticides.

Muffy, No I haven't. I've read a couple of books by Gavin Debecker (i think that's who it is) about natural instincts of kids and stuff (like fear and self-preservation), Raising Cain by two chiold psychologists from the East Coast, The Unhurried Child (real good book about not beating competitiveness into a kid at the expense of being a kid growing up), and How to Raise an Unspoiled Child. Know any other good books on the subject?

Finished Timeline, by Micheal Crighton last year. Good book about jumping back in time to the Middle Ages. Read We Were Soldiers Once and Young just after that. Re-read Blackhawk Down after that. Just finished Catfish and Mandela, by Andrew Phan while in Vietnam a couple months ago when we adopted our son. All good, light reads. But I assumed MisterE's question was what we all were reading now, which is just books about raising young'uns.

Books about parenting is all I get to read these days. Already read Rise & Fall of Third Reich, Burden of Guilt, A Brief History of Time, Dante's Inferno, Ghandi, etc. Those days of serious, deep thought reading are behind me, for I have entered into what my other friends with kids call... The Dark Years...

That's only if you DON'T KNOW what the answer is. Amatuers...

I got arrested in Daytona Beach over 20 years ago on July 4. Does that count? Had to spend 3 days in jail for an OC violation cuz I only had $12 on me and couldn't post bail. They still show me in their records...

The speed limit on I-84 from Eastern Oregon to Portland vicinity is 65 mph, not 55. So it's only 5 mph less than it is in WA. Not too big of a deal. Furthermore, when an interstate highway enters the corporate limits of any code city with a population greater than 100,000 people, the speed limit on said interstate highway is dropped to 55 mph. That's a federal mandate, not state instituted. Why this value is chosen is not known to me, I just know that's what it is. The interstate highway system was funded by federal defense dollars and construction began back in the Red Scare days of the 1950s in order to (obstensibly) move troops and war materials across the country to combat a commie invasion. How the military planners thought this would be valuable is anyone's guess, but we got a pretty skoocum highway system out of the deal. That's all for today's highway engineering lesson, boys and girls, Class dismissed.

Appears to me to be Sinead O'Connor. Popular Brit singer in the 80s most known for bashing the Pope.

And sworn statements from at least three witnesses, and GPS coordinates from his route with times at each waypoint, and... aw shit, wrong thread!

No one does...

Village Music of Bulgaria Nary a fahq'n werd of it!

Love you too, Cavey.

Also has been referrred to as "stomping out bar tacks"

4:20, and we're starting to get under way here at the old grindstone. Have fun, y'all this weekend! Hey, JGowans, have you started drinking yet, or did you split work like you said you were going to?

I don't know if BD has a patent, but OR has come up with some after-market "coffee grinder" style screw-ons that fit older BD and Smiley screws. I bought some, tried them, and then took them off my screws. Lots of fumbly problems. Hard to rack, couldn't get the bottom cap screw to stay tight, coffee grinder was constantly hanging up the draw/rope, etc. Then a bunch of Canadiennes in Canmore told me about some testing they'd done where something or other would happen in a fall and I'd be killed. FWIW, I believed them (or thought that all the other problems I was having with these things was causing me too much grief) and took them off. The Expresses don't do that b/c they can be folded up against the hanger, but then I guess you would already have known that... I tend to suffer thread drift... sorry.

I think you're right, CBS. Thunderbolt, yes? Many years later they updated it with an F-16 Fighting Falcon.