/T/BLOG/: August 2005

This photo I just grabbed from a blog that I think is worth seeing. (credits of this photo goes to FrancoJo) It's the blog of my youngest brother who lives in Southern France. He just started his blog named FrancoJo a few weeks ago and I think he has some beautiful photos on there. So take a look for yourself and maybe leave him a comment or two. And the reason why I show this particular photo is because it is in my mind gorgeous. Live art. Down hill skiers on a climbing wall is something you don't see every day. Well enjoy his blog!

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The disaster in the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida is enormous. Many people are dead, many people are still missing and the loss of homes is countless. The Red Cross can help. Please help those who need it!

Donating to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund enables the Red Cross to meet critical needs of victims and thousands of other disasters each year.

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Based on the comments in my previous post, I guess you want to see some more detail of the mushrooms photos that I took in Sweden. Well here they are:

I am not a biologist, so I cannot tell you what kind of mushrooms these are.. maybe you know?

...and you know that you can click on (almost) each image in this blog to see them in a larger format.

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You probably all have experienced this scenario.. Someone comes home from vacation and has taken of course a number of pictures. You ask politely "Did you take any photos on your trip?" And before you know it you get to watch photos and photos and photos as if there is no end to it. Of course you like to see a couple of them, but to see them all in such a lengthy period of time plus you get an anecdote with each of them. So be before you know it you sit there, stuck with the photos that you, after you have seen a few, don't care less about. All you can think then is how do I make myself invisible and disapear without anyone noticing.
Well with that thought in mind, I will show everyone my vacation photos here. All you need to see is an overview, right? Well enjoy!

Of course if you need to view a photo in more detail, leave me a comment which one you like to see closer and I might post it later.
And if you haven't figured it out yet... these are photos of my trip to Sweden around my birthday this year.

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Doris of Gran's on Bran got this from Scott-o-rama who got this from Larry who got it from...

In this little diversion the "tagger" asks five questions of the "taggee," and then the "taggee" ends the post with the instructions for how the game works so that it propagates like any good meme is supposed to.

Doris asked me:

/T/ -

1. What is the most unusual thing you have seen on one of your treks?

This was an easy question, because just the other day I saw something that kind of spooked me out. In fact I took pictures of the objects that I saw and thought to even write a post about it on my blog.
Well it was just this last Thursday, I hiked along the Crystal Spring reservoir. It has some nice views over the water, but there is a road (Cañada rd) going pretty close along the whole trail which makes it defintely less attractive. But after a half anhour hike I saw 4 packages tossed away in the bushes. Black garbage bag plastic taped shut with blue masking tape. And the first that came to mind was CSI.. what else could be in these packages than body parts?? Well I took 2 pictures while being uncomfortable with the situation and looked good at the spot if I could see any others than the four, which I could not. It felt weird, but since I am no hero, I did not even dare to touch or open them, affraid what I might find.
Then at home I tought, nah this can't be.. first of all the packages where too light.. 2 of them were still hanging in the bushes and did not fall through down on the ground. Second the size was for all of them approx. 2 ft long and a diameter of about 6 inch. Well that will never fit a body. And third, with coyotes and other wild animals around these bags would have been teared open if it contained some kind of flesh. Plus I thought what will the police do if I give them a call about it and it is just garbage? I felt stupid. The pictures I took with too little light they did not turn out good at all, so I thought I just forget about the whole thing, I even deleted them just to put it out of my head until I was asked this question about the most unusual thing and I recovered them from my trash can to show them here.

Well if anyone is interested in solving the mystery, the location is (packages might still be there) about 2 miles south on Cañada rd coming from highway 92 in San Mateo county on the hiking trail that goes along the right side of the road.

2. We usually have all sorts of half used jars in our refrigerators. Name a couple of things in your refrigerator that really need finishing off or throwing away?

You make the questions easy for me.. I took a quick look and I am pretty good with cleaning up my refidgerator, but there are a few things that are kind of sitting there for a while and they probably fall in this category.

I took a picture of them. One is the french mustard. Probably just perfectly fine, but when I eat mustard I always eat dijon. So this was just sitting there in the back of my refridgerator. Maybe I should eat more burgers and start using it.. hmmm thanks for the idea. The other one is the Guava Jam. It's so sweet it can hardly ever go bad.. but I just don't eat it because it's not jam really. Picked it up in Kauai several years ago.
While reading over what I wrote, I think those beers really need finishing off too..

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3 questions and the answers of this post has been removed later by the author.
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Thanks Doris for taking the time to come up with these questions.

In accordance with the rules of the meme, I need to post these instructions:
Instructions:

If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “Interview me.” (”Tickle me” or “Caress me” are not acceptable substitutes.) You must leave your blog address so I can think of good questions for you!
I will respond by asking you five questions - each person’s will be different. I’ll post the questions in the comments section of this post.
You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Don't forget, you will need to check back for your questions and it might help if you let me know when you have answered them.

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little while back I wrote something very positive about NeoCounter and how much I liked the scrolling counter and all. Well that was then. All free things come for a price, and this free counter comes for a price too high for me. After 2 weeks of trial use they make the counter, that looks nice in it's original form, look like a circus attraction. They pause the counter for a couple of minutes and attach a huge google advertisement banner to it. And do this twice for the online visitors and the total visitors.. So the image I show you here shown twice below eachother in the sidebar that was too much for me to deal with. So I'm sorry but I have to say goodbye to it. I will miss the cute flags of Macedonia and Guam that used to come up at the end of the scrolling list for their resp. 2 and 1 visitors, but even I do have an eye for aesthetics. We'll miss you.

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Baidu.com had it's Nasdaq debut, and the shares of this company which is sometimes referred to as the Chinese Google, rocketed! The stock which was priced at $27 opened at $66 and ended its historic opening day at $122.54!! That is a 353.85% gain on a day that the stock market in general was sluggish. Baidu.com showed on their website the picture you can see here to mark their historical debut. To find a comparable performance in the IPO market, you have to go all the way back to the dot-com hysteria of 1998-2000. Well I didn't buy it, but I sure will keep my eye on it.

By the way, who reads chinese and can translate what it says in the arrows on the picture?

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When I was preparing dinner today, which I admit am not always too consistent in, I did something that apparently I had never done before. I took a number of bowls out of my cupboard and when I did that and had them in my hands, things started to shift and before I knew it, a stack of 4 plates came tumbling down on my lime stone kitchen counter. So far always the weight of the bowls kept everything in place, but by taking them all out, the balance was disrupted. I only knew it were four plates that were broken when I collected the pieces to estimate the damage, I was able to create 3 1/2 plate from the pieces and the rest was too small to fit really well.

I'm always careful with my stuff because I always hate it when something breaks. It feels like it is such a waste. But this time I thought of something else: I know in some countries it is tradition to throw plates for good luck. In other countries they say that broken pieces itself bring good luck. So maybe this is just what I needed and will my luck come back today. :)

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Today I went to do a medium (approx 6 mile) afternoon hike as a continuation of what I had discovered a little while back.. (see here) So I parked my car on Alpine Road near the Alpine Pond and hiked the route I marked in red on the little map I show here. And this hike was gorgeous. I constantly surprise myself with the amount of incredibly beautiful nature that is so near by. So the pond I had seen, but the ridge along I walked, that was awsome. The photos dont really show the beauty, because it is so much bigger and more colorful than the photos show. But here is still a little photo summary for you to enjoy: