Seattle

Yesterday Cely and I drove up to the Ikea just outside of Seattle. It was a great day. Cely has been missing the quiches that we used to get at Ikea in Schaumburg and missing the cool and cheap home stuff. So we hopped into the car for a drive. Not very smart with how the price of gas has been lately but being smart has not stopped us ever in the past. We got up there at about 3pm after stopping at the IHOP in Salem for breakfast and a 3 and a half hour drive from there. When we got up there we discovered that they weren't making the quiches in Seattle. Maybe they have changed there menu all over. It has been awhile since we made an Ikea visit. Of course we ended up buying some Swedish sweets and cheese, a couple of cheap throw rugs and a table top grill. You cannot go into that place without spending some money. This Ikea was really different from the one in Schuamburg. I think what they did was just take over a couple of existing warehouses. That made it less attractive to shop in. I wonder if this was one of the first Ikea's in the US or if it is just a temporary store. It is even placed in an area zoned for light industry and warehousing rather than shopping.

I didn't take any pictures on this trip so here is a picture of some the beautiful rhododendrons that grow around here. They are starting to fade but when they are in their full glory they are spectacular.

Alexis' Commencement

I haven't written in this for almost two months. That does not make for a very interesting blog. But then, I don't think much about this blog will be very interesting. I just need to keep writing.

On Mother's day weekend Cely and I went back to the Quad Cities for Alexis' graduation. It was a perfect weekend because Adrienne's birthday was on the 12th, Alexis graduated on May 13, and Mother's day was May 14. Adrienne flew in on Friday night so the whole family was there and we were all at June's house.

So, Cely and I took the red eye on Wednesday night and got into the QC on Thursday morning. That night we went to Iowa City for an awards banquet at the University. Alexis got the College of Arts and Science Dean's Academic Achievement award. It was very cool.

A funny thing happened at the banquet. I ran into a guy I knew from Arlington High School, John Keller. He is the Dean of the Graduate School and was there to give the award to one of his students. It was fun, John and I caught up on what had happened to us since high school. Alexis had a great night. Cely and I were really proud.

On Saturday Adrienne, Cely, and I picked up Alexis for commencement. It was fun to see Lex cross the stage but it was a really long ceremony. Afterwards we went out for dinner at Biaggi's in Davenport. Afterward June had the family over for dessert. Vincent, Jutta and Jordan were there. So was John with his kids Jake and Kate. Ernie and Debbie were there too. It was really fun. Vincent entertained everyone with his tales of his new job as a letter carrier. He could be a stand up comedian.

Here is a picture of the girls. We had a birthday cake for Adrienne and a graduation cake for Alexis. Cely and I stayed until Tuesday but the girls had to go back on Sunday. Lex went back to start moving to a new apartment and Adrienne flew back home so she would be ready to be on call. Cely and I were able to spend some time with June.

Easter Weekend

Last week Cely and I were finally able to fly again so we went back to the Quad Cities for Easter.

While we were there we went to Iowa City to see a show that Alexis and her friend Danielle had in a room over a bar across the street from Prairie Lights. Alexis had two sets of photographs up, highway pictures and ossuary. When we were getting ready to take the red-eye out of Portland to go home Alexis called us and told us that a tornado had hit Iowa City. When we were up there with her we saw some of the damage. It was really shocking. She had been downtown on her bike just a little while before the tornado hit. It destroyed one of the Catholic churches downtown. Father Rudy Juarez who used to be in Davenport is the priest there.









This picture shows an apartment building with broken windows and the entire cinderblock facade blown off.



The weather seemed ok when we were there but it wreaked havoc on our trip back. We were planning to leave for home on Monday but since we fly standby, I was getting nervous about making it back since most of the flights looked full or overbooked. We decided we could get out easier if we left Sunday afternoon. It was a good idea in theory but didn't work in practice. We got on the plane in Moline an hour late around 5pm. They taxied out to the runway to await clearance from Chicago to fly in. After about 15 minutes the pilot came on the intercom and said that the flight was cancelled but that they could put us on a chartered bus to O'Hare. By the time we got to O'Hare the last plane to Portland had already left. As we were standing in a long line at the customer service stand we decided that we better do whatever we could to get out of Chicago that night because our chances of getting a standby seat on Monday morning would be minimal. We had only two choices San Francisco or Las Vegas. The Las Vegas plane had the most open seats so we jumped at that one and finally got out of O'Hare at 11:30pm. We arrived in Las Vegas at about 1:30 and had to wait until 6am to begin our next leg towards Portland. The Las Vegas airport is pretty weird, full of ads for shows and slot machines. I thought it might be fates that brought us there so we headed for the slots. But it was not to be. After plugging a few bucks into the machines it became clear that we weren't going to be instant millionaires off the quarter machines. So in the morning, since there were no direct flights to Portland, we caught a flight to Denver. After a couple of hours laying over in Denver we made it on the first flight out. We finally made it home at around 4pm, about 26 hours after we began our return trip. I hope our next trip works out better. 

Whale Watching Week

Lincoln City Beach



March 25 - April 1 marks the Spring whale watch week on the coast here in Oregon. Cely and I had not been to the coast for a while so we decided to make a short trip. We drove over to Newport then swung up to Lincoln City. Cely wanted to see what Lincoln City was like. We had driven through but never really stopped. The day was gray and always on the verge of raining. We didn't actually get hit by the rain. It wasn't actually cold but on the whole not a cheery day. Lincoln City was not such a great tourist stop. We parked the car in a public lot and tried to visit some shops but the shops were so spread out and away from the coast we did not persevere too long. We stopped and walked along the beach there for a little bit. The beach was more rocky that others we have visited so far. This was also beach cleanup weekend so there were a lot of people who were doing the good work of picking up litter on the beach. Cely and I did our part by picking up a couple of cool rocks from the beach. I don't think they will miss them. Some of the rocks have holes in them like they were drilled into. We could not figure out how they came about.

Lincoln City Beach

After our short stop we jumped back in the car and headed back in the direction of Depoe Bay. We stopped just north of Depoe Bay at a sighting stop at Boiler Bay . It is a beautiful spot where coast is very rocky. As we walked to the rail to look out for whales, Cely and I were crossing some wet rather muddy grass and all of a sudden Cely's feet swept out from under her. She went down, knocking my feet sideways, and I went down on top of her. She got pretty muddy and wet. Fortunately it wasn't that cold so we did stick around to see if we could any whales. We didn't but I guess others saw about 11 whales that day. The visibility was great even though it was so gray and cloudy out so we could see a vast expanse of ocean.

Boiler Bay














As you can see the coast is just beautiful here. So beautiful that you can even stay out here and look at it even when you are muddy and wet. The only wild life we saw were these gulls that Cely photographed. As we drove back to Corvallis it began to rain so all in all we timed it right.

We are thinking about going to see Inside Man as a matinee today but that is the only movie we have planned for the weekend. Yesterday night and Friday night was devoted to our latest addiction, DVDs of the cancelled television series, Angel. We are into the fourth season and are in between discs now. There is only one more season to watch. It should keep us busy for a couple of weeks but we are already planning to watch the Buffy the Vampire series when we finish this one!

Cely's Birthday

This weekend was Cely's birthday so we had some fun and did some visiting. Our kind of fun isn't really a big deal. It consisted of getting up late and going out to eat and explore a couple of malls. We first went to Salem to see if they had more to offer than the Albany mall. It was pretty disappointing. They do have a Best Buy up there for when we need an electronics fix but that doesn't happen too often. Even the Macy's in the mall looked tired.

We couldn't decide where to eat so we hopped into the car and went up to Portland. There is a pretty upscale mall up there with some fancy stores. There is a good restraurant up there too; Patini Pasteria. We like it because they are a local place and have a lot of vegetarian choices. So we walked around and window shopped. We did pick up something fun; a box of fake moss. It seemed so Oregonian. I think we will be sending them for Christmas presents! I also saw this store called Lexi Dog. Unfortunately I took the picture but didn't go up to the store to see what they sold.

Movies this weekend.

V for Vendetta. Friday night we went out to see V for Vendetta. Cely and I weren't really interested. I thought it would just be one of those action movies without much story. But this was really an excellent movie. It was exciting and the story fun too. Cely and I kept thinking it was an allegory for some of the things going on now with our government. We really enjoyed it and give it a hearty endorsement.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. This was our netflix winner for the weekend. It was a wonderful story of two young men sent to the country be "re-educated". They bring a violin to the village and western music even though they have to tell everyone that the music is really Chinese revolutionary. They tell everyone that one song is "Mozart thinking about Mao". The two boys get their hands on some western novels and begin reading to the seamstress, teaching her to read in the process. In the process the seamstress grows and gets the strength to leave the village and the two boys who both have fallen in love with her.

Junebug. This was our loser for the weekend. This movie got some good reviews but it didn't hit us. We could hardly make it through it. Thumbs down on this one from Cely and I.

To finish off, here is a picture of one of the plants in our back yard. I don't know what it is. Maybe someone could tell me. (I finally looked at some tags on the plant. Evidently it is a camillia, camillia japonica to be exact.)

Snow in Corvallis

This week we had the our first snowfall in Corvallis. It snowed Wednesday night and we woke up to a light covering of snow. It was to heavy and wet to call a dusting. Here are some pictures.
They are out our back door and the front. That's our Miata all covered with snow. I hate it getting snowed on but at least it doesn't get any salt. For a couple of days this week it was probably colder here than back in Iowa.
This was pretty ironic because over last weekend we drove up to the Cascades to look at the snow. They really got hit this week maybe next weekend we can go up again and watch the people ski.

MOVIES

Last weekend we watched 16 Blocks. It was pretty much the usual Bruce Willis fare. Saying that also means it was pretty exciting and entertaining. Cely and I both wondered if Mos Def really talks like that? I guess we need some help on the popular culture thing.

We saw a delightful English movie that we got from Netflix called Greenfingers starring Clive Owens. It is a 2000 film, based on a true story about a group of prisoners in an experimenta British prison and how they get interested in the ultimate English pastime, gardening. They eventually enter a prestigous gardening competition. One of the supporting actors is David Kelly of Waking Ned Devine fame. Seeing him on screen leads to comparisons with that movie. This one isn't quite as good but it does capture some of Ned's charm.

Last night it was Libertine with Johnny Depp. It started up slow but got rolling and was an excellent character study. Johnny Depp created an amazing portrayal of a man who really pays for his indiscretions. (tech note. Another one of the great Firefox extensions. I was spelling indiscretions wrong but couldn't figure out the correct spelling. So I used this dictionary extension you can load in Firefox. I just had to highlight the word and double click. It opens a dictionary. Of course, I had to get the spelling close.)

Today we were on a Kennedy assassination kick. It all started with seeing Joan Mellen on BookTV on CSPAN2. She has a book, Farewell to Justice, which talks about Jim Garrison's investigation of the assassination and the belief that it was a conspiracy hit set up by the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, and others. She draws some connections from the assassination to the situation today. It was interesting enough for us to go to the public library and pick up the book and to swing by Blockbusters to rent Oliver Stone's JFK. I have a hard time believing that something that big could be kept secret for so long but there is a lot there to make you wonder.

Daytrip to Olympia

Saturday Cely and I drove up to Olympia Washington to check out Wagner's European Bakery & Cafe. June had been there when she visited Jutta and Vincent when they lived there. She gave it a rave review. It was not bad but not really out of this world. Which leads me to my general complaint about the lack of really great bakeries. Have we lost them all in the US? I have not found one in Corvallis and there certainly isn't a good bakery in the Quad Cities. The South Town Bakery is the only one in the area that approximates a good family run bakery with sweets and breads. The South Park has good homemade donuts and sweet rolls but not much else. Wagner's in Olympia is nice but didn't have a large selection and no impressive breads. So we had a sandwich for lunch and sampled a few of their sweet rolls. Then we took a quick look at the Olympia port. We saw a ship being loaded with logs. Who knows where it was going but there were a lot of them.

On the way home we stopped in Portland to see a movie. The French movie, Cache, starred Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche. It was really interesting. Cely thought it wasn't too good, and I have to admit it was really slow. The camera shots were very long and static but the mystery drew both of us in. Cely's complaint and that of some critics was that it left open too many questions. I kinda liked that. Roger Ebert has a review that I think catches it.

The oddest thing about the day was that when we were looking for the theater we drove past the weekly no fur protest in downtown Portland. As we drove by we saw a barebreasted woman participating in the protest. Not something you often see in the Quad Cities and it seemed too chilly to be topless. That's what is nice about life, if you keep your eyes open there is always something new that keeps it interesting.

One more thing. I was listening to the Siegel-Schwall cd that they released last year, Flash Forward. There is a funny tune on it by Jim Schwall called The Unqualified Blues. It is one of the best send ups of George W. Bush I have ever heard. The little sample is a small sample.

That Old Time Music

This whole thing with Bill Graham and Wolfgang's Vault started me thinking about all the great music that came out of the 60s and 70s. Wolfgang's Vault has a audio stream of concert recordings from some of the great bands that played in Graham's concert. So I have been listening to some tunes from the greats. The thing that really impressed me was the vast array of concert posters and memorabilia they have for sale on the site. If my kids read this they would make me a happy man if they bought me a poster from one of the Siegel-Schwall gigs that are for sale! Just like this one!

So I started thinking about the concerts that I went to as a kid. I was remembering the teen club that was in my home town, Arlington Hts. Il. It was called the Cellar and some amazing music happened there. Read the article. It gives some sense of all that was going on there. Listening to Joe Kelley's Blues Band was the best education a white kid could get. So I Google Joe Kelley and find Teardrop Records and who else records for them but J. B. Ritchie. I sat next to him in Mr. Turock's History class! The biggest mistake I made was skipping the Muddy Waters concert at the Cellar! J. B. went and told me all about it the next Monday. I still regret that. But I did go to hear Howling Wolf, and Albert Collins, and the Siegel-Schwall Band. It has been great to stroll down memory lane. Now Sam Lay, the best drummer in the world is playing with Siegel-Schwall when they play their fantastic reunion concerts. Corky played in the atrium of O'Keefe Library at St. Ambrose University when I was library director there. And my old friend J. B. Ritchie is recording for the same label as Joe Kelley! Life goes round and round.

Code4lib

Warning, to those of you not librarians, this has a lot of library stuff.

For the past couple of days I have been hitting the Code4lib conference here at OSU. It was a pretty big deal with people from all over the country, Canada, and Europe. A lot of it was about programing and the plumbing that works behind the stuff that I normally see so, much of it went over my head. But it is good to hear about this stuff because it begins to make sense after a while. The keynote was from a group from Georgia who are developing an open source Integrated Library System (ILS) for the public libraries there. It looked pretty nice. They were not getting the service they wanted from their vendor and they didn't think the system could scale up to the size of the database they hoped to create. The system would be mounted on one server system and would manage centrally around 8 million records. It made me think about the QuadLinc system. There aren't that many systems around the country that run like that. The speakers talked about how they sold it to the Georgia legislature by emphasizing how having a central sytem saves all the local libraries so much money. I certainly knew what they were talking about. The QuadLinc system really saved St. Ambrose a lot of money. It is hard to convince others how well it can work. I also wondered how well the QuadLinc software would scale up when they expand across northern Illinois.

What I really wonder about is how I am starting to hear about people making big changes to the online system catalogs. First there was the recent buzz about the North Carolina State University home grown catalog. Now this "Evergreen" system and the group catalogs that OCLC is doing around the country. I think that more and more people are going to be producing systems like I saw at Universitat Freiburg. There they had three separate systems that each were designed specifically for their function but would talk together. It seemed to solve the problem where the commercial ILS's try to do so much and library staff have to put up with compromises. There are probably others who are developing homegrown systems. Its kind of funny that originally libraries designed there own systems, like Ohio, Illinois, and California. Then the commercial vendors created systems that could do more and had all the bells and whistles. Now we may be seeing new technology enabling libraries to solve their own problems again.

The conference was very successful. Jeremy Frumkin from the OSU Libraries put it together.

San Antonio - Some things I missed

A couple of more thoughts about San Antonio.

I wanted to add a picture or two also. Cely and I really enjoyed San Antonio even though we really didn't get to explore very much. I think we will go back again sometime. I would have liked to spend more time at the Alamo and Cely wanted to explore around the Villita.

But also important was that we found a fun restaurant,
Mi Tierra Cafe and Panaderia. The food was really pretty good and we had a great waiter the first night we went there. He helped make sure my meal was vegetarian. They are open 24 hours a day and have a good selection of pan dulces that are very fresh and tasty. They use a painting of Zapata as part of their decoration for t-shirts and other gifts in their gift shop. Cely and I picked up aprons for Emil, Alexis, and Adrienne. We started by buying one for Emil since he is so into cooking Mexican food and Emiliano is his tocayo. All of them are becoming good cooks. Its good to know that they are keeping up the tradition of good cooks. I sent the aprons off to the three today.

Since Cely couldn't get around much we ended up going to see a movie on the last day we were there, waiting until we had to catch our plane. There was a cinema pretty close so we went to see Last Holiday with Queen Latiffa. It was very predictable but also very enjoyable. I like movies like that, light, funny, and a little romantic.

Speaking of movies, we saw two good ones this weekend. Friday night we saw Woody Allen's newest movie, Match Point. It was pretty good. Cely liked it more than I did. We both thought it was well put together and the story was engrossing. Today we saw Syriana which was very complex but riveting. It took a lot of work to follow all that was going on. It left me feeling a little depressed about the world situation and what we in the US do to help mess it up.

Well that's it for now.

San Antonio

Cely and I are in San Antonio for the American Library Association Midwinter meeting. The weather was fine when we got here but it quickly turned cold, windy, and rainy. I have been visiting with old friends and trying to learn things. We have seen Steve Ostrem around most. I haven't seen him much since leaving Iowa. It was nice to catch up. His wife Mary has had rotator cuff surgery and is layed up for about 6 weeks. We met up with Sue O'Dell and Jonathan Miller also. I was able to meet up with Barb Allen for a drink. Yesterday we took a little boat trip on the river through the riverwalk area. It was really nice. The boat driver had a funny rap but also had some interesting history of San Antonio. These tours in cities are always a good way to see the city and learn something you would have missed on your own.

I have been noticing the "old" San Antonio architecture more than I have noticed the old part of other cities. Maybe it is because it has a southern look that is different from the northern cities I am more familiar with. One of the aspects of the older buildings are the overhangs along the first level that protect people on the sidewalk from the rain. I benefitted from that yesterday when I went out without an umbrella. The overhangs also reminded me of the streets of Guayaquil so I think they must serve as a way to keep the shop cooler. Maybe I am noticing this more because I am trying to link back to when I was here as a kid. In that way I can still get an impression of how it looked in the late 50's. There are plenty of places that still remain from that time. It probably helps because we are staying in a hotel that must have been one of the premier hotels in that time, the St. Anthony. The hotel is fine but Cely and I are looking for more of the modern amenities.

Lexie and Adrienne

We took Lexie to Seattle to fly back to the Midwest. We drove up on Friday night and it looks like we average making the trip in 4 hours. So we ended up just sleeping in the hotel and getting up at 4:30 to make the departure time. The US Airways flight was full so we were nervous about her catching the flight. The guy at the counter was extremely helpful. He listed us so that Cely and I could to to the gate and wait with Lex. Fortunately, she got on the flight and actually the trip went perfectly. After we dropped her off we left and headed home. Cely and I decided that we could relive our midwest roots and eat breakfast at the Village Inn around Portland. There are not too many Village Inns out here so we ended up driving for two hours before breakfast. And of course, there is a Ritz Cinema in the shopping center by the VI. We went over and saw that Cassanova was playing. So we just popped in and caught the 11:00 am showing. It was great fun! The movie was very intertaining. Heath Ledger was a good Cassanova. I enjoy those period based adventure, romantic comedies.

I guess it was a Heath Ledger weekend because last night we watched Broke Back Mountain. It lived up to the hype. The story was really well done and the acting was moving. I think it captured the complexity of the relationship and how many times people get trapped into there circumstances by the society around them. It is just too bad that they could not live the life that would have brought them happiness.

Adrienne is going to begin training for United soon. I hope that it will be a better situation for her. It looks that way. It sure will be nice for us. We will be able to continue to fly easily to Moline! We will just have to be grounded for a month or so. Waahhh!

Lexie's Visit

This weekend Cely and I went to Seattle to pick up Alexis at the airport. She is in town for a week. It is the first time she has been out here since we moved here. Then we didn't have any beds or furniture. On the way back we took a drive out to Astoria. Lex was happy to see where Goonies was filmed. There are a couple of websites dedicated to the Goonies and Astoria .
We stopped at Cannon Beach and looked at Haystack Rock. We drove down the coast so that Lex could see some of it since she won't be here that long. We are just hanging out now, watching tv and stuff. Pretty dull stuff right now. I have to find the cable to download pictures from my camera and I can make this a little more interesting. All for now.

I am experimenting with this blog so I am learning how to put pictures in my blog. This is the only picture I have on my little notebook computer. So this is me. 

Starting out

This is my first post on the Blog I set up for Cely and me. We are just sitting around tonight because tomorrow will be a big day. We are going to drive up to Seattle to pick up Lexie. She is going to try to fly here on Adrienne's benefit. Cely and I are very excited to have her here with us for a while. Adrienne was just out here for a couple of days. But both she and Cely were sick.

We watched a netflix selection tonight. It was the Scarlet Pimpernel, an A&E series. This one was pretty good. It has a pretty well-known English actor but I can't think of his name. The wife is Elizabeth McGovern. We have gotten hooked on watching old series through Netflix. Angel is the other show that really has got us hooked. The show is fun to watch. I should have more details on the show but I can't remember the names of the people and don't really want to look them up. So I guess this won't be that interesting to people.

We are watching this new series the Book of Daniel. It is stirring up some controversy for some reason. But mostly it is pretty dull. Everyone has all these problems and no one deals with them with any style. It seems like one of those Dawson Creek type things. Not that I ever watched Dawson's Creek.