Pic of the Day April 28, 2008

I harvested my

Jerusalem artichokes today.
I love growing these. They are so hardy and heavy producers.
This is the typical harvest from just one plant!The bulbs look like ginger but are a starchy tuber
not unlike potato. Very tasty as soup or sauteed.
Not the most easily digestible tho...

Gerard's Herbal, printed in 1621, quotes the English planter John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes:

"which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men." [4]

Pic of the Day April 27, 2008

Gene, these are crawling out of the ground everywhere.
This is just a shell and it looks like it has wing buds toward the ends.
Any ideas??? Some moth?

Chicken Run the Sequel

Pic of the Day April 25, 2008

Pic of the Day April 24, 2008

Pic of the Day April 23, 2008

Pic of the Day April 22, 2008

Pic of the day 21 April, 2008

Finally...A PM with some Huevos

This Story Makes Me Sick!

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Not a big surprise though...

(Full Story)

Pic of the Day 20 April, 2008

Pic of the Day 19 April, 2008

Pic of the Day 18 April, 2008

Bottles on tile sound funny...

Sorry for the poor quality phone video.

Pic of the Day 17 April, 2008

Some friends Isobel met at

Warnambool Cheeseworld.

Pic of the Day 16 April, 2008

Oh my!Would you let you kid ride this?

The Video

Pic of the Day 14 April, 2008

Isobel's new kite!

Pic of the Day 13 April, 2008

Pic of the Day 12 April, 2008

This lighthouse was nice as well.

The look on Isobel's face is excitement,
the look on mine is pain!!

Pic of the Day 11 April, 2008

The beautiful coastline near Portland.
Pretty much the only thing worth checking out in Portland

Pic of the Day 10 April, 2008

A view of the river marina.

Pic of the Day 9 April, 2008

How cute is this house?!?This week a friend from work loaned us their beach house
down at Port Fairy. The weather was beautiful
and it was nice to just relax and hang out
with the family.

Pic of the Day 8 April, 2008

And one more...

Pic of the Day 7 April, 2008

And how about this one?

Pic of the Day 6 April, 2008

Gene!
What are theses?

Pic of the Day 5 April, 2008

Pic of the Day 4 April, 2008

Wha'chu talkin' about Willis?

One From the Archives

Thumb Sucking 101Here's a pic of me with my little mate Micah from quite some time ago.

I love this picture and haven't seen it in years as it was backed up on an old disk.
Micah must have been about Isobel's age here?
He's much older today...more hair too.

Speaking of hair...how bad was mine?

Pic of the Day March 3, 2008

I wonder what Isobel is thinking???

I know what I am thinking.

Pic of the Day March 2, 2008

Pic of the Day April 1, 2008

Hear all those "BOOS"?
Not an April Fool's Joke...

Pic of the Day March 31, 2008

Pic of the Day March 30, 2008

The first night we camped the skies opened up and showered us with lightning, thunder and a torrent of rain. Scary stuff. The next day we drove to Fall's Creek ski fields. Clouds passed by and through us the whole way to the top. The area was recently savaged by bush fires.
By the time we got to the top of the mountain
we were nearly completely enveloped in fog.Some of my favourite terrain in Australia are the tree fern valleys.

Pic of the Day March 29, 2008

I forgot to mention that the campsite had a fence covered with wild blackberries.We picked enough for blackberry pancakes!These brambles were so thick with berries that it reminded me of those early years after I moved to Wisconsin from Kansas in grade six.
We used to fill gallon ice-cream buckets with berries and our teeth with seeds.
Raspberries too.
Man, thinking back, I miss those innocent days.

Hey Tony...remember riding our Kawasaki's to Bass lake? Hot black tea and sugar with tinned green beans to warm up, watching Caspar cartoons? Sucking nectar from ditch Columbine flowers before they became associated with school massacres? Picking engorged ticks off that old dog and smashing them on the road (nearly makes me sick to think about) ? Washing your dad's semi for a measly $5? Baling hay and then making forts in the barn? Saturday nights with Benny Hill followed by Monty Python and by Dr Who?? Your pool table? Electronic Battleship for Xmas..?Man I was so jealous of you that year.

I thought about that Xmas recently. I picked up an old (manual) Battleship game and taught my students ho to play. They love it...

Pic of the Day March 28, 2008

So being that we've had about two months of this:We didn't hold out a lot of hope for this camping weekend.
Boy, were we pleasantly surprised.
She was
happy,content,
and actually slept during the day!!!
We had planned to stay for two days but
ended up staying the whole week.

Pic of the Day March 27, 2008

Oh yea, we also passed a Dookie on the way.Seriously, there's a town called Dookie.

Pic of the Day March 26, 2008

Along the way we stopped in Glenrowan, made famous by the bushranger Ned Kelly, who was portrayed by both Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger and made an Austrlian icon by the painter Sidney Nolan.