Lenten Rose

Humble flower
Bowed head
Lenten beauty
Winter's dread

Helleborus Orientalis is the botanical name of the very popular, early blooming shade perennial more commonly known as the Lenten Rose. Mine are blooming today. This is a picture I took today February 25, 2007

Wienermobile

Big excitement in my home town of Soakum, Oregon. It really goes by the name of a past Postmaster General of the US. But since all of our rates are jumping farther than Carl Lewis I've renamed it. The Wienermobile rolled into town and the local Ray's Market. Not being one to miss some excitement, and since I had to drive by there today, I took my camera.

First a little history on Oscar Mayer:

"Bavarian immigrant Oscar Ferdinand Mayer began working at a meat market in Detroit, Michigan, and later in Chicago, Illinois. In 1883 in Chicago, Oscar Mayer leased the Kolling Meat Market along with his brother, Gottfried Mayer. The two sold bratwurst, liverwurst and weißwurst and were popular in the predominantly German neighborhood of Chicago around the market.

As the meat market's popularity grew, it expanded its storefront and sponsored local events including the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. By 1900 the company had 43 employees and Chicago-wide delivery service. In 1904 Oscar Mayer began branding its meats to capitalize on their popularity, beginning an industry-wide trend. In 1906 Oscar Mayer became one of the first companies to voluntarily submit to the newly-created Food Safety Inspection Service (part of the United States Department of Agriculture) for testing the purity of their products."

Well below are the facts as Oscar Mayer gives them.

Interestingly it's engine is pretty much the same as we have in the Musemobile. They do have a cool GPS system built in but then again we never get lost (I chuckle to myself)


A large crowd of three people were gathered inspecting the rather odd vehicle and hoping for a free hot dog.


It is a rather cool way to travel around and is rather plush inside.


I love the license plate "Big Bun"


There is the drivers seat, keys in the ignition and GPS system on the dashboard or maybe in this case it's the daschundboard .


Here is a good view of the interior with the young lady driver at the wheel.


She was kind enough to retreat to the rear of the wienermobile and take this shot of me looking in.

Scrabble Score ~ The Scrabble Queen 348 ~ the contender 302

Quotes of the Day ~

My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R

My bologna has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R

Oh, I love to eat it every day, and if you ask me why, I'll say,

"Cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

and ever popular

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener

That is what I truly wish to be

'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener

Everyone would be in love with me.

Sweet Tomatoes on a Rainy Day

One of Scrabble Queen's favorite places to eat when we lived in San Diego was a Soup & Salad place called Soup Plantation. A couple of years ago we discovered that the same place in Oregon was going under the name of Sweet Tomatoes. So on Saturday, in the rain we drove to Portland for lunch.

It was cool with off and on rain for the 120 mile drive but as we were nearing Portland we did get a good look at Mount Hood.


The eatery was in an office park and we parked next to an Umpqua Bank building with an interesting design.


Then into Sweet Tomatoes on an empty stomach - a good thing since it is an "all you can eat" experience.



When you enter you first go through the long salad bar with all sorts of greens and toppings and pay at the far end.


It's not just salads and soup among the other thing are a bars for soup, breads, desserts and this one for a variety of hot pasta dishes.


Well I'm not showing us eating but needless to say we had our fill. Above the exit they had a cute display of "killer tomatoes."


That movie (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes) was shot in San Diego in 1978 for $100,000. One of the writers was Rick Rockwell who you may remember from "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire on the Fox network.


There was also a nice Rustica Farm Image painted on the entrance/exit wall.


It was again dark and a little foreboding on the drive back with both high and low ground-hugging clouds and more rain. In the dim light this truck looks a little evil like the movie "Maximum Overdrive" written by Stephen King and starring Emilio Estevez. Side note - the movie also had a new actress in her first very minor roll named Marla Maples. You may remember was later married to Donald Trump. She is also the cousin of Heather Locklear. Oh I'm kind of off the topic but it is interesting.



I wish I could capture on my camera the true beauty of what I shot here it was an amazing mixture of light and dark, soft and sharp, with hints of color impossible for me to photograph at 65 mph on a rain slick highway. *Smile* we did get home safely.

Scrabble Score ! Scrabble Queen one Gazillion - the challenger one gazillion -10

Quote of the Day

From "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"

The President: Take air force one.

Jim Richardson: Sir, Air Force one is broken

The President: Broken?

Jim Richardson: Yes sir.

The President: The whole plane?

Jim Richardson: In a sense sir, you remember where the Washington monument used to be?

More Fun with Pictures

I didn't do as much picture manipulation today - it's been a really lazy day. We started off with a tug passing in front of our RV moving fast and leaving a wake.


I tried shooting a shot through the lens of my binoculars. It came our relatively poor but I found it interesting anything came out at all.


So I tried taking one backwards through the binoculars - oh well (laughing at myself)


I did get out close to the old board walk and got this picture notice how much clearer the sky is today - no smoke.


Well I'm a sucker for odd-ball pictures and got this shot of the ground nearby with an old timber embedded in the rock strewn ground.


Scrabble Score ~ The Scrabble Queen 296 ~ the contender 316 ---- Yahoo!!!!
Quote of the Day ~

“It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America" ~ Molly Ivins (see below)

Molly Ivins has passed away.

Published: January 31, 2007 10:00 PM ET
AUSTIN Best-selling author and newspaper columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment and referred to President Bush as "Shrub," died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. Ivins was 62. The writer, who made a living poking fun at Texas politicians, whether they were in her home base of Austin or the White House, revealed in early 2006 that she was being treated for breast cancer for the third time. "Molly was a hero. She was a mentor. She was a liberal. She was a patriot. She was a friend. And she always will be," the Texas Observer said in a statement upon her death. "With Molly's death we have lost someone we hold dear. What she has left behind we will hold dearer still." Managing Editor David Pasztor said Ivins died Wednesday afternoon at her home while in hospice care.

Playing With Pictures

I didn't get many pictures today on our drive to Coos Bay so I decided to give everyone a glimpse at how I play when I'm up late and Scrabble Queen is asleep (I stay up late and she retires early)

So here we are and all I have are four so-so pictures due to some smoke in the sky ( I always have an excuse whether I need one or not)

The first image is of the moon over Coos Bay at low tide.

Well I thought this one could use a darker sky to emphasize the moon a little and also stepped up the color (see Below). I also added a little "Oil Painting" touch.




This image was badly washed out by the smoke in the sky so.............


I heavily blurred the image and added lots of saturation and a little color shift.


The original here wasn't too bad but I wanted more color so...........


I shifted the color then did a little "Watercolor" trick.


You can really see the smoke in this picture so..............


I monocolored it a grey-blue and inverted the colors as well as adding a slight edge effect.


So now my secret is out I have proven the saying that "idle hands are the devil's workshop" or at least the saying "Give a monkey a typewriter and over time he will write only gibberish and not a great novel"

Scrabble Score The Queen 331 ~ the contender 306 (proving anyone can win at scrabble given enough time) Just kidding !!!

Quote of the Day~

There is an old adage that says, if you give a monkey a typewriter and let it type long enough; it will eventually produce the Encyclopedia Britannica. Well, we've got a pretty smart monkey (your basic industrial engineer), and a really fast typewriter (a multi-gigahertz PC). ~ Thom J. Hodgson is the James T. Ryan Professor & Director of Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering Institute

Education
University of Michigan: B.S.E., Science Engineering, 1961; M.B.A., Quantitative Methods, 1965; Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, 1970

Areas of Interest
Scheduling, logistics, production and inventory control; manufacturing systems; and applied and military operations research.