Cup 'a Joe

I had already noted that we got a Starbucks here in Gloucester. Bizarrely enough, the Newport News newspaper picked up on this.

Congratulations, Gloucester, you're on the map.

The Starbucks map.

Starbucks is open and doling out coffee, Frappuccino and lattes in the newly expanded and refurbished Farm Fresh on Route 17. Customer Courtney Childress couldn't be happier Starbucks landed in Gloucester.

"I was surprised because we don't have a lot of stuff in Gloucester," she said.

Childress, 14, used to have to wait to go to Newport News for her beloved caramel Frappuccino. Now she bugs her mom to stop in on their way by, usually every weekend.

Maybe it still says something about how small town we are that they stop on their way by - "usually every weekend". Folks, this county has only one major road running through it. You have to pass this store to get to any retail classier than Walmart. And you usually come past here weekly?

Do They Take Bids?

I can do this job for only $10,000.

A trial that opened more than a year ago has become bogged down in Boston federal court.

The question at the center of the case: Should a murderer serving life in prison get a sex-change operation at taxpayer expense?

An Associated Press review of the case, including figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews, found that the Correction Department and its outside health care provider have spent more than $52,000 on experts to testify about an operation that would cost about $20,000.

Darwin Award - VIII

We have a new winner.

Two teens who died Saturday night in Routt National Forest were smoking and jumping atop an oil tank just before it exploded, the Rio Blanco County Undersheriff said today.

Undersheriff Michael Joos said investigators are looking at the possibility that cigarettes or ashes ignited vapors from the tank.

About 10:15 p.m. Saturday authorities received reports of an explosion. They found the bodies of Fuller and Hedemark, who were thrown more than 400 feet. A dog on the tank was also killed.

Ah, a nice weekend!

For once, we didn't have a lot of work to do this weekend. Both days I spent a good part of the afternoon sitting outside on our deck, with the dogs lazing about, while I read. I did a little yard work both days, but darn little. Temperatures were around 80 degrees, and there was a breeze in the trees. It was nice.

Coming up next, unbearable heat and humidity.

ACLU Pervert - Update 2

Some months ago, a former president of the Virginia ACLU was arrested on child pornography charges. He had argued, earlier, that Virginia libraries shouldn't put any sort of filtering software on their computers. He was caught after using his credit card to buy pictures over the 'net (duh!), which he viewed on his ten year-old son's computer.

I'd forgotten to watch for the outcome. Apparently, he was back in court over two weeks ago.

A former Arlington County youth sports coach who once headed the Virginia ACLU pleaded guilty yesterday to charges that he purchased child pornography so graphic that prosecutors called it "sadistic."

Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, admitted that he accessed more than 850 pornographic images of children as young as 4, including a six-minute video depicting the sexual torture of children set to a song by the band Nine Inch Nails.

Rust-Tierney, a public defender in the District and a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 7. His attorneys and prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of 8 to 10 years.

More Zero Tolerance for Guns

OK, sometimes I send stuff to the Wall Street Journal, and sometimes I swipe what they found.

A fifth-grade promotion ceremony in Rancho Palos Verdes turned into a free-speech battleground Thursday, when students were asked to remove weapons from toys that had been placed on mortarboard caps because of the school's zero-tolerance policy for weapons on campus.

Each year, students decorate wide caps with princesses, football goal posts, zebras, guitars and other items to express their personalities and career goals. Cornerstone at Pedregal School is the only Palos Verdes Peninsula public school to practice the tradition.

On Thursday, before the ceremony, one boy was told he couldn't participate unless he agreed to clip off the tips of the plastic guns carried by the minuscule GIs on his cap. Ten others complied with the order before the event.

The principal pulled Cole aside Thursday morning, handed him a pair of scissors and said the guns had to go.

Sorry ladies, but there's only one word for this principal - pussy.

Real Estate

Eight months ago I wrote about our effort to get our real estate assessment revised after the latest review. They had assessed us at $244K, up from $155K the year before and $86K the year before that. The problem was, our house is on land zoned commercial, so it was getting boosted in value like it were a business location instead of our home.

Fortunately for us, the equalization board agreed with us, and lowered our assessment to $99,300. Last month, we even got a $300+ refund from the county for overpayment of property taxes for last year.

Now, I'm starting to wonder, again. This house is three doors down. I'll admit, they've got five times the lot we have (1.22 vs .24 acre), but it's on a corner lot and is surrounded on the other two sides by businesses.

It's prettier on the outside (new siding, shutters, etc) , and I'm willing to assume, for the sake of argument, on the inside as well. It has central air, and I have oil heat/window A/Cs. We each have 4 bedrooms and 2 baths.

They claim to have 2500 sq ft, but that sounds like utter rubbish to me, unless that attic is way bigger than it looks. My house is both wider and deeper, and I'd only claim 1400 sq ft in our two stories.

However, it has a tiny speck of a wood frame garage, and I have a hefty cinder block structure (not as ugly as it sounds), plus my 'carport' (boat shed).

They have big trees (mostly pines). I have big and small trees (including 2 pears, 2 cherries, 2 apricots, plus sundry blueberry bushes, etc. plus a 14 ft circumference black oak.).

Anyway, their asking price is $379,000. Huh?

Royal Navy

Maybe if these guys spent more time on their jobs, their comrades wouldn't be getting paraded around downtown Tehran. It's still pretty funny, though.

Save the Crabs!

A food writer in Norway has learned that it's baaaaad to boil crabs.

Ekern angered animal activists with his description of preparing crabs on the beach while his children were watching. He described throwing the crabs into hot oil after bashing them on a cutting board, a process that didn't kill all of them.

The article also outlined how to boil crabs, and included recipes.

"Showing how to boil living crabs is encouraging law-breaking. Crabs are also covered by the Animal Protection Act, and animals shall not be exposed to pain," NOAH leader Siri Martinsen told Journalisten.no.

"It is highly probable that crabs have the ability to feel pain. We know too little about it and the animals should get the benefit of the doubt," she said.

Meanwhile, in other Norwegian food news -

NORWAY, which allegedly conducts the world's largest overtly commercial whale hunt, has described Australia, New Zealand, the US and others fiercely opposed to commercial whaling as hypocrites.

The anti-whaling lobby, it said, were bent on destroying the International Whaling Commission (IWC), a 75-member body aimed at regulating whaling as well as in charge of conservation of the large creatures.

For years, anti-commercial whaling nations notably Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the US have been actively lobbying against Japan, Norway and Iceland in their bid to lift a two-decade old moratorium on commercial whaling.

Sorry, but I think I have more sympathy for the whales than crabs.

Made in USA

This is a General Electric electric skillet. My parents received it as a wedding gift in 1956. They passed it on to us 25 years, or so, ago. It made part of our dinner tonight. If only my other stuff lasted as long.

Apricots and other fruit

Back in April we had a snowstorm. I thought it was going to be the n'th year in which we lost all the fruit on our little apricot tree. It turns out that wasn't the case.

Winnie has spent the last couple days picking apricots and turning them into jam and syrup (Glazed chicken! Yum!) . Now, if we can just figure out what to do with the last 100 or so that are sitting in the dining room...

Unfortunately, we lost a pear tree this year to fire blight. We bought a blight resistant replacement, but it will be a year or two until it's big enough to help much with the cross-pollination. I may get another, so we have three different varieties.

I also spent one long evening pitting over 750 cherries (yes, I counted) that Winnie picked off of our two sour cherry trees.

The blueberries are also coming along, and we should have a bumper crop this year (see photo).

My Economy's Bigger Than Yours

Here is a great map. It shows how, if you look at the economy in the individual U.S. states, they would stack up against entire countries elsewhere.

Virginia's economy is the same size as Austria's. Illinois the size of Mexico. Texas the size of Canada. Etc.

Housing and Illegals

Reuters has a story posted about the cost of buying a home.

A record 37.3 million households, or one in three, were paying a "moderate cost burden" of 30 percent of their income toward housing in 2005

Umm, I guess that's no surprise. Back in the mid-80's I was paying about 33% in interest, principal, and escrow. Your point is?

The recent crisis in the subprime mortgage market means borrowers with damaged credit will be unable to buy a home.

Christ! That's what caused the "recent crisis!" Banks are loaning money to people who can't afford to make the payments. Both sides are gambling that they'll be able to make the payments when they balloon.

Well, actually both sides aren't gambling. After all, if you have no credit to begin with, you have nothing to lose. The banks figure, in turn, to either make a killing on the payments, or to get the government to bail them out. They win either way. The loser, my friend, is the taxpayer.

And who, exactly, is buying all of these houses?

"After contributing more than a third of net household growth between 1995 and 2005, new immigrants will likely account for at least that large a share between 2005 and 2015.

Great! The recent boom in the housing industry was caused by the need to build places for illegal immigrants to live. That explains a lot.

400th Anniversary - The Other One

I wrote about the 400th anniversary celebration in Jamestown last month. I didn't really talk about the settlement itself.

They found the original fort site a few years ago, and have been having a good time digging it up. The theory had been it had all washed away over the years, but actually the site was still mostly on land.

"Ah, a good sturdy fort to protect from those wily Indians , eh!"

Well, no, not exactly. They were rather more worried about the dominant superpower of the day, Spain, sailing in and blowing their settlement to kingdom come. St. Augustine, Florida had been settled 32 years earlier, and so was only a few days sailing away.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, there was another settlement founded 400 years ago (give or take) this year - Santa Fe. The Spanish started putting up this town between 1607 and 1610. In fact, the Palace of the Governor's (as shown here) was started in 1610.

I guess adobe in a desert climate wins out over a wooden palisade in a swamp. Except in the history books.

The Exurbs Go Modern

Gloucester is coming up in the world. This past week a Starbucks kiosk store opened inside our newly remodeled Farm Fresh grocery. Their map manages to put it in the wrong place by about 10 miles, but it's a start.

Our next door neighbor works at a Starbucks in Williamsburg, and apparently they're getting ready to build a full-blown free standing store in Gloucester pretty soon. Their store locator says, even as far out in the boonies as we are, that they have 22 stores within 20 miles of us.

Too bad (??) I mostly drink tea.