Sunday drive before Bristol.

Clint and deserted rusty truck.

First of all, Clint's a Bears fan. He got that green and yellow jacket for christmas. That must be clarified living on the Illinois - Wisconsin (Packer's) border.

Anyway, we went out taking pictures while the day was still nice. It was supposted to get colder and cloudier later in the afternoon.

Which would work out fine because Nascar's race this week was to be at Bristol. (That in itself made the day. I don't want to rehash the race but there was so much bad blood brewing that at the end of it Jeff Gordon actually got mad and pushed another driver!! I can see Matt Kennseth or Kurt Busch or Tony Stewart doing that but Gordon?)

Clint drove. Being twenty three and having a four wheel drive Grand Cherokee must give you more chutzpah. The picture below was 200 - 300 yards down a muddy, hilly, rocky path thru someone's field paralleling the tracks. I wasn't so scared of someone complaining about us driving thru their field than as I was of blowing a tire and having to walk out. And this wasn't the worse one. About an hour later we were probably a mile deep into someone's field following a grassy path along a fence line. This owner must have been a hunter. He had deer stands set in the trees and there were many other signs of hunters having been around. Nothing like trepassing on land occasionally occupied by men with guns.

The tracks seen below are right outside of town on a narrow paved country road.
Hebron tracks.

The crossing has no lights or gate. The train doesn't seem to have any regular schedule anymore. A few years ago it ran out of Walworth Wisconsin giving tourists a taste of the countryside. Now it's just a safety hazard that will never get gates because it is not used enough.

The long road to the Final Four.

Last of my frosty day pictures. Thank god.

---------

Whew.

Just finished making my last picks before Thursday's 11:00 deadline. I don't watch NCAA basketball during the season but I love March Madness. Two weeks of following games, gathering results and highlighting winners in my many brackets.

I have entries in the local paper's pool and a handful national sports sites. I've entered under my name, my son's, my daughter's, my nickname, and if they had counted in dog years I would have entered Cubbie.

My knowledge of who's "good" is acquired from skimming headlines and articles in sport sections and websites about a week before tournament time. This I know: there are a handful of teams that are pretty good every year, i.e., Duke, U Conn, Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA.

In fact even Gonzaga is usually good nowadays; they used to be a favorite underdog pick because of their funny name. Not anymore. Seeded third in the Oakland Region!!

Some of them I like, some I hate. For example: I dislike Duke. I like U Conn. I only picked Duke to win it all in one bracket and I have U Conn winning in three of my brackets. (At least I'm honest with myself. My brother hates Duke and wouldn't pick them to win even if they were playing against Danny DeVito and the remaining munchkins from the Wizard of Oz.)

Anyway, there's nothing worse being two rounds into the playoffs having no teams left in contention for the Final Four. But, never in the history of the NCAA tournament has all four of the #1 seeds made the Final Four. Let me repeat. Never.

So pick the favorites but don't pick all the favorites. Pick some upsets but not too many. To paraphrase Chicago's voting slogan; pick many and often.

Good luck to me.
(I'd be happy with U Conn or a Big 10 team).

Something Eerie about that man.

Approximately 1991. (Note the 666 in the population).
Great show but it didn't last too long.

The mayor of Eerie went on to be President of the United States.
(On Fox's 24 TV series.)



Worse than real life?

TV break.

Spring is around the corner. The days are getting longer and warmer, but still the sun is down by 6:00 and the melting snow and ice has made walking in the yard almost impossible. Squishy and wet with Cubbie land mines dotting the yard. Walk at your own risk!!

Until I can do some gardening, I feel no guilt when I start watching TV at around 7:00.

I see the late ex-President David Palmer (24) has a new show "The Unit". David Mamet is writer and creator. I love Mamet but hate to add another show to my regular viewing list.

I have too many already.

Off the top of my head: 24, Prison Break, Gilmore Girls, Supernatural, TAR, House, American Idol (at times), Earl, The Office, Survivor, Lost, Desperate .Housewives, Grey's Anatomy (at times), and cable channel shows: Rollergirls, Miami Ink, Hustle, Ballykissangel, Daily Show, and the Food Channel whatever.

Also:
I can't believe I just forgot the Simpsons and the other fine family fare on Fox on Sundays. I don't know how they get away with half the jokes they do. You have to listen carefully.

Brittle trees; at least it looks like it.

Local road - Hebron, Illinois

I might actually take new pictures once it warms up. It's been an overall mild winter but waiting a couple more weeks will make it so much better. Plus, the snow is mostly melted. Nothing looks good right now.

Just got a Sony DSC S85 but I haven't had a chance to use it yet. It should be more like the manual Minolta SRT 202 I used years ago. It allows shutter or aperature priority so I should play with stop action with faster moving (Cubbie) shots or the DOF with static shots (garden).

cOld glory.

COld glory.
Originally uploaded by busterp.

Might as well be patriotic - the Olympics are running now.

• Just yesterday Lindsey Jacobellis hot-dogged way out of a certain gold medal in snowboarding. She still got second and will be better known for that than if she finished first. Half the fun of watching the sport is the showboating. It's still just a sport.

The flag is flying proudly in my neighbor's yard, having survived the terrible hoarfrost of January 22. (I'm milking this storm until it gets warm enough to take new pictures.)

Today the temperature is hovering around zero. That's much too cold for the 18th of February.

Good news:

Daytona (Nascar) starts up it's season tomorrow. The opposite of football, Nascar starts the season with it's Superbowl (biggest race).

It's turning into a perfect weekend - too cold to do anything and racing is starting up.

Vrroommm....

Winter scene with cloud rays.

January 22, 2006. Hebron - McHenry County, Illinois.

Beautiful hoarfrost day. I took almost 100 digital pictures. Love new technology - no film. Of course in 5 years my computer will crash and I'll be out all the unprinted digital copies I've saved.

I still have a film camera. It took years of family pictures. A Minolta SRT 202. Still works but just recently Minolta quit the camera business. You can't win either way.

How many more weeks of winter?

Backyard horseshoe watching - beer drinking bench.

February 2 is the halfway mark of winter. And Groundhog Day, popularized by the movie, which was filmed in nearby Woodstock Illinois.

Copied from the Northwest Herald:

• Events on 2-2-2006:
  

  WOODSTOCK – McHenry County, the groundhog hath spoken.
  Woodstock Willie, the
  county's official Groundhog Day marmot, groggily emerged from his stump shortly
  after 7 a.m. Thursday and delivered his prognostication. Traditionally if the
  groundhog sees a shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter, and if he does
  not, spring is soon to arrive.
  Mayor Brian Sager made the announcement that
  spring is just around the corner.
  "Ladies and gentlemen, this Feb. 2 at 7:17
  a.m., Woodstock Willie, the seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators
  emerged reluctantly but alertly in Woodstock, Ill., and stated in groundhog-ese,
  'I definitely do not see a shadow,' " Sager said to a roar of approval from the
  chilly crowd.

I guess that's good news. I don't think anyone ever keeps track of the accuracy.

In fact, the competing groundhog in Punxsutawney, PA., Phil, came up with the opposite choice. They have it covered one way or the other.

Frozen rope.

Didn't they call Jeff George's 30-40 yard passes that? Frozen ropes? What a waste of talent. Well, that's my superbowl week football reference.

This is the back yard on Sunday morning January 22, 2006. Hoar frost covered everything. I took these and some others before running out to get a DVD. Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It was so so.

Anyway, unless the movie is a big screen blockbuster, it makes more sense to me to buy the movie for 20 bucks or less than spend about the same at the show. Plus I can do my laundry during the day.

Audio wiring tip and some mp3s.

Link from Tricks of the Trade:

http://www.tradetricks.org/archives/001560.html

I want to see if this shows up in the bloglines reference to this post.

And, if only by coincidence, I ended up with this audio gem: TPOH - (click link for mp3s).

"I'm an Adult Now" by The Pursuit of Happiness came on the radio just as I was posting the Tricks of the Trade hint. So, on a whim, I went to the excellent music site LargeHeartedBoy and ran a google search.

Amazingly, I found it.

I remember the old days. When I wanted a somewhat obscure band (like Wiretrain) I had to put in an order with the local Flip Side records and wait a week or so. Now it's instant gradification. In fact, if I like the sampling of songs by The Pursuit of Happiness I might actually buy a CD. Yea sure. No really.

Mr. Blue.

Blue boy
Originally uploaded by busterp.

Clint and I went to see Hostel Sunday.

Bonding, family entertainment. Quentin Tarantino NOTE:(introduces - actually produced by Eli Roth). Blood and gore. Actually a semi-believable plot with good looking unknown actors and a very believable, moody, gray, movie set. Parts of Europe are quite scary. Without giving anything away, as the final credits rolled I did count all my digits and appreciated coming up with 10.

As Tarantino movies go, I've seen Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and From Dusk to Dawn and bits and pieces of some of his other stuff.

One of my favorite movies and probably the first of his (Tarantino's) movies I ever saw was Reservoir Dogs. I went to it without knowing what to expect other than I had heard it was pretty good. I walked out whistling "Stuck in the Middle with You." Bloody. Great movie. Great casting. Great character names.

Tarantino was a big fan of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs which was made in 1971 with a very young Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.

As a tribute to Peckinpah, Tarantino used Dog in the title Reservoir Dogs.

I should have had that one to watch the other night.

Just this last Saturday, we were all home watching cable tv movies. Not because we normally do this all together on Saturday nights, but because Amy (with Josh) had to work early Sunday and Clint was broke.

After about a half hour of Jeepers Creepers 2 we gave up on that movie. Some, but not all of us wanted to watch Goonies. (It was on regular cable with a 5 minute block of ads each twenty minutes.)

With a little selling, I persuaded them to watch a Sam Peckinpah movie I had picked up not too long ago: The Wild Bunch. Made in 1969. I remember it as one of the first blood spurting, slow motion, gory projectile movies made.Plus it had William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and many other big stars.

Turns out the only actors Amy, Clint and Josh recognized were Ernest Borgnine and Struther Martin; from god only knows where.

I had always liked William Holden (for his wild side) and offered that he had taken up with Stefanie Powers in his later years - they spent a lot of time in Africa. Of course no one knew who she was either. Or Hart to Hart. Or Robert Wagner. Or Natalie Wood. Or It Takes a Thief. Or, forget it, I give up.

Needless to say I was the only one up to watch to bloody finale. Forgot there was a machine gun in that scene – but I did remember it lasted forever.