Bobby's Blog... " Process Poetic "

2008-10-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

" There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. "

--Homer

In an alternate reality:

HEADLINE NEWS - November 4, 2008

MCCAIN WINS !!!

In a stunning upset maverick Senator John McCain has won the Presidency of The United States.

Obama supporters cried foul as lame duck President George W. Bush unexpectedly endorsed Senator Barrack Obama, who was leading national polls at the time by a wide margin, on the late night talk show "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" last Friday evening; followed up by a "Saturday Night Live" appearance and endorsement the following evening. Republican pundits scoffed and pointed to the "Bradley effect" as a more likely cause, saying dirty tricks were beneath them. When asked why he told the media he had already voted for John McCain in early voting President Bush just chuckled.

Oil futures have rebounded more than $100.00 USD/barrel in late overseas trading to dizzying new record levels after a jubillant McCain re-iterated his platform's "drill, baby, drill" mantra in his victory speech.

In a monumental turnaround Tina Fey has already called Governor Palin to congratulate her on her victory with McCain and retracted her statement that she would "leave Earth" if the McCain/Palin ticket should win the election. Governor Palin responded in kind and asked Tina if she would accept becoming her press secretary and stand in for her during moose season. Governor Palin also offered to donate the proceeds from her estimated $1.5 million USD wardrobe to out of work SNL alumni.

Having abruptly inherited new beach front property where I live I'm reminded of an interesting BBC article on "'America's 'most dangerous fault' ".

I attended high school and worked in the east bay area of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area for a number of years. I 'missed' the 1989 earthquake event after purchasing my first home out of the area in 1986. I remember the concern for family and for others I had known in the past when I learned of the quake... for I had also lived in the South and West Bay, in addition to the East Bay, for the majority of 24 years since my family's relocation from Seattle in the summer of 1962. I miss them all. Perhaps California should have heeded the lightning storms we had after the California Supreme Court judges redefined marriage earlier this year on a 4 to 3 vote.

Maybe that huge chunk of California wouldn't have slid into the sea if Proposition 8 had passed.

Disclaimer: This is a tongue and cheek piece of fiction (mostly) and I take no responsibility upon myself if the above events should come to pass [LOL].

* note: Oh snap! D.L. Hughley (on CNN) beat me to the punch(line) before I could debug this [ROFL].

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the season to prepare to vote one's conscience. One can see my leanings in my writings on this page, and I respect opposing views.

Regarding Proposition 8 here in California I would refer one to "The Family, A Proclamation to the World" for spiritual guidance. The issue isn't about hate nor bigotry nor homophobia... The issue is in rectifying a decision made by the California Supreme Court to overturn a vote made by more than 60% of those who voted in California 8-years ago on same-sex marriage, in the form of a California amendment to put the issue to rest once and for all. The amendment takes no rights away from anyone. Those of same-sex partnerships who 'married' in the state in the gap between the court's ruling and this upcoming election knew that there would be a referendum (right word?) and I have read many posts through blogs and news articles that articulate their views.

It truly pains me to see the angst on both sides of the issue. I have studied the issue with my mind and heart and come to the conclusion that I must vote YES on Proposition 8 and do what I can to help others to come to the same conclusion. My personal choice will be unpopular by some of my family, and some of my wife's family as well. For that I can only say I am doing what I feel I need to do on this very divisive issue; just as others feel they must vote their conscience on the opposing side.

I do get my dander up when one spouts scriptures in support of 'No on 8' in ignorance of "The Plan of Salvation", and when one foments hatred upon those of opposing views.

Again I would ask anyone on the fence of secular mind to remember that this issue was voted on 8-years ago with a greater than 60% passage vote (Proposition 22) AND, in the form of Proposition 8, takes no rights away from anyone in affirming marriage as being defined as the union of a man and a woman.

To those of faith on the fence I would re-iterate my invitation to read "The Family, A Proclamation to the World" for spiritual guidance.

A few thoughtful articles I've read:

"YES on Proposition 8 does not equate to "hate" "

"California’s Proposition 8 and the Tyranny of Tolerance"

I urge a YES vote on Proposition 8.

Memories...

Sweetly
it beckons me
desire to
hear the roar
of surf on shore
memories
of the sea

7-24-2008

Oct 2 2008 A timely quote on my iGoogle home page today:

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. - Evan Esar

Oct 17 2008 And still another timely quote:

Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits that under analysis some of them won't stand up either. - Evan Esar

When it comes to election prognostication, history shows that statistical analysis is not, and never will be, an exact science (reference: "The Bradley Effect", et al)... but it's still cool to watch CNN with their fancy touch screen computer deely-bob trading red states for blue states, blue states for red states, in search of trends from data which may or may not be reliable.

Vote your conscience... and bejeebies to the polls... but DO vote.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'puter stuff: Open Office Suite has come out with v3.0.0 which is great... except I can only use it on my Win XP box, not on my main 'puter (Win 98SE).

Oct 10 2008 Too cool !!! After all my difficulties with Opera after 9.27 ( 9.5x, and attempts to roll back to 9.27 )... this distro ( 9.60 ) seems to fix all my problems using Opera on my older Win98SE box... though I have to admit I upped my system memory from 192MB to my system max of 512MB (not that it helped on 9.5x... ).

Back on the Opera bandwagon again. * Opera browser now out with a recent upgrade to v. 9.61 which works great on both systems.

I have finally upgraded my Win 98SE 'puter with a maximum amount of ram (512 MB). I've picked up a couple of HTML books at thrift shops for $2.00 USD each to add to my library: "Creating Web Pages For Dummies" 6th Edition/Bud Smith & Arthur Bebak; and "Web Publishing with HTML 4 In a Week" Fourth Edition/Laura Lemay.

Gail's XP box took a dump a while ago. Her motherboard went bad and trying to acquire a replacement 'puter and/or board has been unsuccesful in my eBay bidding three or four times now. She was using her older sister's iBook... but the power adapter was damaged (since replaced), and then the hinges AND the LCD screen went bad. NOW she's using her kind'a sort'a sister-in-law's XP laptop scouring Craig's List for bargains (read: free).

Realms of Rhyme

Realms of rhyme
a poet's mind
retreats to
envision
what wondrous
haven
in pursuit
of worlds untold
to muse

7-14-2008

October 2008... Who knew there was a planetarium in Sacramento? I was able to go to the planetarium recently with the local third graders, including my granddaughter Ashley, a child I home teach, and another I used to home teach. Cool exhibits that unfortunately we were a little rushed to see: astronaut helmets, cockroaches, bunnies, an owl, magnetism, light properties, the planets, matter densities, ultra-violet light on various minerals, and much more; and then the planetarium show. Ashley said the planetarium show was the best thing ever! I even learned a few new constellations and have been able to find the 'Dolphin' in our night sky. My wife Gail packed us a humongous lunch that Ashley and I couldn't finish. We had a bear cub run in front of our bus on the way home that safely scampered into the canyon brush of the North Fork of the American River.

My younger brother is back from his work assignment in Italy; and Mom has returned from her cruise to Hawaii. Hey 'guys' ! No pictures yet ! Oh, and I've found some of those pounds I lost a bit ago... back to 159 kg. (it always sounds better in metric).

Oct 17 2008, We had a mild chill spell last week so we had to start up the wood stove for the first time this season, and yes, last Sunday, just after midnight, our first chimney fire. My fault as I hadn't had the fire stove chimney swept out yet. No lasting problem as I had been watching outside just in case nightly for such after I lit our wood stove on its third night of use. The flames didn't ignite anything other than the creosote buildup from last season on the inside of the chimney pipe, but after I quickly shut down the wood stove completely my wife and I hosed down the roof and deck just in case with copious amounts of water. Chimney has since been swept out thanks to my son-in-law (I'm too heavy for the roof on our mobile home... and none too spry).

Last few days no need to burn for warmth... upper 70°'s to low 80°'s daytime, and low 50°'s in the wee hours.

October 21, 2008 Burning a bit of wood the last few days... Daytime temps remain in the upper 70°'s to low 80°'s... Light breezes and mostly blue skies...Awesome !

October 22, 2008 Another jaunt to the doctor for Gail and tests for a blood clot in her leg... tests negative.

October 23,2008 The figs are still ripening and in abundance, yum, and the weather has been awesome.

October 25,2008 1-washer, 2-dryers, 5-microwave ovens, and assorted small electronics (all in dis-repair) sent to the local high school for recycling. Gail and I seem to be very hard on microwave ovens most especially. Gail swears that it's the microwavable popcorn that destroys the microwave ovens.

Something I learned from reading mail from my spam email folder: 24 people have searched for "bobbynichols":

A 53-year-old female living in Pittsburg, CA
12 people aged 49 - 59
22 women
2 men

All I have to do is give my credit card information and pay:

1-Year Premium Membership $ 5 a month!*
3-Month Premium Membership $ 12 a month!*
at Reunion.com to find out whoever is searching for me.

Although I have a common name I rather doubt that anyone who knew me wouldn't be able to 'find me' using the most rudimentary google search... after all 'you' found me [LOL].

Our cat Missy-Miss has been missing for quite a while now. The 'herd' has been thinned outside to six kitties, including Friskie who has been relegated to the outdoors for his spraying behaviour... let's see: Smoke, Momma Kitty, Animal, Geri, Little Sam, Friskie... yep that's it. Indoor kitties are Taffy-Doodles (my kitty),Precious, and Tiger - who used to be Chrissy's kitty and spends most of the day outdoors. Gail's dog "Maddy", or as I call her "Poop", still gets around fine, though glaucoma has taken one eye. One horse left, 'Tara', since the loss of Gail's Donkey 'Eeyore' in the freeze of 2007; and 'Saudi', Gail's prized Arabian stallion, from West Nile virus possibly.. dunno.

Some Halloween fun:

First a link to a campy ecard from JSKY at besttechie: "Witches !"

Second my poem (based on a real event) from a few years back titled:Hell on the Mount

One last quote by Beverley Nichols (no relation [that I know of]):

" Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. "

2008-06-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

" The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. "

An email from out of the blue: (initials substituted for the proper names of those whom I have no knowledge of [but thanks for the email])

E. G. wrote:

Bobby:

We were just checking on you. It seems like we are in the fast lane from the moment we awakken to when we go to bed! We had a miracle from God. When R. had his MRI is showed compressed nerve roots in his back. He went in for a nerve study so we could schedule his surgery and the nerves are normal! He was actually loosing use of his legs for awhile! God is amazing!

Let us know how you are doing.

R & E

My repondit:

Howdy !

I'm doing fine... Thank you for asking.

God is truly amazing. I have a testimony of Him answering my prayers so many times I cannot count. I am a true believer of sincere prayer at all times of the day, whether on bended knee or in my mind or at my special place out in nature; and know that miracles are accomplished every day as a result of true faith and prayer. A poem I published on the net a few years ago:

            Listen

   Give pause
   to thine
   humble prayers
   Turn thy
   mind's thoughts
   to God's love
   ... and listen

   11-1-2005

I believe it is important to open one's self to the promptings of the Holy Spirit when praying... for powerful revelations through His still small voice become available if we but listen.

More of my poetry may be found at: My Poems

One of the greatest miracles or blessings I ever received was prior to my joining the church. I had asked Heavenly Father to please show me if He had anything left for me to do in my life; for my depression was so great I couldn't see past my own pain... and not much later He sent two missionaries of His restored church to teach me the Plan of Salvation... and where I fit in as a child of God.

It has been a little over four years now since my baptism through immersion in water and by fire, and I realize the blessings of everyday life in service to the Lord constantly. For: "And ye will also know that ye are a remnant of the seed of Jacob; therefore ye are numbered among the people of the first covenant; and if it so be that ye believe in Christ, and are baptized, first with water, then with fire and with the Holy Ghost, following the example of our Savior, according to that which he hath commanded us, it shall be well with you in the day of judgment. Amen." [Mormon 7:10] I find great comfort in that promise.

Today my wife Gail and I celebrated the 17th anniversary of our second nuptial (a day early as I wished to keep the Sabbath Day holy) by going to a movie and having a dinner out. We saw the second "Narnia" movie, a matinée to save a shekel or two, and were blown away by it. It easily surpasses the first installment of a few years ago. A simple pleasure, sure, but we so seldom have the means to do something like this. We were truly blessed to receive a modest windfall that enabled us to have this humble celebration, and some left over to take care of some necessities.

I pray 'things' will continue to go well with you. Keep the faith and great miracles will always follow.

Yours in Christ,
bobbynichols

Personal revelation... a new calling realized. A talk to give. A truck that still needs to be smogged. Grandkids out for summer break. My XP box finally set up. An MP3 player to program for talks and hymns. Poem updates. M & M's. Taffy-Doodles bolloxing up Gail's iBook incessantly. Cheyenne put to rest. An odd end to the month of May (100's and cool and North winds [and itchy eyes])... June to date most moderate, most dry, a bit breezy. Service. A found book. An office to clean. Talk of Texas. Thoughts of ocean. Open Office and Opera updates in beta. I love my family!!!

2008-05-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

" A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. "

-- H.L. Menken

    Children of the Day

   Tarnished puppets
   poisoned minds
   contaminated by TV
   barren as the
   false idols infiltrating
   their soft
   static flesh

   5-5-2008

Perhaps not one of my more poetic pieces, again constrained to the use of the 'tiles' at hand, but the sentiment is clear. A timely article and discussion post poem.

The truck continues to need to be smogged.

Whether the weather: 'Tis May ! Mild Spring days... 70°'s & 80°'s Fahrenheit... still very dry. 90°'s due next week.

The lilacs are past their prime in blossom, their colour gone. The periwinkle plants are glorying in the spring sun, though the flowers are a bit sparse. The apple and plum trees appear to be loaded with fruit this year... the past few years have been a disappointment.

Water woes. Thankfully a $70 USD controller box was the fix (as opposed to replacing the much more expensive water-well pump). The controller box cover contains: a large capacitor (which historically only lasts us one year); and a relay (which also seems to have gone out this time); and connections for the electrical interface to the pump and power. Had to slightly mod the control box to fit our old setup and fight with the accumulated rust and subsequent freezing of the old box to its electrical conduit pipes.

My granddaughter had her first Holy Communion on Sunday. She looked like an angel in her white communion gown. I had the privilege to attend the service at her church, as I did at my grandson's first communion a few years ago. From The Articles of Faith #11: "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." I believe in supporting my family in any way that brings them closer to Heavenly Father and our Savior.

A quick trip to the clinic for my wife's severe asthma/allergy coughing fits also on Sunday. She was given a prescription for Prednisone and told to get some over-the-counter Allegra, an anti-allergy pill, which we found a generic substitute for.

My allergy symptoms have actually been alleviated a bit this season.
Oh, the few bouts of itchy eyes... but nothing like the allergic-conjunctivitis I usually suffer from, nor the incessant runny nose, nor the sneezing fits that used to last for minutes... knock on Scotch Broom... which I prefer to call Scotch 'Doom' for its abundance and its allergy causing effects.

My grandson brought by a certificate to show me from the County for his achievement in school... COOL !!!

We are going to have our septic tank pumped out soon. Who would have figured that it was so expensive? ($400 USD + for the least expensive service). We have to locate the 'cap' and dig out the earth above it for the discounted price. Update: After a quick prayer and with the use of my son-in-law's metal detector and the little bit of knowledge of where the septic tank should be I found both caps rather quickly. (It was only after I had unearthed one cap that my wife informed me there were two to find).

Green Tips: 50 tips from Wire and Twine (gleaned from Digg).

I've taken to heart last month's message from the living Prophet; particularly a passage from Matthew's writings of our Savior regarding treasures:

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

“But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Don't take family and friends for granted. Work on: home and hearth, faith and worship, charity and service.

2008-04-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

" If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags ? "

-- unsubstantiated

A Cry in the Rain

   Rain
   silver-dancing
   touchest
   softly to
   mingle with
   warm tears
   drawn from
   trembling
   flesh

   4-24-2008

The 'office' is still in disarray.

The truck continues to need to be smogged.

We still have need of firewood for the woodstove (which is being tended to on a just in time basis)... the rogue manzanita bearing the brunt of the burnt.

Brother Robin now one year shy of being a half-century old... my newest grand-niece lately but one year old.

I've broken the 340 lb barrier... mostly by being more active.

A bad haircut from a quick stop at not my usual hair-care provider.

Taxes... just in time from TurboTax on the web (a neat inexpensive tax service).

A small windfall took the edge off of current financial strains... and more to come.

'Defensible Space' has been a theme of late... a touch of poison oak or something mostly gone after nearly two weeks.

Still need to replace/repair the old chimney spark arrestor.

To quote my brother Robin: "Life is good".

2008-04-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

" Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing. "

-- Randy K. Milholland

Re: email received 3/10/2008

> soheil ghafelzadeh has left a new comment on your post

"Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an em...":

>soheil ghafelzadeh wrote:

> my name is soheil ghafelzadeh

> who are you?

My answer 3/11/2008:

Howdy !

Who am I...

I am bobbynichols...

Well, I try to answer all my emails, and I do tend to babble when I write (I'm very shy in person). I was once a blogger (not quite up to date any more... but hopefully that will change). I have been keeping my poem links up to date recently, however, on my Blogger page.

I am a mini-micro-minor poet; not published anywhere except by myself - on the web... But, then, one has to start somewhere. Oh, I guess I have spammed my family over the years with my poetry as well.

My Poems Collection is an html document on most of my poetry- like "stuff". A .pdf version is also available on my Blogger page. Most of my poems are corny/silly/stupid, but some are o.k. in my humble opinion.

I live in California, USA, in the Sierra foothills... Gold Country !

Places I've lived: Seattle (2), Washington. California cities: Merced, San Mateo (2), Stockton, Newark (3), Fremont (4), UnionCity, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara (2), Cupertino (2), San Jose, Monte Sereno, Magalia, Chico, Campbell, Georgetown, and here. The numbers in paren () denote how many different abodes in the same city; [(1)if not noted].

Places I've visited of note: San Francisco; Baltimore, Maryland; Georgetown/Washington D.C.; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; Monterey and Carmel, California; Seaside, Oregon; Arlington, Virginia. I've seen both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; and flown over the Great Salt Lake in Utah in a commercial jet (as a passenger of course). I've visited Lake Tahoe, and Clear Lake in California; and Green Lake and Lake Washington and Lake Union in Washington state. I bicycled to and from Yosemite National Park in California, twice, from the San Francisco Bay Area as a high school youth. I've been up the Space Needle in Seattle, twice, and most of the rides at Great America's theme park in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My favorite city is San Francisco... Resort: The Claremont/Berkeley, California... Hotel: The Claremont (http:www.claremontresort.com/) or The Miyako/San Francisco (now the Kabuki? http://www.jdvhotels.com/miyako/)... but those were back in the days of excess. Now a days: Fast food: Kentucky Fried Chicken... Beverage: milk... Place: home

I am a recent convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or sometimes called the Mormon Church)... Four wonderful years last week !

I am male, married, 2-grandchildren, 50+ years old, 6' 4" (1.9304 m), about 350 lbs ( 158.8 kg ), blond haired and blue-eyed, glasses. My wife and I lead a very humble life; we both have various health issues.

Education: AA in Electronic Engineering. I always received good grades in school, excelling in math and the sciences. I wish I could have applied myself more... sigh.

Let's see, jobs I've had in the past: liquor store clerk; all phases of the recreational bowling business; life insurance; window washer/ floor polisher/janitor; electronic service tech; shipping clerk & marketing specialist in the outdoor manufacturing biz; copier service tech.

I used to be a good bowler (ten-pins) in the day, but bad health has plagued me the last ten or so years and I had to end my recreational bowling.

My favorite website is http://www.besttechie.net/forums/ where I keep up-to-date on tech stuff. Other websites I like are linked on my Blogger page.

Books I'm reading now: The Book of Mormon; The Other Side Of Heaven/Groberg; Jesus The Christ/Talmage; The Space Opera Renaissance/ Hartwell & Cramer

Likes: family, Temple, church, chocolate, chicken dinners, quail (to watch, not eat), peanut butter, Sci-Fi, ocean, zoo, popcorn, web surfing, poetry, reading, snow, kitties, puppies, computers, March Madness (college basketball), baseball, bowling, chess, whales, walking, scripture study, pen drives, light rain, bumblebees, science, learning, spell checkers, fish, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).

Dis-likes: malt ball candies, parsnips, yams/sweet potatoes, peanut butter cookies, mowing the lawn, cold weather, hot weather, snow skiing, dogs, rutabagas, ice hockey, car racing (it's not really a sport is it?), cold water, allergies, eyeglasses, talking in front of a group of people, dial-up internet access, down pouring rain, most bugs, fishing, meat bees.

My favorite computer applications: Open Office Suite, Foxit Reader, Irfanview, Smart Type Assistant, Opera browser, Thunderbird mail client, Sunbird calendar/PIM, Note Tab Lite, any portable application for my USB pen drives, Call Wave, PrintDesk Top, CCleaner, WinSCP, a-squared (free version), HTML-Kit, HTML Tag Buddy.

Today I am struggling with a hot water heater... Taking out the old and trying to figure how to put in the new with some fixture upgrades. I am not even remotely a handy-man so trials like this are frustrating. Fed the horses... Two flakes of alfalfa each for "Saudi" and "Tara", my wife's Arabian horses. Earlier helped bury one of my in-law's malamute dogs, "Nikita", who had passed away in the night. Daughter made taco salad for dinner for the extended family which was a blessing. Truck needed some brake fluid... way too low !!! oil and water were fine. Need to smog certify the truck this week. Checked the checking account... yep, too much month at the end of the money again. Couldn't get to my family home evening discussion on Jesus The Christ/Talmage tonight due to time constraints (and no water for a shower!)... I'll read the chapter I missed before night-time prayers and
bed. I'll stop at this point.

I had been wracking my brain for a poem's title for a poem I had written which led me to the context for the blog reference you
cited: " The Gargoyle "

... O.K. - I was stumped for a title. I almost always "write" the poem first then wrestle with myself in giving the poem a title.I took the fifth word ("empty"), then the third word after ("illuminating"), then the seventh word after that ("cement") from my poem (a combination of my "lucky" number '537') and then "googled" the word-trio in quotations ("empty illuminating cement")... no hits. Next tried all the other (5) combinations of the three words within the quotations... no hits.Hmmm... tried the three words without quotes in the English language pages using "Google"... 19,500 hits! O.K. - then I tried only selecting German pages (after changing my Google Preferences for "Search Language" in Google)... 8 hits! Hmmm... still too many... only French pages in Google... oops, 11 hits! Chinese... 5 hits. Tried a few other language pages and finally got a language with only one hit... Arabic!!!

Now what?

I search the page [note: the unique hit noted above] persianblog.com/?date=13820306&blog=ghafelzadeh... it's a Persian BLOG!!! What a poetic form the written word is in Arabic... beautiful. Hey! There's an Allen Ginsberg work titled "Howl" in English on the page and after searching using the EDIT
tab and FIND function using IE6's browser with my 'key' words one at a time... all three of my words are contained in the "Howl" piece listed!!! Cool!

"empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl") "What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl") "illuminating all the motionless world of Time between" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")

COOL!!!... now here's some fodder for a title!!! How about "The Cement Sphinx", or one poetic step beyond to "The Gargoyle"... that's it!!!... "The Gargoyle"!!! Who said giving titles to a poem was hard???...

... I did ;)

As you can see it was a circuitous route that led me to your site... If you find offense, please forgive me, and email me again... I will edit the blog entry if you wish...

Otherwise...

who are you?

-----------------------------------------

Today:

Anyway... I've not been posting, and even I find that annoying... But I have been updating my poetry listings in html and .pdf, though, again, I've not written any poetry since:

Snow Day

Aloft
so softly
the snow
floats and
flutters dusting
rushing children
ecstatic
in airy play

1-22-2008

Even my html has become rusty as I try to post this "puppy".

I have been making buttons for my blog links (recht!) off and on as a project... And that's been fun.

Mom called today. We had played phone tag before finally connecting. Mom had visited brother Robin and his Bella in Italy earlier this year; he then returned the favour by returning to Washington State with his Bella to visit Mom and Peg and John... which evidently went well (I missed their call on Easter). Robin, and his Bella, are back in Italy till the end of the year(?).

Mom also visited with brother Jim... prayers to him.

I've lost some weight, 20 - 30 lbs (9-14 kg)... That that I had gained after the death of my sister Debi nearly two years ago. Still, at 340 lbs (154.2214058 kg) I've far to go.

My truck didn't pass smog (sigh) and DMV is determined to add to my life one trial after another, as if I didn't have enough already. Gail's car DID pass smog, but she's reluctant to let me drive HER car as my weight might harm her seats (sigh, again). "... just another brick in the wall." as the song goes.

Still... my faith is strong and I delight in that which I can do to help build Heavenly Father's Kingdom.

2005-11-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become."

"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."

--Frank Zappa

Weather: October 28th: Completely overcast... a sprinkle here and there... relatively warm. A brief sprinkle early the 29th which gave way to beautiful sunshine weather that same late afternoon through to noon the 1st of November... when the clouds decided to make a re-appearance. Temperatures were moderate in the 70°'s Fahrenheit.

The clouds remained... and then it rained... noonish November the 2nd... with breaks of sunshine intermittent... come the 3rd and all was still, till late in the eve when rain came upon our hill... again. O'cast with bouts of sunshine on the 4th. Temperatures have been in the 50°'s to 60°'s Fahrenheit (10° to 16° Centigrade) range.

The 5th was hit or miss sunshine. A "burn day": we took out a permit to burn our leaves and pine needles and such. Lovely early crescent moon in the early evening... "Diana's Bow".

A BLOG I have enjoyed:
The Comedy Store

Tech news source... digg.com which was started by TechTv regular Kevin Rose. An interesting way to catch up on breaking technology. I caught wind of it when CNet had a blurb that the site was down due to too much traffic!!! I checked it out later, after the addition of extra servers to take care of the increasing traffic load, and like its look and the way articles are ranked by the "diggs" or hits by the readers. Added to my sidebar yet??? Yep.

Wikibooks !!!... especially programming in CSS... for me!!! Note to me: Added to side bar also. The parent website is Wikipedia which I have yet to fully explore.

Stuff I picked up at a relatively new thrift store (Goodwill Industries #38) in Folsom, CA for less than $16.00 USD (total):
Teflon frying pan in excellent condition... the handle just did come off of our old frying pan. Gail wanted to throw the pan out but I convince her to save the sans-handled pan... till now!!!

emachines keyboard in good condition... identical to this same dirty keyboard I'm using now... only clean!!! Swapping out soon!

"Unauthorized guide to Windows 98 Second Edition" by Paul McFedries in NEW condition.

Epson T007 Black ink cartridge... in box never opened for my old Epson Stylus Photo 780 printer. It has a date stamp of 6/2005 but was too good a deal to pass up... besides, I'm sure there's a time fudge factor built in...

Metal picture frame in new condition 1" X 1.5" (approx)... I've been looking for one for over a year that wasn't too "kitsch".

Blue-green colander in NEW condition... our old colander developed a largish hole in the bottom that was big enough to leak noodles out when straining... we'd lose quite a bit down the drain.

New hairbrush in original wrapper.

Black colored desk lamp in good condition (but no lightbulb?) for Gail's computer desk. I offered her my old trusty halogen desk lamp... but she liked the newly purchased lamp better.
... sweet !!!
I looked for blue jeans and tennis shoes and a suit/sports jacket... but alas, no size Moose in stock.

Hooked up my old Macintosh Centris 650 that came to me via my Mother, via my sister, for my granddaughter, Ashley, to use. She's using it to create works of art using Adobe Photoshop 4.0. The program is a bit slow by today's standards, but is suitable for a soon to be 5-year-old's creativity. Now if I could only stop the "nag" screens that pop-up incessantly: [ ! An unknown user is already using a copy of Adobe Photoshop® with this serial [OK] ]... who cares!... and worse, how does "it" know? The prog is registered to the original owner, my sister, and was handed down... not pirated. Maybe a quick email to Adobe would be apropos.

I like playing the "Hangman" and Solitaire games on the Mac to while away the time between screens on my Win98SE box when blazing at 24.0 to 26.4 Kbps on dial-up.

In case I don't post again before the 17th of November: Happy birthday Melanie!!! (52?)
Ashley's birthday is the 30th.

Added my 9th poetry collection to the side bar to bring me up to date prior to posting this BLOG entry. A much larger selection than most... I just got lazy and lumped them in one large HTML document rather than two smaller ones (less work).

Onomatopoeia sighting: (From the customized homepage provided by Google for 10-29-2005) Word of the Day... 'susurrus': a whispering or rustling sound.

23... (The van): Gettin' us where we need to git. Oil change soon... breaks maybe. Gail's van still dead.

~

Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.
BIG Earthquakes... from the Earthquake Notification E-mail service:
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake in the Southeast Indian Ridge has occurred at: 45.27S 96.96E Depth 10km Sat Oct 29 04:05:57 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
2205 km (1370 miles) SW of PERTH, Western Australia, Australia

~My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Wistfully Silent

Wistfully silent...

Must I be so distant in

Your rose-coloured world ?

:Bobby Nichols
10-29-2005

The Haunted Wood

Wind echoes

in the

wooded mist

rising eerily

Giving a

spectre's laugh

life

:Bobby Nichols
10-28-2005

~~~

~ Listen...

Give pause

to thine

humble prayers

Turn thy

mind's thoughts

to God's love

... and listen

:Bobby Nichols
11-1-2005

The Longest Days

My true love

gone on

to reward

beyond

Certainly

these are

the longest

days

:Bobby Nichols
11-1-2005
~

HE Is !

HE is the light borne

Reborn of flesh and sinew

A light unto all

:Bobby Nichols
11-3-2005

~ Life's Hope

A struggling forth

of gloomy existence

need not

be burdensome

... For life's hopes

are kindled

in the Savior

:Bobby Nichols
11-3-2005

"Step on a Crack..."

While cracked
concrete walks
burden the feet
who is
reminded
of the
broken-backed
Mother's
grief ?

:Bobby Nichols
11-3-2005
~

~~~ Building Zion

Hopes are in

plenty

that keep us

ever

preparing for

our Heavenly peace

:Bobby Nichols
11-5-2005

" The Haunted Wood "... the imagism of an illusory haunt contrived by the machinations of the wind. (Part of the poetry exercise for my part is to increase my vocabulary.)

" Listen... "... I show a slight edit here. Forgive my poetic license in the entry. I substituted 'thine' for a 'thy' preceding 'humble' to be more proper in word usage. It didn't occur to me at the time, and I may not have had the 'tiles' to do so anyway had I realized the gaffe.

" The Longest Days "... From the 'tiles' and from the heart, but not from experience.

" Life's Hope "... I missed the deadline and decided not to submit what I had up to that point, but rather embellished the germ of what I had wrought.

" Building Zion "... By now some may wonder if indeed I'm being above board and truly playing the 'tiles'... I am.

" Step on a Crack... "... The 'tiles' unleashed evoked a child's rhyme (and 'Devo' lyric).

" HE Is ! " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was a blazing sun risen over a barely lit sky (or dark filtered sky) with the sun's rays casting reflection upon a dark ocean... giving the appearance of an inverted exclamation point of golden glow.

" Wistfully Silent " a Haiku: ... A photo of an individual standing on a distant hill's ridge... the sky a dappled rose color.

Taffy-Doodles says "meow"

2005-10-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."

--Barbara Kingsolver

More from Barbara Kingsolver:
"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof."

"Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."

Weather: Days are in the 70°'s and 80°'s Fahrenheit; with moderate to brisk breezes through the 11th of October that occasionally, like the 11th, die off in the late afternoon. The evenings and mornings are still quite chilly. Still haven't started up the wood stove yet. The oak leaves have begun to cover the ground. I've begun to enjoy the ripening figs...a few here a few there.

Rain Saturday the 15th in the wee small hours. The evenings and mornings have been actually warmer than previously. The days preceding and after the wet were/have been delightful in their moderate temperatures.

October the 20's: Wonderful weather!!! 70°'s and 80°'s. The rain expected the 22nd and 23rd of October was deferred for a bit. I've noticed that I have two different varieties of fig trees! I've been waiting for one tree to ripen its figs like the black skinned variety only to find that its fruit is ripe in a greenish to ruddy state... these are a more tangy tasting variety than the black skinned variety.

October 26th gives us a bit of precip in the form of drizzle early, to showers later, abating late evening; the daytime temperature a bit chill but not cold. The leaves from the lilac bushes are dropping in droves... the plums and apples are all spent... still an occasional blackberry to be found. Coyotes were serenading their kin just after midnight to start the day. Gail started our first heat-stove fire of the season since the grand-kids were here. Gail and I will usually just bundle up more when the grand-kids aren't here and the house is chill.
The 27th was dry with predominate blue sky, large white billowy clouds passing... a bit cool.

A previously written poem of mine to celebrate this Halloween... "Hell on the Mount"... enjoy.

A BLOG I have enjoyed:
Airbagindustries.com/

THE YANKEES WIN 2 of 5 games to the los angeles? angels in the first round of the American League Baseball playoffs. My baseball season was essentially over herewith. LONG LIVE THE YANKEES!!!

... O.K... I did watch the marathon 14 inning 3rd game classic between the Houston Astros and the Chicago White Sox, and the last two outs of game 4 that clinched the World Series for the White Sox. It just ain't the same without the New York Yankees or the San Francisco Giants or the Oakland A's in contention.

Wonderful sacrament meeting the Sabbath of October 9th, a Fast Sunday. Many powerful testimonies, with more than one moving me to tears.
Two weeks later on the 23rd was my favorite sacrament meeting theme... the primary children's presentation to the ward. Nothing moves me more than the children singing and giving testimonies.

Something cool found browsing Lockergnome's newsletter (September 20 "Windows Fanatics" issue): Tinypic.com/ can host your photos and give the URL's for links for BLOGgers, EBay users, etc. without the need for one to use their own web space to store images. I checked it out in this BLOG (see pic below) and it appears to work fine... and the URL is tiny!!! The website states that all photos larger than 250K Bytes will be automatically resized, but hey, that's plenty big enough for the casual use of pix on the web. File types that are allowed: jpg and .png and .gif and .bmp formats.
Our church hosted a preparedness fair October the 14th that was quite an eye opener for me. Now I need to begin implementing the knowledge gained to be ready for whatever. I'm also thinking along the lines of creating a brief page of all the links that I have gleaned from the fair and further useful links through a little more research.

Rosa Parks has passed on. Her act of civil disobedience is acknowledged as a turning point in human relations in the USA, her courage to defy convention and retain her dignity is a testament of faith. What if she hadn't decided to keep her seat on the bus that day?

A bonus I received from our power company for reducing our home's energy consumption by more than 20% (actual=23%) from June 1st to September 30th (compared to last year's consumption) gave me an energy bill of only $16.27 USD for the past month... SWEET!!!
Of course that money I saved will probably go toward the ridiculous increase(s) (ad infinitum/ad nauseam) in the price of gasoline, but hey! I look forward to checking out gasoline/oil/related profits by the various petrochemical companies around the world... just for a giggle.
Blithly mis speling en Goggle:
Fond wile Gogling "Gogle"

... ibud

... transl8ed pome fromb da Spanische

Eh websyte speshalizing n de mis-speling uv Googlle???

... Ahhhhhhhh... Niagra (whatz uh "Flork"?)

... Owe, gnow Eye gno!!! Lyk de Florks uv duh Amerikan Rivr wrond heya.

... a "Mycrosoft" exspearment.

... "Los Vegas"... ah hystery leson.

The van... died... October 13th, a Thursday... Long live the van!!!

My daughter had borrowed my wife's van to run my grandkids to school... both of her vehicles in sad shape and waiting repair themselves. On her way back home she heard a loud clunk noise in the engine area and didn't have any brakes? She immediately threw the car into park?? while the car was in motion to stall/stop the van??? Not many minutes after I started relating this story in the BLOG draft (same day) I received a call from the school that the kids had been dropped off at... seems they noticed a large puddle and a trail of oil in their parking lot and were calling to see if my daughter had made it home alright? Gail got the van towed home using her cell phone's towing benefit that has come in handy sooooooo many times...!!! Attempts to date have proved futile in resurrecting the poor vehicle.
23 (or Van-trois [sic])... October 13th (continued): Our first van (pictured below) was destroyed in April 2002 when it was driven into one of the narrow Greenwood bridge abutments.

I've been blessed with an extended family within the church that has provided a van for my family. It's a 1993 van (not shown) that runs!!! My daughter's two vehicles had also gone down for the count for a period of time with thisses and thats, so the vehicle situation was quite tenuous at best with school and soccer and church and my daughter Chrissy's (and her husband's) job and all the sundry things Gail runs around for... phew!!! I've long joked that this property was cursed when it comes to vehicles. A long tale it would be about all the vehicles we've had in the 15 or so years here.

Need a freeware solution for a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator, and a database integrated, (etc.) into an office suite?... Open Office 2.0 has been released!!! Not yet for MacOS X... but soon? A huge download (75 MBytes) for slow-pokey dial-up users like me, but I have upgraded from my Star Office 5.1 Suite application that I've used for quite some time and the new ap looks quite impressive at quick glance.

~

Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.
BIG Earthquakes... from the Earthquake Notification E-mail service:
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Pakistan has occurred at: 34.43N 73.54E Depth 10km Sat Oct 8 03:50:38 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
95 km (60 miles) NNE of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan (pop 524,000)

115 km (70 miles) ESE of Mingaora, Pakistan (pop 174,000)

125 km (75 miles) WNW of Srinagar, Kashmir (pop 894,000)

165 km (105 miles) N of Jhelum, Pakistan
... Then the area was hammered continuously... with 24 seismic events of 5.0 magnitude or greater within 40 hours, hampering rescue attempts... many tens of thousands have passed on.

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake northeast of Taiwan has occurred at: 25.30N 123.26E Depth 190km Sat Oct 15 15:51:08 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
140 km (85 miles) NW of Ishigaki-jima, Ryukyu Islands, Japan (pop 45,000)

165 km (100 miles) ENE of Suao, Taiwan

175 km (110 miles) E of Taipei, Taiwan

1950 km (1210 miles) WSW of Tokyo, Japan
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan has occurred at: 36.40N 140.85E Depth 37km Wed Oct 19 11:44:43 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
35 km (20 miles) E of Mito, Honshu, Japan (pop 246,000)

75 km (45 miles) S of Iwaki, Honshu, Japan (pop 360,000)

130 km (80 miles) NE of Tokyo, Japan (pop 7,967,000)

150 km (95 miles) SSE of Fukushima, Honshu, Japan (pop 285,000)

~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

A Roiled Pumpkin Sky

A roiled pumpkin sky

Like desert dunes convolved nigh

Where lies the wind's eye ?

:Bobby Nichols
10-27-2005

~~~ Beautiful Spirit/Child of God

Hunger to do

God's will

like unto

His beloved

Son's love

for the Father

:Bobby Nichols
10-26-2005

A Quickening

Our days end

in the very

vacuum of

timelessness

... Quickening

headlong beyond

unto tomorrow

:Bobby Nichols
10-11-2005

~

Silhouettes

Silhouettes gainsay

An indigo sky begat

Of Moon's spectral glow

:Bobby Nichols
10-22-2005

SNAFU-2

Will queen star

Angels ex now we'd

Forge are hail

Ankoua

and choso

Not

and

:Bobby Nichols
10-22-2005

A Glimmering

A moonlit dance

caresses the trees

Our silver being

refined

becomes us....

Redefining

existence

:Bobby Nichols
10-22-2005

My Ephemeral Love
(D&C 132:16)

Arousing in

the eternity

I am become

an Angel of light

forgotten by

thee...

My ephemeral love

:Bobby Nichols
10-27-2005
~~~~

" Beautiful Spirit/Child of God "... a pious piece proffered.

" A Quickening "... another poem of time... or another time.

" A Roiled Pumpkin Sky " a Haiku: ... At first glance at the photo for inspiration I thought it to be upside down. It was only when I realized that the ground was dark from lack of sunlight that I identified the sky... a turbulent morass of pumpkin colored hues; including the darks of the skin of an orange pumpkin and the various colors of an orange pumpkin carved at differing depths.

" Silhouettes " a Haiku: ... An interesting photo of a pines? wooded cliff in the foreground with an indigo sky containing a moon glowing through an afar high fog... looking so much like a light centered in a crystal ball... the moon's reflection clearer in a like azure sea below bereft of fog.

" A Glimmering "... This was the original poetry entree that became transmogrified into " SNAFU-2 "... second in the SNAFU series that comes of starting the poem creation before 12:00 a.m. Eastern USA time and finishing after the same. During my 'tiles' play, the 'tiles' were changed in the ether but not in my JAVA window making for a condition neither betwixt nor between.

" My Ephemeral Love"(D&C 132:16) "... A recent lesson in the "Gospel Principles" book speaks of eternal marriages (Chapter 38) as being necessary for exaltation; and only in an eternal marriage may one receive a fullness of joy. D&C 132:16 refers to the LDS Doctrines and Covenants... a collection of modern day revelations, section 132, verse 16.
Ephemeral defined... after all, marriage in the "'til death do us part" sense of the word is but the blink of an eye in the span of eternity. What might a Latter Day Saint who has married "'til death do us part" (as opposed to a temple wedding by the proper priesthood authority) from without expect... hence my poem.

Pêng-an!!!

2005-10-07T00:57:00.000-07:00

"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
--Henry Ward Beecher

My prayers go out to those affected by hurricane Katrina, and other calamities...
Been a loooong time since I posted... my apologies (as if!!!)... but I have been keeping up my writing in the NoteTab Lite 4.95 proggy file that contains my BLOG template and notes.
So, here we go:
Weather: The evening of July 20th had a wonderful full Moon out illuminating a dapple-clouded night sky.... it had been about 100° Fahrenheit, again, during the day. Thursday was overcast and cooler with a noted increase in humidity... Friday about 90°. Back to/near 100°'s Saturday through Wednesday (baby's-breath breezes Tuesday).
The ozone had also been rather high... registering in the moderately high area of the scale. The ozone creeps up the hills from Sacramento like so much ooze (oozone???) as the heat intensifies, making it best to stay indoors in the afternoons for us sensitive air-breathing types.
Overcast sky to start Thursday the 28th... still heated up to/near 100°. Odd... A brief sprinkle on Sunday the 31st... still very warm during the day.
August 9th... it's been in the 90°'s (Fahrenheit) to near 100°'s for quite a while... light breezes bringing acorns to fall. Some plums and many blackberries ripe to pick. The fig tree's fruit now visible... green.
The next few days the sweltering weather subsided... only 'eltering' (upper 80°'s to low 90°'s Fahrenheit (low 30°'s Centipede... er, Centigrade)).
Surprise overcast in the afternoon Monday the 14th... the clouds coming west from the Sierra's... with a bit of drizzle in the early evening hours.
Back to sunny and warm then hot through the end of August. Still warm to hot in early September... but the nights have been cooling noticeably these past few weeks... actually cold Monday morning September 5th.
September 9th through the 18th... moderate weather with light breeze... the Summer's heat retired for a bit... warming trend into the upper 80°'s possible the 19th, my daughter Chrissy's birthday (28)... with full moon for view.
A surprise thunder shower Tuesday the 27th of September that I missed while visiting in Modesto. Cooler and breezier days to start the month of October.
It has been an
emotional rollercoaster
of a time.

All about Peg:

A bit lyrical... Peg O My Heart

Gifted... you betch'a... Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG)

What you need to know about PEG.

Never at a loss for words... when parsing expressional grammar.

Taking stock in PEG

Heavenly body... a true star!!!

She never plays head games... or does she?

Wasting money on PEG... No way!!!

Rarely solitaire... that Peg.

More notes on Peg

Always the puzzeler... Peg!!!

When traveling a hopping good Peg... arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And yes...Peg is a Mac o'file (sic) who might make a convert of sorts... if she wished

Yes... I will always remember... Peg, my sister.

Happy (belated) Birthday wishes for July 29, 2005 (I actually started this note gathering before her birthday, but blithely kept accruing).

... from Peg !!!

August 30th... Figaro, my cat does not return home. She's pictured with me in the little animated .gif I put at the top of my BLOG. The instant I saw her as a fussing kitten, after finding her abandoned under our home, I fell in love with her. I adopted her myself and bottle fed her as her Momma was unknown and not around.
Figaro's temperament was quite unique. Try to give her affection and more often than not she would try (and usually succeeded) to scratch and bite... but be so loving when she initiated her need for affection. She would sleep on top of the covers of my bed between my legs (I sleep on my back with the sleep apnia mask on and rarely move). After we bathed she would rub our legs with her little body and bite and scratch more and more fervently as if intoxicated by the odor of our freshened skin.

I've put out flyers and contacted the animal shelter in Placerville and a local veterinary but have little hope of getting my kitty back. She's never stayed out overnight that I can recall in the 4+ years I was blessed with her... she had always returned to the comfort of my bed to sleep. I recalled a dream on awakening the 19th of September of Figaro returning dirty and dishevelled, but none the worse for wear... but no... Taffy-doodles and I patiently wait.

September 11... I found a dead black cat on our back lawn. We thought it was Gail's cat Missy. We should have known better... Missy would leave for days and days and not return until Gail would lament that she was gone for good. Gail wouldn't come out to see which kitty it was for identification, so to speak, so I buried the kitty, we both thinking that that was that... then Missy showed up the next day. Gail believes that the kitty we buried may have been a recent stray that was trying to integrate itself into the fold.

September 19... While rinsing out my Sunday's socks, I, bent over the sink, heard and felt the result of a very distinct pop in my back... pain ensuing.

Mom came 'down' to California in time for sister Debi's birthday. Two parties for Debi so we told her she racked up an extra year. My daughter Chrissy and the grandkids wanted to see their grandmother/great-grandmother so Gail and I also went for the day, and I stayed a few extra days to visit with Mom and my sisters.
All was warm and fuzzy, a wonderful visit, until Tuesday the 27th when my sister Debi and Mom and I were leaving the Modesto downtown area. After viewing my sister Peg's artwork at a gallery and picking up my return bus tickets, with Debi driving, an elderly driver (whom my sister believes was on her cell phone) ran a red light striking the driver side passenger tire... turning the car we were in 360°... almost overturning us and breaking the car's rear axle.
I'm sore in addition to my previous back pain, Debi's sorer, Mom's in a neck brace and a shoulder brace; the other driver was shaken but otherwise appeared unharmed, her car needing a bit re-Furbush-ing. Emergency personnel and the police and the tow truck and a taxi all doing their thing got us back to Debi's home within the hour after the accident.
I was able to walk a mile with only a little pain the 1st and 3rd of October... my soreness more inhibiting sleep than walking? Thank Heavenly Father we were all wearing seat and shoulder belts.

James Doohan, 'Scotty' on Star Trek, beamed up for the last time July the 20th.

Bob Denver, best known worldwide as Gilligan, has finally escaped the island named after him.

IBM helps Firefox with accessibility... and more from Google News: IBM +Firefox.

A little more tweaking of my BLOG template... the red colored font for my sidebar headings looked especially out of place... changed.

I tried a service on my BLOG, briefly, to see who links to this BLOG, from "who links to me" dot com. Unfortunately they contain links which I try to minimize (if not eliminate) due to possible ad/spyware generation. Though mostly innocuous just mentioning what they are might set Google 'Ads' to bring them up. Basically I wanted to see if anything untoward was linked to me... but nearly nil were... only a few inoffensive mentions. I found that by using one's url as a link in a message board may generate a linked reference from there to one's site... interesting...

Spent some time reading and studying other BLOGs. Wonderful medium for many talented artists and writers to create in. Unfortunately there are SPAM BLOGs (SPLOGs???) that are just ad ladened space. I don't mind a few ads here and there, I even have a small number, but an entire BLOG's content?... yuck!
Some BLOGs I've enjoyed:

Streets of Amsterdam

obscure desire of bourgeoisie... though it hasn't been updated recently... but I can relate.

Planet LDS... an LDS BLOG aggregation.

The 122nd temple was dedicated recently by LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley in Newport Beach, California. The 121st LDS Temple was dedicated in Nigeria. Our Sacramento Temple has walls!!!... and is beginning to look like the artist's rendition shown on the webpage. (note: the Temple can not be viewed by webcam at night, PDT / PST)

Flickr... an online photo thingee I've seen a number of BLOGs using. I opened an account to check it out later.

Mom told me that my cousin, Jerry Harlan Harper, passed away (March 1, 1930 - April 8, 2005). I never got to know him but I dearly loved his mother, my Great-Aunt Ada Loussac, and his step-father Zack Loussac. Aunt Ada lived practically around the block from where I lived as a young boy in Seattle in the '50's to early 60's, my family and I on N.W. 107th Street. Jerry had gone on to his career by that time, I believe, and I do not recall seeing him at my Great-Aunt's home.
Judging by Jerry's accolades that I've viewed on the web, he was quite the accomplished actor. One bit of tid: he guest starred in a MAS*H television show episode (episode #14, Love Story", Jan. 7, 1973) I remember best for Radar's "Ahhhh, Bach!" quote... I'll have to watch for reruns to 'catch' Jerry playing a sergeant. More on Jerry... and still more on Jerry... and a Google search Jerry Harper" +Cyrano

Wild blackberries have come and gone. The French plums from my little tree didn't disappoint mid-August... golden heavenly sweet. The prune plums in mid-September were sparse... perhaps the deer eating what few there were. Another plum variety (more reddish in colour and an elongated oval in shape) ripening the first week of October was a pleasant delight, evidently the deer not caring for them. What few apples we had were disappointing... I await the figs to ripen.

Planted a tree :) ... a baby cedar tree that I had uprooted as a fingerling and potted... that subsequently outgrew the pot. The summer heat has wilted the poor thing... I pray it will survive.

From the eLink newsletter (#77):
"What's that Bug"... great for trying to identify that creepy-crawly in the garden.

aLZO: for U.S.A. households... save energy (and money)!!!

Defragged the eMonster a couple of times... took hardly any time at all. Ran a Thorough System Scan and found no problems with the hard disk. My Spybot (anti-spyware) proggy has been buggy for some reason causing crashes when I try to update and otherwise... even after uninstalling and downloading a fresh .exe. There must be a conflict with Spybot and the other progs I'm running... I just can't seem to isolate the problem. I've uninstalled Spybot for now.

On a session of pitch, hit, and grunt with my 8-year old grandson, David... my 4-year old grand-daughter, Ashley joining us for a bit...
Sob! She throws like a girl!!! Both David and Ashley are playing soccer now... Gail sometimes driving them to practice... making her a soccer-GrandMom.

Call For Help is back on G4 (the old ZDTV/TechTV) at 8:00 a.m., PDT!!! Leo Laporte is back hosting from Canada. I can thank Leo (and his associates from the past) for most of the computer savvy that I have. To me it was a dark day when Paul Allen sold TechTv to be run by apparent gamer enthusiasts... not that I'm against gamers, per se; but the information disseminated to get PC slow pokies like me up to speed in an entertaining way was invaluable and enabling.

I've discovered Babylon in cyberspace. I know how to avoid the obvious nasties on the web but have found more in the guise of tech and other seemingly innocuous web forums. My sincere apology if one in the past had browsed over to the G4 Forums and was offended by the many trolls pervading that section of cyberspace... especially the Off Topic forum. On to brighter vistas... and a revisiting of old friends at the tech forum I've newly registered on and now have linked to on the sidebar.

Our Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, has challenged the membership of the church to begin reading (or in many cases re-reading) "The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ" each day. I had already started my second read through when the challenge was issued, so I guess I had a head start and finished October the 2nd.
Our Monday get-together-group that had been reading from 'The New Testament' in "The Bible" (we finished Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John... and had started on The Acts) has switched to reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning.
Our Wednesday cottage meeting has us in the middle of the "True to the Faith" gospel reference book as we work our way through alphabetically.
I had also been attending a Sunday school class on teaching the gospel... that has elicited a stark awareness of my inadequacies. Much to learn... and a need to work out the thisses and thats of a psyche that needs further tuning. I'm still trepeditious, evidently a word I made up from the root trepidation, when it comes to being and participating in groups, let alone teach to one. Trust in Christ... let The Spirit do the teaching...

A more complete links page for Accessibility found while browsing the net. I offered my modest page for perusal to the web author... perhaps some of the links I came up with will get a better audience. I'll continue my modest page tweaking here and there and continue to master my web skills. I still have high hopes of my pages becoming "Bobby" approved in the future. Single web pages may be tested at WebXACT and multiple pages/sites may purchase a program from Watchfire.
And then... the rebuttal to "Bobby".

National Cristina Foundation (NCF) "provides computer technology and solutions to give people with disabilities, students at risk and economically disadvantaged persons the opportunity, through training, to lead more independent and productive lives."... found while browsing Kim Komando's website.

IBM has released freeware to help workers cope with disabilities that are age-related so that older workers may continue to stay productive in the workplace.

Only one thing to say about baseball... GooooooooooooooooooooYANKEES!!! Tied 1 game each in a best of 5 games with the Los Angeles? Angels in their first playoff round.

Bleeaaeack! I definitely need to clean this keyboard!!!

The van... twice yet again incidences of the gear shift linkage going out... 3-hours waiting for a tow truck one time, where on the arrival the tow truck driver re-connected the linkage himself in only a few minutes and we were on our way... yay! I had tried to wriggle under to see where and what needs be finagled to no avail.
This last time, John, a member of our church, was able to convey to me where and what was/is going on, after he reseated the offending beastie. He also managed to disconnect the automatic shoulder harness that had been binding and making a racket when the door was opened. He was amused at the butter knife my wife had jammed in the mechanism so it would 'shut up' when we closed the door. Brakes fixed by my Father-in-law early October the 3rd; a water leak possibly fixed with liquid sealant prior.

Front drivers side window shattered late afternoon October the 3rd somehow. The only thing we can figure is the lawn-tractor-mower that my Father-in-law was using in the vicinity may have kicked up a rock???. No one saw the event actually happen, and yes, still only PL/PD insurance... sigh! This in addition to the earlier damage to the passenger side door a few months ago (still not repaired) continues to give Gail considerable grief. Evenings and mornings there's quite a chill while driving!!! with a blustery brisk breeze bracing the bod as the season races towards winter.

My grandson David's 9th birthday the 3rd of October!!! Celebrated the 2nd with the usual large raucous party outdoors with cousins plethora bounding hither and thither. The piñata a gorged monster-truck ripe for batting. The weather was slightly overcast and breezy giving those wearing shorts the goosebumps, the sun peeking out from beneath the numerous clouds just before sunset. Good time had by all.

Gail and the in-laws drove the way to Lake Havasu, Arizona, for the first wedding of a nephew of Gail's which will be held at a chapel in Las Vegas. Gail will spend Thursday evening in Lake Havasu at Gail's sister's place, drive to "Sin City" for the wedding on Friday, and back? to Lake Havasu before returning home.
There was quite a snafu over getting their rent-a-car. Suffice it to say Enterprise Rent-A-Car of Placerville couldn't and wouldn't deliver, and Hertz Rent-A-Car delivered with flying colours... though we had to go to the Sacramento International airport to get what was required for a vehicle on very-very short notice. Enterprise blew it with a two week lead, AND a preliminary visit the day before.
I needed to drive our van back home after dropping Gail et al off at the rental center and had a panic attack while driving the freeway just the short distance before I could reach a backroad home. No problems on the backroads after that through Sacramento, Orangeville, Citrus Heights, Roseville, Folsom, Newcastle, Auburn, Cool, Greenwood, to Garden Valley. Perhaps the drive would have been more enjoyable had I gotten any sleep the night before? Nah!!! The ever-present breeze from the broken window kept me quite alert to the wonderful countryside which includes the canyon formed by the north fork of the American River.

My brother Robin sent me an email about a hypothetical interview called "The Interview with God". I'm not sure of any religious affiliation that he prescribes to other than he has Christian sensibilities. The presentation is sweet in its simplicity.

A verse from "The Book of Mormon" that I'm fond of reminds us why we exist in this mortal existence at all: "For behold, this is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for man to perform their labors."... Alma 34:32.

Chapter 34 in 'The Book of Alma' (one of many 'books' that comprises "The Book of Mormon") is a powerful testimony of Christ by a man named Amulek about 74 years before the birth of Christ.

I pray... that all will come to know God and our Savior; and be baptized by the proper authority of the priesthood of His restored Church... which will allow one to be able to "receive the Gift of The Holy Ghost"... whose 'still small voice' will enrich the quality of one's life unto eternity... in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
~

Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.

* disclaimer: I enjoy learning about geology and have an interest in earthquakes and do not show them in order to, in any way, reflect biblical references. Wrock on!!!
BIG Earthquakes... from the Earthquake Notification E-mail service:
A magnitude 7.3 earthquake in the Nicobar Islands, India region has occurred at: 7.93N 92.15E Depth 10km Sun Jul 24 15:42:05 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
135 km (85 miles) W of Misha, Nicobar Islands, India

420 km (260 miles) S of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India

1110 km (690 miles) SW of Bangkok, Thailand

2775 km (1720 miles) SE of New Delhi, Delhi, India

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan has occurred at:
38.27N 141.99E Depth 53km Tue Aug 16 02:46:30 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
95 km (60 miles) E of Sendai, Honshu, Japan (pop 971,000)

145 km (90 miles) ENE of Fukushima, Honshu, Japan (pop 285,000)

165 km (100 miles) NE of Iwaki, Honshu, Japan

350 km (220 miles) NE of Tokyo, Japan

A magnitude 7.7 (revised from an earlier report of 7.3) earthquake in the New Ireland region, P.N.G. has occurred at: 4.57S 153.40E Depth 96km Fri Sep 9 07:26:44 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
40 km (25 miles) ESE of Taron, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (pop N/A)

140 km (85 miles) ESE of Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea (pop 17,000)

870 km (540 miles) NE of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

2535 km (1570 miles) N of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in northern Peru has occurred at: 5.66S 76.37W Depth 85km Mon Sep 26 01:55:34 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
75 km (50 miles) NE of Moyobamba, Peru (pop 31,000)

175 km (110 miles) ENE of Chachapoyas, Peru

645 km (400 miles) SSE of Quito, Ecuador

715 km (445 miles) N of Lima, Peru

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake in the New Britain region, Papua New Guinea has occurred at: 5.51S 151.83E Depth 35km Thu Sep 29 15:50:25 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
150 km (90 miles) SSW of Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea (pop 17,000)

175 km (110 miles) SW of Taron, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea

670 km (415 miles) NE of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

2430 km (1510 miles) N of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "
...& Haiku daily contests:

All Hallows Fest

The hot breasty lovers

with soft silky masks

laugh...

Awash in tears

and broken smiles

:Bobby Nichols
9-26-2005 ~~~

AtAraxis

Be not thus deceived

Lest you disparage your worth

Rouse not the tiger

:Bobby Nichols
7-23-2005

~ The Sanctuary of Tears

There is

sanctuary

in tears...

though a

cold comfort

silent in

its solace

be found

:Bobby Nichols
10-4-2005

Tilting at Windmills

Truth is a

prisoner

oppressed in a

wilderness's garden

Tormented perforce

in paranoiac

association

:Bobby Nichols
7-23-2005 ~~~~~

" Tilting at Giants "... I nearly entitled the entry " Plbbbt " after the once famous epitaph in the late '60's-early '70's television show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in": "... and that's the truth... plbbbt" made by the character Edith Ann (played by Lily Tomlin)... with the 'plbbbt' being made with a slight pursing of the lips, and the tongue extended touching the upper lip, and blowing softly with puffed cheeks... allowing the lower lip to vibrate...
(cont.)... On a more somber note in search of a title I then decided to Google the first line of my poem-like entry "truth is a prisoner" (including the quotation marks) and received (3) hits:
A few poems by Khurram S. Sheikh.

About the band "Lemon Aid". (some of the lyrics are a bit gr@ph!c) so I will not link to them (plbbbt!)

A chapter/scene, Part 22 of 27, from "Mercury Falling"... either a gr@ph!c novel or play so I will not...
... which got me Know-where...
(cont.)... A Google search of "paranoiac association" led me to Salvadore Dali and his philosophy and art of the paranoiac... kind'a left field for me (yeah right!), but I was re-introduced to his art of the surrealistic bent, or melt, (see "The Persistence of Memory")... which got me Know-where...
(cont.)... There's got to be a title somewhere he congitated to himself... so I tried Googling: "dALI +TRUTH +GARDEN +tormented +prisoner +wilderness" (without the quotation marks, and YES I left the caps lock on for a bit)... 168 hits... which led me down the wilderness path into the garden of Cervantes' Don Quixote AND using a mini-memory warp to the imagery of the before-mentioned poetry by Khurram S. Sheikh, Dali's paranoiac associations, and of course, the Don Quixote reference we (me, er, I) get/got "Tilting at Windmills" ... piece of cake!!! though I'm not exactly 100% in love with the title.

" All Hallows Fest "... a bit of fluff that I, my Mom, and my sister Debi came up with in quick collaboration while I showed them the Poetry in Motion daily contest.

" AtAraxis " a Haiku: ... a photo of a white tiger in repose the subject of the photo for inspiration. Ataraxis defined.

" The Sanctuary of Tears "... Not that all tears may elicit the emotions set forth in my poem like offering... much more shall be written... but the 20 'tile' limit constrains one in this format.

"Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!"

--Edwin Markham
More from Edwin Markham:
"There is a destiny that makes us brothers, No one goes his way alone; All that we send into the lives of others, Comes back into our own."

"For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike."

"We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life."

"Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out."
Weather: July 7... warm with a gentle breeze. July 11... back to hot (100°'s ?) with hotter days predicted.
Locked into 100° Fahrenheit days through the 16th. Gail finally borrowed an area fan for some relief the 15th... our ceiling fan in the bedroom giving comfort at night. Note: No apparent brownouts nor blackouts due to power consumption. Still hot through July 19th... hovering about the 100° Fahrenheit mark.
Gail at the Grand Canyon July 7, 2005... vertigo hindering the full splendor for her... Grandson David said it was 'awesome'. No one took the $50.00 USD day ride by donkey down to the Colorado river. Gail arrived home late Sunday the 10th the worst for wear (driving) with a mixed bag of memories.
I did manage to install a lantern lamp outside our home while she was gone. We purchased the lamp in brand new condition, in the box with warrantee, for $5.00 USD at a local thrift store. It can be activated by motion detection or by off/on switch. Just had to run to the local ACE Hardware store for some longer sheet metal screws... the electrical box was inset to the wall a bit and I had to improvise.
Earthlink virus blocker message status... Message deleted... Virus Detected: W32.Mytob.C@mm

Message Details: From: ('spoofed' address) To: (me) Subject: (none) Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 10:12:18 +0200
... Thank you Earthlink !!!
Best to:
Keep your firewall updated and running.

Keep Windows (or applicable OS) and Mail programs updated/patched.

Keep your anti-virus program(s) updated and scan often.

Use adware/malware blockers and scanners and update them frequently.

A word about 'worms' from the a² knowledgebase.

Do not visit suspect (porn/'warez'/'phishing'), or 'pharming' sites.

Do not open attachments (unless you're absolutely-positively sure you know they're safe)... period.
Be aware of the nasties... they be out ta get ya!!!
Sports:
U.S. holds its own in the sport of wife-carrying.

Professional Bowling News

NHL Ice Hockey will return.

7/19/2005... Baseball: The Yankees are in first place!!! Who'd'a thunk???

Sports highlights from The Martha's Vineyard Times.
BLOGGER 'bugs' still causing me an inordinate amount of time editing due to spurious code being thrown in. My last battle in the previous posting was to rid the post of at least (20) false "font" tags thrown in after I pasted my HTML into the BLOGGER engine. Also, when I edit the post of extra line spacing sometimes the font colors and sizes sometimes change? Dunno... perhaps it's my coding, but I don't quit the HTML editor I use (AceHTML 6.0) until it gives my code the o.k. after I've gone through its debugging/editing checks. Dunno. Not to mention the weird way the BLOGGER engine codes for emboldened text. Today extra 'anchor' tags and closing 'anchor' tags being added... and... dunno.
The van... I managed to get the door that was damaged closed and latched. I had already dismantled the fender and got the stripping off to adjust the hinges that were torqued out of shape when Gail called from Arizona to tell me to leave 'it' alone... sigh. So I did, after I adjusted the hinges and put 'it' back together. Estimates running approx. $3,000.00 USD for repair... or 85% of the complete loss value of the van and we have PL & PD coverage only.
The gear shift lever (linkage?) went out, again... again my Father-in-law repaired.
Learn Guitar chords online. I still need an amp or an output device of some sort to begin learning on the guitar I was given, but this little gem of a page I found in my Lockergnome Windows Fanatics newsletter (dated April 13th, 2005) just might let me practice virtually by ear... cool!!! Jimmy Page... (Led Zeppelin)... watch out!!!
I started watering the lawn (such as it is) at 11:00 p.m. one evening and finished just after 5:00 a.m.. It's just too hot during daylight... and so cool and quiet and starry out in "the wee hours".
Saw my first live skunk since moving here 14-years ago scurrying on the road before dusk one night. Too many of the dear critters litter the road in sorrowful repose. At home we have had occasional evidence of their presence and needed to close all the doors and windows... phew!!!
Learn American Sign Language...
Michigan State University's ASL (American Sign Language) Browser... requires Apple's "Quicktime Player" version 5.0 or better (freeware).
* Note: on my humble 700 MHz Athlon box some videos took nearly a minute to render both in the current versions of IE6 and Firefox... I'm sure most of your experiences will be more robust than mine (with my antiquated eMonster 700k)... however, the sign language is also depicted in clear written form (prior to the video) if you do not have Apple's Quicktime installed.
Just click "Take me to the ASL Browser" on their webpage (or this direct link), when ready, to learn ASL...
["The hands create a cool breeze as they fan the head"] !!!
Bug in the bug fix... Firefox 1.0.5 needs to be updated to 1.0.6 due to 3rd party extension problems with 1.0.5. The freeware Firefox 1.0.6 (web browser) is now available.
Firefox is now my default browser with IE6 serving beside it... on occasion. The function I've been using the most is the [ Control + ] key stroke tandem to view web pages with the type enlarged. The download utility in Firefox is still a bit slow for my taste (being constrained by dial-up) and so I'll use Leechget to speed up my downloads a bit (plug-in needed for non-IE users)
Our prayers answered: Gail's follow-up exam on the 14th gave us the great news that there is no need for concern for fibroglandular densities... perhaps only a shadow of adipose tissue on the initial mammogram.
Puppies: Surprise appearance of five puppies (one of which passed away)... from the apparent union of one of my in-law's Malemutes, Big Foot, and an Alaskan Husky, Sky. My granddaughter, Ashley, has adopted the name "Angel" for a female pup she hopes to keep. The remainder of the puppies' futures are dubious at this point.
~
Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.
(All quiet on the BIG QUAKE front.)
~
My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

~~~ Fair Beauty

Fair beauty...

Desire softly
transparent

Love's destiny
a visage rare

:Bobby Nichols
7-7-2005

Awaken...

Cloud not thy heart

Awaken to His will

Wait ever patiently for

The reward beyond

:Bobby Nichols
7-7-2005
~

The Watchers

Vigilant watchers

Alert to harm from without

Lest the prize be lost

:Bobby Nichols
7-11-2005

Vanity

Grasping for the Moon

Full faced in dawn's azure sky

To feed my vain pride

:Bobby Nichols
7-7-2005

~ Crux ( αωε )

Knowing wisdom
thought speaks clear

From love
words found voice

By the cross
man gained Forever

:Bobby Nichols
7-8-2005

A Daydream

Daydream's indulgent
moments memory

Paints visions
swimming
before my sight

Of wind stirred
furious ocean

:Bobby Nichols
7-11-2005 ~~~

" Crux ( αωε ) "... 'Crux' defined; and from the Greek alphabet... I am in awe.

" A Daydream "... I started in another direction (waves of green grass swaying in the wind melodically) based on the 'tiles' I had first uncovered, then reconsidered when I found the "ocean" 'tile' and diverged from there... as is my wont.

" Awaken " ... Another pious piece profferred.

" Vanity " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a rose-colored full Moon above a craggy canyon rim in an azure sky, probably at dawn, with a few craggy trees about... one in the appearance of reaching out at the Moon.

" The Watchers " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of two cheetahs on guard over a kill while a third partook of the feast.
" Fair Beauty " ... a piece of fluff.
***[Hand high, flat, palm down, fingers wagged all together]* *!!!***

2005-07-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

"When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare."

Weather: Wonderful 80° Fahrenheit (27° - 30° C) days through June the 28th... 90°'s the 29th.
My wife Gail has gone to Arizona to visit her sister over the July 4th holiday... and a bit more. My grandson David, Gail's mother, and another sister of Gail's will accompany her as they drive a rental car down there. They're going to watch fireworks over London Bridge... yes, the real London Bridge on the 4th, and then visit the Grand Canyon on another day trip.

Sound byte (.wav):
The temperature in Arizona is above the century mark (Fahrenheit)... but it's a dry heat ???
* sound byte 'borrowed' from "Good Morning Vietnam".
June 30 has Garden Valley in the mid-90°'s Fahrenheit... with Sacramento making its first foray into the 100°'s this year.
Mid-90°'s through the 2nd of July... then into the low 100°'s Fahrenheit (37.7°C) for Garden Valley's first forays into the three digit zone. Gorgeous upper 80°/low 90° days on the 5th and 6th with baby's-breath breezes.
Jack Kilby has passed away.
Spam: June 29, 2005 session... spam blocked courtesy of Earthlink Spamblocker: (subject lines only)
Little-Stocks Sizzle as the Big ones Fizzle utrecht cake
Re: admonish, Let me help you out
Re: He believe as sugarcoated barricade
Imagine there's no heaven,
An fill is translucence
you are so good to me
Re: starchy, We never get together anymore...
Sebastian said hi
I close be vaporize hassock
I took the word 'translucence' from the above to search for a quote (see quote above) in the database at www.greatest-quotations.com/ where I generally indulge my quotation whims by word or author. Maybe I'll use these words in recombination like the "Poetry in Motion" contest for a poem.
* Note: I didn't bother reading the emails.
The van... new tires all the way around for less than $200.00 USD (couldn't wait any longer). Damage to passenger door while backing up, with door open, into another car (parked)... have to bungee cord the door to keep it closed until repaired... Need brakes and coolant leak fixed and shoulder harness 'track' repaired... sigh.
Cool! Viewed a "shooting star" the night of July 5th tracing quite an arc over the Sierra's towards Lake Tahoe.
"Dark horse" London, England, wins the Summer 2012 Olympics bid over prohibitive favorite Paris, France, possibly due to a disparaging remark by the President of France over British cuisine and Mad Cow disease. Guess the French will have 7-years to come up with a haute cuisine answer for crow: let's see... four and twenty "blackbirds" baked in a puff pastry with Paté de fois gras?

Note: "Paté de Fois Gras" Obscuræ
... and further Obscuræ: Something lost in translation? Compare the two web pages (I almost 'said' Google pages!!!)... from "The Barge Company" on food and wine:
bargecompany.com/alouettefood.htm

bargecompany.com/alouettefood.htm (translated to English)

~

I experienced a good jolt on the Sabbath, June 26, 2005: a magnitude 4.8 earthquake 10 km (5 miles) ESE of Truckee, California (pop 13,000) has occurred at: 39.31N 120.07W Depth 7km Sun Jun 26 18:45:57 2005 UTC... perhaps 55 miles (88.5 km) away, while in church. The Earthquake prediction map for the area appears to have increased in probability for more quake activity.
Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.
Receive Earthquake Notification E-mail alerts.
Earthquake prediction map for California???... no way!!! (yes... way!)
BIG Earthquakes... from the Earthquake Notification E-mail service:
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake near the coast of Nicaragua has occurred at: 11.18N 86.40W Depth 46km Sat Jul 2 02:16:46 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
70 km (40 miles) WSW of Rivas, Nicaragua (pop 20,000)
95 km (60 miles) SSW of Granada, Nicaragua (pop 71,000)
100 km (65 miles) S of Managua, Nicaragua (pop 864,000)
1650 km (1020 miles) ESE of Mexico City, D.F., Mexico
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Nias region, Indonesia has occurred at: 1.90N 97.10E Depth 30km Tue Jul 5 01:52:04 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
190 km (120 miles) W of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia
255 km (155 miles) SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
530 km (330 miles) WSW of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
1395 km (860 miles) NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia
~

My entry (entries)... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~
Lamentation

Mourning seasons lost

Leaf forborne an hoary oak

Laments the acorn

:Bobby Nichols
6-29-2005
~

" Lamentation " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was a repeat offering of a blackened-bark oak tree bereft of leaves amidst a spring glory of renewal for all else. Perhaps a bit better than my last attempt?
Goom bye !!!

2005-06-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

"Is it only a dream that there'll be... No more turning away?"

--Lyrics from Pink Floyd's "On The Turning Away"

The above lyrics from "On The Turning Away" by Pink Floyd (IMHO) have to do with society (as a whole) turning away from the downtrodden and suffering. I had watched a DVD at our church's cottage meeting on Wednesday the 15th called "The Touch of the Master's Hand" inspired by a Myra Brooks Welch's poem.
The end of the video depicts society's cast-offs living in the streets... one of whom is contemplating a leap onto a freeway, being goaded on by more fortunate souls... only to have a helping hand, I believe it to be depicting the Savior's hand, guide him from the brink. All souls are of worth. I pray that all in need will be looked after and we needn't ask "Is it only a dream that there'll be... No more turning away?" Be charitable, share in the Savior's great work.
After Googling a bit in researching I came upon a short essay by Lilly Walters about Myra Brooks Welch and her poem.
Lilly Walters' website is dedicated to those with but one hand to type with and one-handedness in general... a link I will add to my accessibility page in the near future.
Note: There is a short novel based on Myra Brooks Welch's poem by Larry Barkdull.
More Pink Floyd lyrics and news: Pink Floyd to re-unite!!!
Weather... Saturday the 11th... same as Friday the 10th: Sunshine into the 70°'s Fahrenheit with large poofy white clouds. The humidity seems high... probably because of the ground still being somewhat saturated from the rains... still warmer and muggier on the Sabbath, Monday, and Tuesday.
Wednesday the 15th brought 90° Fahrenheit temps... Thursday o'cast in the 60°'s with a bit of precip in the afternoon.
Moderate Spring weather on the Sabbath through the 20th... with a beautiful full moon June the 20th.
June 21... First day of Summer... maybe 80° Fahrenheit with a light breeze. One of our oak trees from our bottom pasture decided to drop a limb onto the phone lines in the early a.m. ... dragging the line to about 8 feet (about 2.5m) from the ground without breaking the line... the tree limb resting upon the line and into the street obstructing about 1/4th of the driving surface (no accidents reported before we found out about the downed limb) and still supported in part by the main tree trunk. The phone company finally showed up at 5:30 p.m. PDT to clear what we could not of the massive limb... still holding the phone line taut. I'm out 6 hours time (I had to get ready for an appointment in the late afternoon), and $50 USD (for some help by an acquaintance of my father-in-law with power saws), and received a mild sunburn; but, should get nearly a cord of wood out of the limb.
Near 90°'s Fahrenheit the 22nd... not feeling well: allergies & lack of quality sleep... feeling a bit morose. Did some laundry and updated and scanned the computers (spyware and virii). Gail went with son-in-law Richard to watch the grandkids while he had his back examined (tweaked at work) at the doctor's in Folsom.
Moderate light breezy days through the 25th of June.
West Nile virus concerns heating up. Gail needs to get the horses vaccinated, but ouch! $20 USD for each shot plus the vet visit cost... AND the regimen needs to be repeated in 4-weeks. We'll have to put it off for a short time.
Talked to Mom on the 12th... missed her on the 19th... talked to her on the 22nd: She's back from a jaunt to a friends cabin, near Homer?, Alaska, where she and her significant other arrived via helicopter.
The grandkids and their cousins found a good sized horned toad in our upper pasture... they decided to release the little critter after I showed concern for it missing its Mommy and Daddy... otherwise it might have ended up neglected in a makeshift terrarium.
Jury duty canceled... sweet!!!
El Dorado County Fair... Gail went with the 'kids' and I had a quiet evening.
Father's day! Nice card from Chrissy, and construction paper tie with a "Snickers" candy bar attached from the young ladies from our ward.
Freeware version CD burner software DeepBurner Free 1.5... came to my attention through the Lockergnome newsletter a while back (that I finally had time to read). I'll give it a go. The company that puts out DeepBurner Free 1.5 also has a pro version ($$$) AND a freeware music ripper called DeepRipper 1.1... cool!
Need a map?: Google Maps (beta... and it shows!)
... or Mapquest
Fibroglandular densities... something new to add to thought...

~

Shake me!!!... USGS Earthquake Hazards Program... recent earthquake activity around the world.
Receive Earthquake Notification E-mail alerts.
Earthquake prediction map for California???... no way!!! (yes... way!)
A devastating earthquake 200 years ago that reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, in the U.S., could be repeated before the year 2055.

BIG Earthquakes... from the Earthquake Notification E-mail service:
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Northern California has occurred at: 41.33N 125.86W Depth 10km Wed Jun 15 02:50:54 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
145 km (90 miles) WSW of Crescent City, California (pop 4,000)

155 km (95 miles) WSW of Brookings, Oregon (pop 4,000)

155 km (95 miles) WNW of Eureka, California (pop 26,000)

480 km (300 miles) NW of Sacramento, California

approx. 515 km? (320 miles) NW of Garden Valley, California
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in the Rat Islands, Aleutian Islands has occurred at: 51.32N 179.41E Depth 51km Tue Jun 14 17:10:17 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
70 km (40 miles) S of Semisopochnoi Island, Alaska (pop. less than 100)

95 km (60 miles) SE of Little Sitkin Island, Alaska (pop. less than 100)

2175 km (1350 miles) WSW of Anchorage, Alaska

3000 km (1870 miles) W of Juneau, Alaska
A magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Tarapaca, Chile has occurred at: 19.90S 69.13W Depth 111km Mon Jun 13 22:44:33 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
115 km (70 miles) ENE of Iquique, Chile (pop 206,000)

200 km (125 miles) SE of Arica, Chile

240 km (150 miles) SSE of Tacna, Peru

1515 km (940 miles) N of Santiago, Chile
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake off the coast of Aisen, CHILE has occurred at: 44.98S 80.57W Depth 10km Wed Jun 15 19:52:24 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
595 km (370 miles) WSW of Castro, Chile

670 km (415 miles) W of Coihaique, Chile

1530 km (950 miles) SSW of SANTIAGO, Chile

2190 km (1360 miles) SW of BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake off the coast of Northern California has occurred at: 40.72N 126.54W Depth 10km Fri Jun 17 06:21:42 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
200 km (125 miles) W of Eureka, California

200 km (125 miles) W of Fortuna, California

225 km (140 miles) WSW of Crescent City, California

495 km (305 miles) WNW of Sacramento, California

~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

~~~ Fugitive Bliss

Love

suits desire

Subtle and silky

ending

in fugitive bliss...

:Bobby Nichols
6-22-2005

The Derelict

White, I gaze hereon

Thither my mortality

Life's sting hard to bear

:Bobby Nichols
6-21-2005 ~

~ Thought

Thought wanders freely

Inspiredly tuned to one's

Mileau and spirit

:Bobby Nichols
6-25-2005

Strawberry Moon

A mild Summer borne

Strawberry Moon's passing gift

To Garden Valley

:Bobby Nichols
6-21-2005 ~~~

" Fugitive Bliss "... the 'tiles' were half and half French and English words and bits of words. I chose to stray to the English 'tiles' and attempted to craft a proseworthy piece of brevity. I hadn't thought before that 'fugitive' used as an adjective could be so different than the noun usage.
" Strawberry Moon " a Haiku: ... A Strawberry Moon... full moon in June. The photo for inspiration had of a series of canyons hemming in a meandering river under a slightly clouded sky. I took my thought to the weather, and moon phase, being experienced here at home.
" Thought " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a moderately swift moving shallow river in a bed of river rock... the rock, predominantly, the size of bowling balls... the river bounded by trees... the sky a very light blue. 'Mileau' defined... hard to believe it's only two syllibibbles. 'Spirit' is a word rich in meaning.
" The Derelict " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a snow white young mountain goat staring down from a lichenous blue boulder... a lush forest in the background. My mind straying to the video inspired by Myra Brooks Welch's poem and Pink Floyd's lyrics, both before-mentioned, and finally to my favorite scriptures in 2Nephi 31:19-21 (The Book of Mormon), more specifically to verse 20:
"Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."

Amen.

Toodles !!!

2005-05-24T02:03:00.000-07:00

"Eternal life does not begin with death; it begins with faith."

--Samuel M. Shoemaker

Weather... In the 80°'s, humid and blue-sky'd light-breezy Saturday (the 14th). The wind being up allows the inch worms to launch themselves upon the wind with their silken threads.
Saturday the 14th: Still 'under-the-weather', a chest cold has hold. BLOGGING, reading and "writing" poetry. Surfin' the web while Tolkien's "Return of the King" comes to life on the telly, playing on in the background. Then a little soft music from the "Atmospheres" channel before the grandkids start their "I WAN'NA WATCH CARTOONS!" tirade while (mostly) Gail and I do babysitting duty, ostensibly while my daughter and her husband attend a wedding. Spent a little time doing guard duty outside while my father-in-law lets loose his breeding male malamute dog. Someone has to watch over the kitty cats!!! Ah... here we go... "Fairly Odd Parents", the first of the telly cartoons to grace the home at 4:30 p.m. PDT... and it's such a lovely day outside!
Rain through Thursday the 19th... 5-day forecast: sunny 70°'s to 80°'s.
Sunday the 22nd: warm into the 80°'s with a wonderful clear sky that complimented the full moon in the evening.

A bout of asthma on the 21st. A bit of weed whacking (well... a little) and mowing the lawn the cause. Good thing my cold (or whatever the malady) had recently finished running its course.

The last rain storm and the current heating trend has exacerbated the Sierra snow pack melt/runoff. We had a better than average snow pack this year in the Sierra's... about 120% of normal in the greater Tahoe area. The dams here-about's are allowing for greater flows into the rivers, the reservoirs being at high capacity, giving heavy flow and widened banks on the American, Yuba, and other rivers that 'feed' the Sacramento River. One fishing spot I saw in Sacramento, that's usually a tree studded gravelly area, now has the trees inundated with about 6-feet (2-meters) deep of fast moving water. Warnings have been given by the media for: hypothermia and fast-moving flows and flotsam for those who wish to tempt fate.

I set a goal to make an anagram out of one of the Elders' names... Failure. (5) of the letter "a"'s my downfall. I even tried the Samoan language dictionary which is rich in multi-voweled words to no avail. His name includes a biblical name containing the letter "c"... which doesn't appear in the Samoan alphabet... Oh well.

Note... Online Anagram fun at http://wordsmith.org/anagram/

Another goal... edit my BLOGGER template's CSS. I have embedded on my 'puter the background gif's I want viewed that reference my C: drive in the HTML... but not an external source so that anyone might view, at least IE users with pix enabled, the same background. Speed was one concern... proper implementation another. Just a little bit of study on how others' BLOGs are done within BLOGGER's constraints. Perhaps another BLOG face-lift soon?

Note to self: Chapter 58 "Seven Pillars..."?

Star Wars III... it's a definite maybe. My wife was pregnant with my daughter back in '77 (that's '100 in Canadian) when the first Star Wars, Episode IV, came out. We went to the drive-in in Union City, California to see it. Gail spent most of her time going back and forth to/from the restroom.

Gail brought out the two kittens to feed on some lunch meat. I've named them "Little Squeeky" after Taffy-Doodles' sister who passed away a few years back, and "Little Dude" after Taffy-Doodles... maybe just "Taffy" if we find it's not a boy. Taffy-Doodles isn't the Daddy, he's 'fixed', but the real Daddy and another stray stubbed-tail cat have been hanging around more and more lately. Brings up the "kitty count" to a number that I don't care to think about. Anyone want a kitty?

SpywareBlaster 3.4 is out for those who do their own anti-spyware 'thang'. It's freeware and reputedly blocks the spyware from even entering your system. I keep Gail's and my 'puter updated at least weekly along with all the other anti-virii and anti-spyware stuff: SpywareBlaster, AVG, ZoneAlarm, A², AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy... my main freeware spyware aps in current use. Earthlink 2005's Mail does a good job of picking out some nasties as well. The 'sober worm' has been found and quarantined at least once a week in my spam-filtered email.

Kind'a funny... Gail couldn't get online with her SBC client. The error code (error 691) referred to bad user name/password/client. Evidently she's only had to click the connect button for the last many months (remember password and user: enabled) and 'someone', not me, had deleted the user and password entries by accident. After correcting her user name entry, from '@sbcglob.net' to '@sbcglobal.net', we still got the error 691 code. We finally hit upon the idea of using her password in all lowercase letters... Bingo! She uses the same password "name" for her SBC Yahoo account (which she always has to re-enter... all in caps) as she does for her SBC online logon.

So... ya' wan'na get rid of ants but want to do it without the hazardous chemicals. Equal parts baking yeast, sugar and honey in a covered container with lots'a holes fer dem bitty critters.

120 Latter Day Saint (LDS) Temples worldwide and counting as the San Antonio, Texas, USA, Temple is dedicated May 22, 2005.

Watch the progress of the Sacramento, California, USA, LDS Temple via web cam.

Jury duty requested of me for June the 20th. I have no idea how I'll be able to swing that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Earthquake prediction map for California???... no way!!! (yes... way!)

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the Nias Region, Indonesia has occurred at: 0.56N 98.38E Depth 30km Sat May 14 05:05:18 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:

135 km (85 miles) SSW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia (pop 71,000)

275 km (170 miles) NW of Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia

465 km (290 miles) SW of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

1185 km (740 miles) NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake south of the Kermadec Islands has occurred at:
32.87S 179.30W Depth 10km Mon May 16 03:54:11 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:

165 km (100 miles) SSW of L'Esperance Rock, Kermadec Islands

425 km (265 miles) SSW of Raoul Island, Kermadec Islands

700 km (435 miles) NE of Auckland, New Zealand

1065 km (670 miles) NNE of Wellington, New Zealand

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Simeulue, Indonesia has occurred at:
2.00N 96.97E Depth 30km Thu May 19 01:54:53 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:

205 km (130 miles) W of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia

255 km (160 miles) SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

540 km (335 miles) WSW of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

1410 km (880 miles) NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contest

~~~ Enchant Me...

Your very being
a desire for answer

Lament not
your unassailable
mystery

Enchant me with
your dreams

:Bobby Nichols
5-14-2005

Honor The Father
Prayer
oft personal
best shared

Honor
The Son
forever

:Bobby Nichols
5-15-2005

~

Broken Sky

Mosaic reflections
of gentle wave on waters
Mirror broken sky

:Bobby Nichols
5-14-2005

h₈
Loathing
walks amidst
shadows of fire
where dwells
the fallen's
desire

:Bobby Nichols
5-24-2005

~

~~~~~~~ Reminisce
Tenderly doth
precious memories
share tears
and laughter
when
treasured friends
dear meet

:Bobby Nichols
5-14-2005

" Enchant Me... "... I like this entry. Guess I should like one, myself, every now and then.

" Reminisce "... The poem 'sounded' good when 'penned'. I'm having second thoughts on whether memories can share anything.

" Honor The Father "... John 5:23 comes to mind (after looking it up)... I'm by no means a scriptarian

" Broken Sky " a Haiku(NOT): ... well I goofed. One too many syllabibbles in the first line. Guess I've been pronouncing the word 'mosaic' wrong all these years... "moes-ache" instead of "mo-sa-ic" (correct). I still liked the imagery. The photo was of a gliding swan on a glass-appearing, albeit rippled, body of water (shown before). I created the Haiku "The Swan" 4-3-2004 from the same photo. All of the photos are beginning to look recycled to me.

" h₈ "... Another warm and fuzzy by Bobby Nichols. I hope the '8' becomes subscripted as intended... the 'h' preceding purposely in lower capitalization.

Tofa !!!

2005-05-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

--William James

Weather... Gorgeous Spring days Wednesday and Thursday and Friday... rain next Monday-Wednesday???

Gail had the horse shoer, or farrier, up this way to trim Eeyore's (our donkey) hooves. They seem to grow much faster than Gail's two Arabian horse's hooves. Saudi, the stallion, will 'prolly' get his hooves trimmed next month. The fencing 'round here needs a serious look-see.

Called Mom on Mother's Day. Alaska is in its looong day cycle. It stays light until 10 p.m., ADT (Alaskan Daylight Time), if I remember correctly. Mom's feeling "under the weather" as well (as bad?). All in all we had a nice short chat while we condoled each other over our illnesses.

Oops! A Mozilla Firefox/Suite bug in need of fixing. Patch to follow shortly I'm sure...

And here it is... Firefox 1.0.4 (that was fast!!!) a 4.6 MB download. Ya know Firefox has hit the big time when a lot of time and energy is being used by the media, and in the white hat/black hat sector.

Tuesday afternoon the 10th: After feeding the horses, with the help of my grand-daughter Ashley, I felt a tickle in my throat... I've Gail's sore throat manifesting, or festing, upon me. Gargling with salt water, gargling with Listerine. Hope I don't get the small bout of laryngitis she had. I teased her a few times about her loss of voice and she warned me she might do the same if I became sick. Time to hit the store shelves in search of those raspberry cough drops I used last year. I had battled a small sinus affliction the previous Friday through Sunday. The sinus cavity below the right eye felt like an ice-pick was being inserted into it. Aspirin and Sudafed and a home-made hot water bag (from three leaky sandwich bags... one inside the other, etc., heated by a microwave oven I'd been given) on Sunday evening seemed to clear that out. Gail and I are still ill Friday the 13th.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Life

Light sustained life
blossoms

The fruits of love
His creation
everywhere found

To the end endure

:Bobby Nichols
5-11-2005

~~~~~~~

Niagara

Hazarding torrents

Jaunting to cataract's edge

Awe in foment boils

:Bobby Nichols
5-11-2005

" Life "... An awkward piece... an edit surely to follow.

" Niagara " a Haiku: ... A view of Niagara Falls, with two distant excursion boats excursioning, from the aspect of two trees framing the vista, appeared to be the photo for inspiration. The link I created utilizes Google's "Images" search. Note:
6000 hits on a misspelling I, and others, managed.

Onen !!!

2005-05-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

"Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators."

--Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

"Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing."

--Aesop

"To refrain from imitation is the best revenge."

--Marcus Aurelius

"Imitation lacks but "L" from Limitation."

--Bobby Nichols(me)

Weather: Thursday the 5th... it's raining and the grandkids are going bonkers... On and off rain through Monday the 9th. We were treated to a couple of hail storms and thunder showers on Monday the 9th due to an unseasonable cold mass of air from the north... tornado watches were in effect down Sacramento way most of the day... snow in the Sierras. Forecast of near 80°'s Fahrenheit for next week???

Query... Were the fig trees so slow in developing their leaves from their buds last year? They've barely changed since January. Dunno.

Gail's van... It lives!... needs tires.

Sports:

The Kings (Sacramento's NBA team) have been eliminated from continued post-season play... long live the Kings!
Giacomo, a 50:1 shot wins the Kentucky derby.
Quantity and quality is lacking in Mumbai cricket.
The N.Y. Yankees are languishing near the bottom of their
division in professional baseball.
The North American Tiddlywinks Association... a handy link for those who wink ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake south of Panama has occurred at: 5.62N 82.49W Depth 10km Thu May 5 19:12:18 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:

310 km (195 miles) S of David, Panama

325 km (200 miles) SSW of Santiago, Panama

340 km (215 miles) SSE of Golfito, Costa Rica

495 km (305 miles) SW of PANAMA CITY, Panama

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake southwest of Sumatra, Indonesia
has occurred at: 6.20S 103.13E Depth 30km Tue May 10 01:09:07 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:

250 km (155 miles) WSW of T.-Telukbetung, Sumatra, Indonesia

285 km (175 miles) SSE of Bengkulu, Sumatra, Indonesia

400 km (250 miles) W of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

415 km (260 miles) W of Sukabumi, Java, Indonesia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: "
Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~~~ Glory

Dark-enigmatic space

contemplates a

scintillating Sun

... Its light

crowning beings with

garlands of love

:Bobby Nichols
5-6-2005

Repressor

Examine
the whims
of
fallowed desire

Yearning bound
till
love
doth dire

:Bobby Nichols
5-9-2005

~

Moth

Night blooms, moth alights
Flower's nectar'd sweetness sought
Nocturnal delight

:Bobby Nichols
5-8-2005

Spring Enchantment

Færies glide headlong
Down the frozen vernal flow
Mirthful in their play

:Bobby Nichols
5-10-2005

~~~~~ Singularity Redux

Heavy unsteady

in the fabric

of space

A nubbly trace

... Singularity

:Bobby Nichols
5-10-2005

" Glory "... a modest edit of my entry in the contest.

" Repressor "... A bit of poetic license... I turned an adjective 'dire' into a verb (or is it an adverb?). Anywho... 'dire' sort'a kind'a rhymes with 'desire', lacking but one syllabibble, and kind'a connotes love's demise while denoting the fear or dread of love. The poem made more sense to me when I coined it.

" Singularity Redux "... I already had a poem titled "Singularity" hence 'redux'.

" Moth " a Haiku: ... A photo of a moth spotlighted on a clutch of flowers used for inspiration.

" Spring Enchantment " a Haiku: ... What I saw in the photo of a frozen falls with snow clumped in heaps about, through bough of tree and landing of rock, were færies cavorting down a frozen Spring falls headfirst... The 'vernal', or spring, aspect due to the inclement weather about our area this 9th/early 10th of May as if by enchantment.

Salamaik tingga !!!

2005-05-05T02:54:00.000-07:00

"Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

--Ambrose Bierce

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."

--Joseph Addison

I found my quote selections by entering the word "empty" in the search box at www.greatest-quotations.com/ and selecting from the first page of quotations. Why "empty" one might ask? The answer may become apparent in a most convoluted manner later in this post. "Erudition" means "Great learning" according to my dog-bitten copy of F&W. It's amazing what one can learn from a book at hand, albeit dusty (and possibly dog-bitten). The use of http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Erudition: an online dictionary/encyclopedia/etc. comes in handy as well!!!

Weather: The start of May... back to spring sunshine... and allergies... rain May 4th in the form of "Seattle Sunshine" to intensify later the day of the 5th (Cinco de Mayo).

Gail's van took still another dump Tuesday the 3rd. We had been all day away off the hill doing errands with no problems. Got home after picking up grandson David from the school bus, put the hay in the barn, backed up to park... the van begins to roll backwards while in park??? Put the emergency brake on to stop the roll and tried to shift through the gears... no gears??? My father-in-law tightened down some plate behind the steering column and glued? something else to stay out of the way. He still wants to check it out further before we can drive it.
A bit of a bother, sometimes, with editing my BLOG in BLOGGER. Links are mangled after pasting the HTML into the editor. Evidently the BLOGGER edit engine will try to add further "a href" and "/a" tags to random HTML link strings. Also the spacing got warped a bit, and a font size magically changed by itself. Stuff to edit!

Sigh! The lilacs are bloomed out. Had some fun with grand-daughter Ashley, four-years old, picking wild-flowers with her last week and making wishes from dandelion seed heads. A few weeks earlier she was sent to me because she had harvested a bag of periwinkle flowers from my periwinkle bed in the front of the house, ostensibly for correction. Her sad little face was enough to melt anyone's heart. Rather than scold, I suggested making a necklace from the flowers. Gail found some periwinkle colored thread and in no time had a wonderful periwinkle-flowered necklace for Ashley to wear.
For image manipulation... Irfanview 3.97 has been released. One of my favorite freeware aps among applications that I use frequently. The batch rename and batch file type conversion features have saved me a lot of time editing photos. A built-in slide show feature makes for quick viewing of large picture files... I'll use this feature after taking digital photos at the grandkid's parties to entertain the grandkid's, and me and Grandma, shortly afterwards. Don't forget to download the Plug-ins for extra functionality.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

~ The Gargoyle

Words without life

doth empty thoughts

comes illuminating

as stones must

under a flashing

cement sky

:Bobby Nichols
5-3-2005

The Comforter

Still thy heart
of pain

Awaken that
peace found

Within His
Heavenly love

:Bobby Nichols
5-2-2005

~
Fare du Jour

I ben der b'fo

I grab 'n skittles so fast!

'fo d'bin be locked

:Bobby Nichols
5-2-2005

" The Gargoyle "... O.K. - I was stumped for a title. I almost always "write" the poem first then wrestle with myself in giving the poem a title.
I took the fifth word ("empty"), then the third word after ("illuminating"), then the seventh word after that ("cement") from my poem (a combination of my "lucky" number '537') and then "googled" the word-trio in quotations ("empty illuminating cement")... no hits.
Next tried all the other (5) combinations of the three words within the quotations... no hits.
Hmmm... tried the three words without quotes in the English language pages using "Google"... 19,500 hits!
O.K. - then I tried only selecting German pages (after changing my Google Preferences for "Search Language" in Google)... 8 hits!
Hmmm... still too many... only French pages in Google... oops, 11 hits!
Chinese... 5 hits. Tried a few other language pages and finally got a language with only one hit... Arabic!!!

Now what?
I search the page persianblog.com/?date=13820306&blog=ghafelzadeh... it's a Persian BLOG!!! What a poetic form the written word is in Arabic... beautiful.
Hey! There's an Allen Ginsberg work titled "Howl" in English on the page and after searching using the EDIT tab and FIND function using IE6's browser with my 'key' words one at a time... all three of my words are contained in the "Howl" piece listed!!! Cool!
"empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
"What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
"illuminating all the motionless world of Time between" (from Allen Ginsberg's work titled "Howl")
COOL!!!... now here's some fodder for a title!!! How about "The Cement Sphinx", or one poetic step beyond to "The Gargoyle"... that's it!!!... "The Gargoyle"!!! Who said giving titles to a poem was hard???...
... I did ;)
" The Comforter "... A pious piece proffered.
" Fare du Jour " a Haiku: ... This poem leapt from my soul with a mind of its own before I reached the Haiku entry page. The photo, of all things, was of a hot air balloon... so I wasn't being prescient. I guess it's just one of those poems that had to be written now... and I was chosen.
The style is reminiscent of my poem "Sundow'n" created March 18, 2004.

Khoda hafaz !!!

2005-04-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

--Pope John Paul II

Another month slips away.
Pope John Paul II passed away 4/2/2005.
I heard the announcement from President Gordon B. Hinckley during the second block of Saturday's conference meeting broadcast. Most (all?) of my wife's family, and my daughter's family, are Catholic... my commiseration for their loss great. I was born into the Episcopalian faith (both parents non-practicing Episcopalians) and "converted" to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a brief description from The Articles of Faith) in March of 2004.
Pope John Paul II will be remembered not only as a spiritual leader of the Catholic faith but as a world leader of great influence. The new Pope has taken the name Benedict XVI.
As an aside: My grandson David will receive his first communion shortly.
Monaco's" Prince Rainier has passed away at 81.
Weather: April showers: Sunday, the third of April,surprised me with a late thunder/lightning display after mostly cloudy skies for most of the day. After the first burst Gail and I rushed to the computers to disconnect the modems and power cables. The storm cleared by Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday provided warm and sunny again. Allergies were in control... a bit of lethargy my only complaint. A brief gully-washer of a storm again and then the weather back to a warming trend. A bit of intensification of allergy symptoms around the 15th especially the itchy eyes that I find difficult not to endlessly rub. However, no great bouts of allergic conjunctivitis like I've had in the past. One other bonus due to the warm weather storms... haven't had to fire up the wood stove to warm the home much... cool!!!... er, warm! Seattle-sunshine late Friday the 22nd through the 24th. Allergies intensified due to the high tree pollen count leaving me in moderate discomfort and losing some sleep... it's hard to use a sleep apnia mask when one is congested. Off and on cloudy and sunny and rainy days filled out the rest of the month of April... further warming into the 80°'s Fahrenheit arriving shortly.
What a wonderful experience while at the Oakland Temple! The view from the Temple was breathtaking. While there was mostly overcast skies, the San Francisco skyline was crisp and clear. I could see the Golden Gate bridge, Sutro tower, the "Pyramid" building, Alcatraz, Angel Island... and much more.I took a tour of the genealogy center in the visitor's center and was honored to be a witness to a wedding at the Temple. While what goes on in the Temple is sacred, not secret, I shan't elaborate any further than to say I will remember my experiences in the Temple with utmost reverence, love, and further contemplation and reflection.
Problems with Gail's van, again. Used my bicycle to get to Wednesday's final Temple class and a meeting with the Bishop on April 6th; the weather overcast and cool. Mostly uphill... mostly walked the 6 mile trek in a little over 2-hours. It's funny... it doesn't look like much of a grade when one drives over the same terrain in a car! My twenty-year-old 10-speed is more of a touring bike (Schwinn Traveler) than a mountain bike. Thank heavens for the ride home by one of the bishopric! I ached for days.
Repairs to the van included two half-axles at $159 USD each, Gail getting partway home before the repairs broke down and she had to return for final? repairs. Van took another dump Tuesday the 25th (April), the oil filter getting bumped or something causing a massive oil leak as Gail entered a gas station. "If it's not one thing it's another." "It just goes to show you, it's always something"-- Roseanne Rosanna-Danna (Gilda Radner).
Sent my brother Robin a birthday ecard with a short note. The music's kinda' hokey, but the artwork was amusing though primitive. He is 40-years old for the seventh time. He answered back saying he just finished a 32 mile (51.5 km.) bike ride (show off!). He's still quite the prolific bike tourer (see below).

Note to self: Musical piece: "Sweet Dreams and Starlight" by David Nevue on the album (alblum?) of the same name... a haunting piano piece I want to get hold of. Maybe use a winning free iTunes code to get it... if it's available? I downloaded the free iTunes player available from Apple Computer for Windows XP (20 MB's) on Gail's computer's dial up connection (GROAN). We'll see.
(GROAN) revisited. Evidently we have one cat who has yet to be spayed. Two new kitty cats. One kitten looks like my cat 'Taffy-Doodles'... black and white, as opposed to Figaro who's white and black (see cat photo, previous post). The other is all black. Both have tails, significant in the fact that sometimes our kittens were born without tails or with stubbed tails. I pray the loose dogs about don't find them as the Momma kitty keeps moving them.
Mom called Monday evening after I returned from Bible study with our church group (New Testament: end of St. John/backtracking to start with St. Mark... a livelier than usual discussion). She's been home from England (and Washington State) visiting family now for a week and just did get a chance to call and catch up. She even visited (rode?) the ferris wheel called The London Eye while in England.
Another vulnerability has been found in Firefox has been found in Firefox, including v. 1.0.2... sigh! The update to v. 1.0.3... issued not too much later than the announcement. Pleasantly awaiting v. 1.1.0.
Opera browser has been updated with some cool options including a simple speech implementation for highlighted text. Though the speech engine only works with Win 2000 and XP (I still stand by my Win 98 OS) AND it may fall short of Firefox's general appeal, I may download the free (ad-ladened) version to Gail's XP box to check it out.
New version of freeware popup blocker EMS FREE SURFER COMPANION v. 1.3.0.0 downloaded. Although Firefox and Earthlink have their versions of a popup blocker, I want to shake it out and compare.
Want to volunteer for a worthy cause ?... a tip from my earthlink newsletter elink.

Related (also courtesy of elink): The United Nations Volunteers
Online Volunteering Service. An international opportunity to do volunteer work from the comfort of your home computer, online.
Another find from elink: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy ... an alphabetical index.
And still another find from elink: Hubble Image Showcase... images from the Hubble space telescope.
The Elders came by Thursday the 28th for some discussions. Gail sat in when she could in between consoling grandson David. David had wanted to spend the night, but broke his word on behaving earlier in the day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake IN THE KEP. MENTAWAI
REGION, INDONESIA has occurred at: 1.62S 99.56E Depth 30km Sun Apr 10 10:29:13 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:
115 km (70 miles) SW of Padang, Sumatra, Indonesia (pop 721,000)
315 km (195 miles) SW of Pekanbaru, Sumatra, Indonesia
575 km (360 miles) SSW of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
945 km (580 miles) WNW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake NEAR THE N COAST OF NEW GUINEA, PNG. has occurred at: 3.50S 145.89E Depth 10km Mon Apr 11 12:20:05 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:
195 km (120 miles) N of Madang, New Guinea, PNG
225 km (140 miles) SW of Lorengau, Manus Island, PNG
675 km (420 miles) NNW of PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea
2760 km (1710 miles) NNW of BRISBANE, Queensland, Australia
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake IN THE SOUTHEAST OF LOYALTY ISLANDS has occurred at: 22.04S 170.56E Depth 68km Mon Apr 11 17:08:54 2005 UTC

Location with respect to nearby cities:
160 km (100 miles) WNW of Ile Hunter, Loyalty Isl., New Caledonia (pop N/A)
285 km (175 miles) ESE of Tadine, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia
425 km (265 miles) E of NOUMEA, New Caledonia
1695 km (1050 miles) NNW of Auckland, New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~~~ Winternacht
Autumn foregone
through days darken

The moon peeps
through trees
snow laden

Cold starry night

:Bobby Nichols
4-16-2005
Les Trappeurs
Longtemps dans le abers
la roche restait
Sa hardis face
mais jetant l'eau embruns
battant dans passer
yeux du feu

:Bobby Nichols
4-19-2005

~
Vingette

Differentiate
Embrace the Infinite's gnome
Singularity

:Bobby Nichols
4-16-2005
Anon

Snow-clad the mountain
where billow'd cloud no mete met
Ere err I went not

:Bobby Nichols
4-16-2005
Fen

Surrealistic
The willow-the-wisp's abode
Misty fen, bane's den

:Bobby Nichols
4-10-2005

~~~~~

" Winternacht "... "Winter Night" auf englisch.
" Les Trappeurs "... En anglais (Babel Fish Translation... again, with my apologies to French speaking peoples everywhere:
The Trappers
A long time in the river mouths
the rock remained
Its bold face
but throwing water spray
beating in passing
eyes of fire

:Bobby Nichols
4-19-2005
I envisioned a scene from the classic novel "Northwest Passage" by Kenneth Roberts I've read a few times where trappers "their eyes afire", would plow through the rivers and lakes of North America past. The movie starring Spencer Tracy of the same title is also a classic in its own write (sic), but doesn't relate the entire novel's story.
An aside... on Ranger Thomas O. Nichols' (related?) website rangerring.com/ artist Mort Kunstler's painting of Roger's Rangers of "Northwest Passage" fame is shown.
" Vingette " a Haiku: ... a nonce word: not vinette, nor vignette... a tweak of 'Vinge'-ness perhaps. The photo, revisited, of a cactus spire midst desert scrub with distant clouds. Meaning?... just a bunch of words, that when parsed, transmogrify the Haiku's tone interestingly... or something... or nothing at all.
" Anon " a Haiku: ... my skiing prowess lacks both breadth and depth. I've related this before (see my Haiku "BunnySloper" 4-16-2004) and so to quote myself "Been there - done that... walked all the way down a run near Mt. Lassen... mortified... but not mort !!!" This was from my ski trip in 1989 when I went by myself and spent most of the day on the "Bunny slopes". I thought to challenge myself on an advanced run for my last run of the day only for my skill and courage to fail. Most chagrined, I walked in chilled solitude until I finally reached my car near dusk. I haven't skied since.
" Fen " a Haiku: ... I found this bit of fluff in a pile of papers. The original version not up to the 5-7-5 sylabibbles necessary for the Haiku contest (actually a 7-7-6 sylabibble mess)... Sooooo, here's a quick witted edit. By the by, the photo depicted a swamp of eerie desolation.

Do widzenia !!!

2005-03-31T21:16:00.000-08:00

"Chess is mental torture."

--Garry Kasparov

Again... where has all the time gone?

Garry Kasparov, perhaps the greatest chess player of modern times has retired. An interesting page for the avid chess player at http://www.chessgames.com/player/garry_kasparov.html gives a brief bio and breaks down his style of play (pertaining to over 2100 games that may be accessed listed in the database).

Weather: Record high temperature in Sacramento of 84° (Fahrenheit) on March 10th with a cooling trend started. Rain followed a week later staying off and on for some time with significant amounts including one brief cold snap... where we did received our frost on the dogwood blossoms. The last days in March back to warm sunshiny days.
My eyes were/are terribly dry and itchy from the outbreak of this early spring. I have a good supply of samples of "Nasonex" that I was given from my health care provider , but I needed to get some more allergy medicine purchased to the tune of $35 USD total for: generic "Claritan" or Loratadine (180 tabs), "Sudafed" (96 tabs), and Bausch and Lomb's "Opcon A" eye drops (small bottle). This should tide me over through the 'season', with the exception of the eye drops.

New (used) steering column ($180 USD) and spark plug wires ($48 USD) for Gail's van. We were "taken" in the purchase of the first steering column. The sale went down pretty smarmily, Gail having gone to the wrong shop... the salvage person not letting on. After determining that we had the wrong shop and wrong part for Gail's model van the part was returned and another trip was made to Sacramento for the correct shop and part. This is in addition to the $50 USD ignition keylock and $20 USD ignition switch already purchased, and the replacement of another part, which I can't recall, that was accidentally broken during repair. My father-in-law Larry was finally able to get 'things' right and we were only without a vehicle for a week, able to get oot and aboot Friday the 18th. I'll add car mechanic to the list of things I should have become in my professional life.

I checked my Google AdSense dollar tally... $0.75 USD total. That means that at this rate in about 33-34 years I should get my first check of $100.00 USD... Cool!!!

Our ward hosted the "1st Annual Inter-Faith Easter Cantata performed by choir members from our "Georgetown Divide" area by Sally DeFord titled "I Stand All Amazed", about our Saviour Jesus Christ. I attended the Sunday performance, sans Gail, and was pleasantly moved by the experience. The performances were splendid. Even after Easter the music is with me in my mind where'er I wander "... wonderful to me."

I thought I had Gail's computer downloaded with Windows XP SP2... but it kept aborting. I did manage to get the smaller updates accomplished, but the large SP2 file (32 MBytes or so) just kept choking on our pitiful dial-up connection. I ordered the free SP2 CD that Microsoft has available... said it takes 4 to 6-weeks for delivery (ugh!!)... received it in the mail in 1-week !!! Installed in Gail's computer and running smoothly.Good SP2 page: "Windows XP Service Pack 2 Spotlight" by Tech Republic.

Anti-spyware (freeware versions all): "AdAware" and "SpywareBlaster" and "Spybot Search and Destroy" all updated and run with their new definitions and/or new versions of their prog's on my Win 98SE box... AdAware SE being a new version of LavaSoft's anti-spyware prog. That explains why if one tries to update previous versions of AdAware - no updates are available. Gail's 'puter to follow... done and done and done.

Firefox 1.0.2 Update for vulnerability found in legacy code... done and done.

From an Earthlink tip: Free online college courses courtesy MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)... learn at your own pace. Also available en Español and em Portugues.

From a TuDogs tip: Web Design Group... HTML 4.0 and CSS reference guides.

And just what triggers depression?... he asked his imaginary psychiatrist, Dr. Liebschitz. The web page referenced was noted after "Googling" the key words ("mental torture") in the quote by Garry Kasparov (he not being the 'he' in the interrogatory).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I watched recently the PBS documentaries on "Cascadia" (Cascadia referring to the subduction zone(s) from Vancouver B.C. down the coast into Oregon... a zone similar to that off Sumatra, Indonesia) and the Tsunami of last December 26th.

Interesting seismic events offshore near Vancouver, Canada as "Scientists search for seafloor eruption." March 9, 2005 (Phys.org)

NBC miniseries "10.5" Questions & Answers

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Kyushu, Japan has occurred at:33.85N 129.98E Depth 10km Sun Mar 20 01:53:42 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

40 km (25 miles) WNW of Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan (pop 1,284,000)
115 km (70 miles) N of Nagasaki, Kyushu, Japan (pop 438,000)
130 km (80 miles) NNW of Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan (pop 650,000)
915 km (570 miles) W of TOKYO, Japan

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Salta, Argentina has occurred at:24.93S 63.36W Depth 558km Mon Mar 21 12:23:52 2005 UTC... followed by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake nearby:24.68S 63.43W Depth 562km Mon Mar 21 12:43:11 2005 UTC... both preceded by a 5.8 Richter event 5 hours earlier.
Location with respect to nearby cities:

210 km (130 miles) E of Salta, Argentina
215 km (135 miles) ESE of San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina
280 km (175 miles) NE of San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina
1155 km (720 miles) NNW of BUENOS AIRES, Argentina

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake, and a 6.7 magnitude event nearby two hours later in northern Sumatra, Indonesia has occurred at: 2.08N 97.01E Depth 30km Mon Mar 28 16:09:36 2005 UTC
and 0.90N 97.80E Depth 30km Mon Mar 28 18:30:43 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

205 km (125 miles) WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia
245 km (155 miles) SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
535 km (330 miles) WSW of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
1410 km (880 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

The estimated loss of life, I fear, is said to be about two thousands. These quakes apparently in the same fault system - south and east of the mammoth 9.3 event the day after Christmas last. Thankfully no significant tsunami action was observed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~~~ Raindrops

Raindrops glisten
Their crystal moment
spirited softly fallen
through the light
verily in sway

:Bobby Nichols
3-30-2005

@Peace

At peace
Patiently waiting
Our Heavenly reward beyond
a certainty...
but do his will

:Bobby Nichols
3-31-2005

~

~~~~~ The Firefox

My attention piqued
I rest in wildflowered field
waiting your pleasure

:Bobby Nichols
3-31-2005

" Raindrops "... I wanted to title the poem Rainbow, but I've been there and done that. A Glory, or rainbow glory, was another choice, but just didn't 'feel' right. A quick edit 4-18-2005.

" @Peace "... but do His will. Terri Shiavo has passed this day, 3-31-2005.

" The Firefox " a Haiku: ... A photo of a resting red fox in a field for inspiration. My original thought was thus:

Mozilla Firefox !
Not Microsoft's IE6
You foo, you foo, you !

... not my best effort.

Görüsædæk !!!

2005-03-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth."

--Shirley Chisholm and/or Marian Wright Edelman

Shirley Chisholm: November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005.
More of her thoughts...

"It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts."

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."

"Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black."

Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism.

Valentine's day: sent my wife a collection of my poems in an ecard that took me quite a while to format... but her ecard never arrived??? Soooooo, I copied the confirmation that I sent to myself as a Cc:, which I did receive, and played with some HTML coding and made an HTML document for web viewing as well as a hard copy for presentation. The hard copy was arduous, as I had to 'print the screen' multiple times as I scrolled through my document using a freeware utility for Windows called PrintDeskTop... v1.05, a must have utility, to get the artwork, .gif's, to render on the printer as it appears on the screen. Just printing the document using typical printer commands allowed only the 'print' to print discarding the artwork (of angels and hearts in this case). Then I literally cut and pasted the document together with scissors and glue to make one six-foot long roll of artwork and poetry.
I sent my Mom a different set of poems in an another ecard from ldsecards.com/ that rendered well. I received a confirmation that she received it.

Weather: On and off rain from still more warm weather systems until this second week of March which is wonderfully in the 70°'s (Fahrenheit) with plenty of sunshine... starting off allergy season in earnest.

Finally got my 10-speed bicycle tuned up after all these years. It may be the only transportation Gail and I have if she doesn't prioritize some urgent repairs to her van... soon. Down now for ignition problems. Seems the ignition key will start the van, but will not shut it off when finished (with the key turned to the off position). We have to disconnect the battery and then further turn the ignition on to stall the van to stop... which must be doing wonders for other systems... not to mention the squelchy-grindy noises it makes when one does that with the van already running.

My vincas, or periwinkles (or myrtle), and plum trees are blossoming enmasse. Daffodils in yellow bloom... well, one of ours did anyway... everywhere else they're blooming like mad. Manzanita with red and pink buds and blossoms... falling to the ground as I hack the tree limbs down for fire wood. Bees and hummingbirds have re-emerged from their absence. It looks to be a glorious Spring.

Ice hockey season cancelled?... go figger. Escalating costs (including salaries) causing financial burdens were bound to bite some major sport hard. I feel for the hockey fans. I was very angry over baseball's past boondoggles when they occurred. I personally like the idea that one enlightened sports person, not I, came up with... tying salaries to performance as in days past... not allowing guaranteed multimillionaires to rest upon their laurels... if that's what they sit on. But, the present day athlete is but a commodity in a big business market and will continue to garner whatever the market will bear, inevitably, until that market crashes.

March madness begins !!! (college basketball)

Updated Gail's XP machine with SP2 and a few other patches before Microsoft gets heavy-handed and updates her computer on their schedule. It takes forever on her dialup connection which tops out at 1 Kbps but typically runs at between 600-800 bps when downloading. I often dream of broadband...

Firefox 1.0.1 released (4.7 MBs download)... an update that (complete article)...fixes a few security holes and some other bugs." I've been very happy with Mozilla's Firefox browser. I rarely use Opera anymore and I'm weaning myself off IE6 more and more. It's interesting to read of Microsoft's frenetic activity in their IE7 project. The only complaint I have with Firefox, and it may be my 'puter not being set properly and not their browser (though IE6 is unaffected?), is the way the Java Applet for "Poetry in Motion" works with the mouse... a very haphazard delayed motion.

Free Java Scripts... for web developers... cool!!!

Physics and technology news... to peruse. The sciences, in general, have always fascinated me. I also watched PBS's reruns of their "Nova" programs on "The Elegant Universe" about string theory and the pursuit of the "GUT", or "grand unified theory" of force(s). It's as simple as black and green, or greene !!! (John Schwartz and Michael Green and Briane Greene)... almost. Of course there's Beyond String Theory"... to further warp one's mind about.

Instead of leading the world, there is no Kyoto accord agreement for the U.S.A. Guess that confirms that our country doesn't walk the walk when we talk the talk of environmentalism. And all that money wasted on studying cow emissions too. It always comes down to dollars and scents (sic).

A wonderful interview with the prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, in 1997 I came across in my email while perusing a Google News Alert. I missed the recent interview with Larry King on CNN, but of what I have heard of the recent interview, it pretty much follows the same vein as the interview of 1997.

The Sumatra earthquake, last December 26th, has been upgraded substantially in magnitude to 9.3 Richter in force.

Mount St. Helens in Washington State, U.S.A., is showing renewed activity.

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Kepulaun Talud, Indonesia at: 4.77N 126.34E Depth 20km Tue Feb 15 14:42:23 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

195 km (120 miles) SE of General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines

265 km (165 miles) SSE of Davao, Mindanao, Philippines

1230 km (770 miles) SSE of Manila, Philippines

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake in the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge has occurred at: 35.70S 16.34W Depth 10km Wed Feb 16 20:27:52 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

390 km (245 miles) WNW of Tristan da Cunha

3180 km (1970 miles) WSW of Cape Town, South Africa

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake in Sulawesi, Indonesia has occurred at: 5.55S 122.03E Depth 10km Sat Feb 19 00:04:44 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

65 km (40 miles) W of Baubau, Sulawesi, Indonesia (pop 54,000)

285 km (180 miles) E of Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi, Indonesia

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Central Iran has occurred at:
30.75N 56.80E Depth 42km Tue Feb 22 02:25:26 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

60 km (35 miles) NNW of Kerman, Iran (pop 384,000)

180 km (110 miles) NE of Sirjan, Iran

260 km (160 miles) ESE of Yazd, Iran

740 km (460 miles) SE of Tehran, Iran

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Simeulue, Indonesia has occurred at:
2.93N 95.56E Depth 30km Sat Feb 26 12:56:52 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

285 km (175 miles) S of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

350 km (220 miles) WSW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

385 km (240 miles) WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia

1590 km (990 miles) NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Banda Sea has occurred at:
6.57S 129.84E Depth 193km Wed Mar 2 10:42:10 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

230 km (145 miles) NW of Saumlaki, Tanimbar Islands, Indonesia

370 km (230 miles) SSE of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia

660 km (410 miles) N of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

2550 km (1580 miles) E of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Kyoto Discord

Fend not for the earth

Until the politicians

Are thus endangered ?

:Bobby Nichols

2-17-200

"Kyoto Discord " a Haiku: ... the photo was of an elk, or ilk, in a meadow... giving me pause to consider my words, above, about the U.S.A and the Kyoto accord. We were made caretakers of this wonderful earth, and we will be held accountable to a Higher Authority.

Kwaheri ya kuonana !!!

2005-02-11T05:50:00.000-08:00

"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
--Angela Y. Davis

Chinese New Year: Gung hay fat choy !!! The year of the rooster.
... Muslim New Year also.
My mother called Wednesday evening. It's hard to believe it's been nearly four weeks since we last talked. Her trip to England is still a go for early March.
Weather: Spring-like days: some rain and o'cast now and again... and some wonderful blue sky sun-shiny days. The winter pattern remaining relatively warm at our locale.
February: Black History Month. I viewed a couple of programs on the VH1 channel about rap and hip hop music, and black directors in the movies that were quite interesting. It was in the '70's while taking a sociology class, briefly, at Cal State Univ. at Hayward, that I was introduced to a glimpse of black history and contemporary black culture. I'm chagrined to admit that my knowledge is lacking in terms of the "black experience". I have been researching the web & watching programs, on the BYU channel, about LDS black history and current events to gain some understanding within the faith.
Ossie Davis has passed.
The "droopy-pants" bill has been dropped in Virginia. What would Thomas Jefferson have done? Suspender stocks fall to new lows in late market trading.
I'm back to formatting the BLOG in HTML using NoteTab Light... a Windows Notepad replacement that uses tabbed entry and is much more functional than Notepad. Its only drawback is that it seems to crash my HTML editor AceHTML_Pro_6 if I try to run both concurrently. The email posting proved to be disappointing and the "Compose" mode method proved to be a bit buggy... with the HTML that it produced quite ponderous to edit. Also, my sidebar has been flummoxed when viewing in IE6... an edit being warranted... though it appears much better in Opera and Firefox browsers. IE6 has been erratic at displaying my Google Ads at the top of the BLOG... go figger!
And speaking of AceHTML, by Visicom Media, the freeware version, AceHTML 5 Freeware, is being discontinued and will no longer be supported. A new update (free to paid owners of AceHTML_Pro_6) v.6.04.2, is now available for download.
Three critical updates for my Windows 98SE operating system. One each for: IE6, Windows Media Player, and Outlook Express for possible system hijacks. Done and done and done. I think this is the last year for operating system support for pre-Windows XP systems... Win 98SE most likely.
My prediction for the Super Bowl score was pretty close... just one Adam Vinatieri field goal short!
BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Celebes Sea: 5.36N 123.23E Depth 486km Sat Feb 5 12:23:15 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
215 km (130 miles) SE of Zamboanga, Mindanao, Philippines
230 km (145 miles) WSW of General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines
1050 km (650 miles) SSE of MANILA, Philippines
My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~ Ever True

Star-crossed lovers
beyond the
bounds of time
awake to their
heavenly reward
... ever true

:Bobby Nichols
2-10-2005
Dim^E

Time is but a mote
Rushing through narrow waters
Leading to the sea

:Bobby Nichols
2-10-2005
Whence the Tsunami

Islands in ruin
The sea a hard mistress be
Whence the tsunami

:Bobby Nichols
2-11-2005

~

"Ever True "... A sentimental piece.
"Dim^E " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a rushing stream bounded by trees on both sides. I apologize for being obscure, dim being short for dimensional. I often just go with what pops into my mind with little regard for if it makes any sense... I be dim.
"Whence the Tsunami " a Haiku: ... A photo offered of gray skies over a palm tree inhabited island with a view of other small islands... a photo used in the past for fonder poetic thoughts. In the aftermath of the Boxing Day's last tsunami, stories of the sea receding to reveal treasures to luckless beach combers evoked my recollection of reading a book of science fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, "Childhood's End", where a child is likewise enticed - although saved miraculously. I believe I too might have yielded... to my ultimate mortal demise. First "Jaws" and now the memory of the tsunami past... "The sea a hard mistress be".

A revved up turkey !!!

2005-02-04T22:48:00.000-08:00

"Love without attachment is light."

- Norman O. Brown

_____________________________________

It's interesting that the email formatting doesn't hold up when sent to my BLOG. The background is lost and any HTML is treated as text. Not exactly WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

I've been having problems getting the email to post to BLOGGER for some reason... even after deleting the pix and attachment I originally attempted to send. I'll just keep sending over and over and... nothing. Maybe the read receipt option in OE should be off?... I'll try that... nope.

Let's try BLOGGER's site for info... BLOGGER KNOWN ISSUES: (there are many) http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=791

"Mail-to-Blogger is currently having encoding trouble with accented and international characters. Until we get this fixed, these characters will need to be fixed by editing the post from the main Blogger interface."

I have been using an international character in my 'Good bye' (Tjada) with the last 'a' having a circle do-hickey above it ((see Swedish (Sweden, Finland) [informal] at http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/goodbye.htm))... edited... NOW let's try posting this puppy!!!!!!!!

... sigh ! ... nope... try again... nope... I give up... after a dozen attempts. I'll try using the email posting another time.

I'll try the "Compose" mode for posting (instead of laboring in HTML)... Note: It's proving to be nearly as laborious.

_____________________________________
Test... pictures?

Picture of my Grandpa Nichols.

_____________________________________

Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/ updated to v. 3.95 with a download of the main prog (857 KB) and its plugins (4.5 MB)... a most excellent freeware viewer and image editor that I've used for a number of years with much enthusiasm.

ieSpell version 2.1.1 (build 325) has been released. I haven't tried it out yet, but I use an older version of this spell checker that works great for Internet Explorer 5 and 6 users using Windows 98 or newer. It supposedly may be downloaded at http://www.iespell.com/download.php ... I'm having a problem or two, for some reason, downloading it.

_____________________________________

Mom... the 44th anniversary of her 29th birthday recently.

Relatively mild winter continues: Only traces of snow at home this January... much, much more in the Sierra's. Budding of the willows and figs early in January... the lilacs and plum tress budding now. Wood... an ongoing chore.

Precious, one of our house cats, had an abscess on her chin that is now much better. Two adolescent cats neutered... 'Mocha' and 'Binx' (or 'Little Poop'). I named the male 'Little Poop' because it was adopted by Gail's basset dog 'Maddie' who I have always called 'Poop' (for the "gift" left in my 'office' the day she arrived from South Dakota). 'Poop', by the way, was adopted by a cat named 'Missy' when she arrived. 'Mocha', whom we had previously adopted out to my brother-in-law's daughter Virginia and significant-other's daughter Carly, is visiting during their interim relocation.

PS/2 replacement for grandson David... the original lasted a week after Christmas, evidently a bad laser. The new one is the slimmer version recently released.

Foxes and coyotes and lions and... no bears... yet. I had no idea that foxes ate apples!!! Geese and blackbirds and Stellar's jays quite abundant. Frogs creakin' up a holler with the ponds full to overflowing with our seasonal creek. A multitude of dead skunks noted when driving about.

Gail to the hospital via ambulance for severe back pain. A couple of bulging disks in her vertebrae that muscle relaxants and potent pain killers seem to help. Unfortunately the meds make her ill... making her loathe to take them.

Bible study on Mondays starting with The New Testament: Matthew: 1. "True to the Faith" study for newcomers still on Wednesdays... I really got a kick out of playing a game called "zip-zap-bonk" we were taught as a possibility for an activity for family home evenings. Tonight's class was on fasting... a good gospel reference being Isaiah Chapter 58.

Johnny Carson's passing.

Innumerable aftershocks still occurring in the Indonesian area afflicted by the 9.0 quake and tsunamis last month. Survivors still being found!!! the latest on Great Nicobar Island.
Iraqi elections. Prelude to civil war?... I pray not.
Eagles vs. Patriots in The Super Bowl... hmmmm, I'll guess Patriots 27 / Eagles 21. I'll miss the televised game. Guess I'll catch the ESPN highlights on Monday.
Waterbed sprung a terminal leak... Gail's attempts to patch the leaks have proved fruitless (note: never attempt to clean waterbeds with gasoline... don't ask!). Three nights of sleeping on the couch or air mattress or recliner not exactly doing wonders for Gail's chronic pain. We purchased a replacement mattress from LaBries in Sacramento, the same store we purchased the original about ten years ago. LaBries is one of the few remaining waterbed outlets left around these parts.

Our microwave died. That makes about one every year for the last five years. Gail swears that it's the popcorn that kills them.

http://deseretbook.com/mormon-life/news/story?story_id=516 ... Mormon / Muslim... an interesting comparison... from a Google News alert I subscribe to.

_____________________________________

untitled

Sea...

Calm serenity

Rising, falling, soothing

I long for thy closeness

... ocean

:Bobby Nichols
circa October 2004

_____________________________________
The above poem was created hurriedly during an exercise in our "Gospel Principles" class a number of Sabbaths ago when we were studying "Developing our Talents", chapter 34. My poem had to be about the ocean. The structure of each poem was the same for all. It was wonderful to hear the other creations by the rest of the class.

A few of the principles of the lesson were: we all have talents; by showing our talents and good works we please God... that Heavenly Father will bless us if we use our talents wisely, especially if we use them to benefit others; we can overcome our weaknesses through practice and perseverance... and turn our weaknesses into strengths; and... we will be "judged" according to our works.

Tjada !!! ... (without the circle do-hickey over the last 'a'!!!)

2005-02-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

... a test to see if this posts.

I'm having many difficulties with the email posting and want to see if ANYTHING posts!!!

Back in a bit !!!

email test #6 to my BLOG

2005-01-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

Change is good... author unknown

 _______________

This is a test to see if/how the email prog on Blogger works for posting...

alzo: Added Space.com News to side bar...

and... added myself to list to receive email on postings (will others still receive theirs'?)... dunno...

and... added comment feature to blog (should email me when a comment gets posted...

and...

 _______________

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to: 
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake IN CENTRAL MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE has occurred at: 0.84S 21.21W Depth 10km Wed Jan 12 08:40:03 2005 UTC
 
Location with respect to nearby cities: 
<UL>
<li>1095 km (680 miles) NW of Ascension Island</li>
<li>1290 km (800 miles) ENE of Fernando de Noronha, Pernambuco, Brazil</li>
<li></li>
</UL>
 _______________

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake IN STATE OF YAP, MICRONESIA has occurred at:10.95N 140.77E Depth 55km Sun Jan 16 20:17:56 2005 UTC 
Location with respect to nearby cities: 
<UL>
<li>330 km (205 miles) ENE of Yap, Micronesia</li>
<li>515 km (320 miles) WSW of HAGATNA, Guam</li>
<li>595 km (370 miles) SW of Rota, Northern Mariana Islands</li>
<li>1950 km (1210 miles) WNW of PALIKIR, Pohnpei, Micronesia</li>
</UL>
 _______________

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake OFF THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN has occurred at:
34.13N 141.49E Depth 39km Wed Jan 19 06:11:38 2005 UTC 
Location with respect to nearby cities: 
<UL>
<li>195 km (120 miles) NE of Hachijo-jima, Izu Islands, Japan</li>
<li>235 km (145 miles) SE of TOKYO, Japan</li>
<li>265 km (165 miles) SSE of Mito, Honshu, Japan</li>
<li>300 km (185 miles) ESE of Shizuoka, Honshu, Japan</li>
</UL>

 _______________

My entry... poetry.com: http://www.poetry.com/Haiku/HaikuContest.asp

 Waterfall

 Vernal falls foment

 Water whipped to frenzied wisps
 Aerial cascade

 :Bobby Nichols
 1-5-2005

 _________________


Note to self:

Self... what happened to the HTML formatting, and the font (Tempus Sans ITC) and font sizing (18 & 24), and font colour (black,red, navy), and email background colour of the email (sky blue), etc., after posting???

Check alzo my cc:

Aloha !!!

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.7.1 - Release Date: 1/19/05

2004-12-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

"People seldom improve when they have no other model, but themselves to copy after."
--Oliver Goldsmith

More word'Smiths':

"Tolerance is a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbors of tolerance are apathy and weakness." - Sir James Goldsmith
"Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse." - Adam Smith
"Above all nations is humanity." - Goldwin Smith
"True repentance has a double aspect. It looks upon things past with a weeping eye, and upon the future with a watchful eye." - Robert Smith
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can." - Sydney Smith

Weather: A rainy Tuesday, the temperatures staying relatively warm (in the 40°'s Fahrenheit). A light rain most of the day Wednesday. A goodly amount of rain Thursday revealing leaks in our humble abode's roof, and elsewhere, and large amounts of snow in the Sierra's. Time to patch the roof again. In hindsight, I would have better served myself had I gone into the construction trade. More rain expected.

The "fall" of Adam and Eve... our Wednesday night lesson from "True to the Faith" closely followed the lesson given in the link.

Babysitting the grandkids while it rains outside on Thursday... David playing a "Quad" vehicle game on his Playstation 2... Ashley on Gail's computer playing the Care Bears games online with me watching, or watching soapys with Gail, or watching David play... me 'putin.

Continued large aftershocks in the 5.5 Richter and above range in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra... the death toll exceeding 120,000 with no end in sight to the escalating total.

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

~~~ The HoneyMoon

Removed...

the metes

and bounds

of desire

Lulled...

as to

a flame

into ecstasy

:Bobby Nichols
12-30-2004

Mains des Bien Peintre

Mains des bien peintre

cherchant pure larmes

pour la vie

trempais pinceau...

Fixant tes pauvre

coeur mort

:Bobby Nichols
12-28-2004

~

The Stand

In the spotlight's glare

An albino crab takes stand

Amoungst the sparse grass

:Bobby Nichols
12-30-2004

Moonbeam-Dreams

Rhythmicly the ocean rolls

Welcoming a summer moon

Evoking moonbeam-dreams

Of love's fleeting nights

:Bobby Nichols
12-29-2004

~~~~~ Repent

Oft sin

embitters men

Should our souls

be defiled...

Repent

Desire His will

... Salvation

:Bobby Nichols
12-28-2004

"The HoneyMoon "... 'nuf said.

"Mains des Bien Peintre "... or "Hands of the Good Painter "... I used Babelfish for translation and formation of the poem... and is rendered thus: Hands of the good painter seeking pure tears for the life soaked brush fixing your poor dead heart. The 'tiles', again, French words and snippets... I could but try, with apologies to French speaking peoples everywhere.

"The Stand " a Haiku: ... I'm still not sure whether the plot of ground depicted in the photo was a white clay or of a very white fine sand or both or neither. I tried to formulate a verse depicting the overall nature of the crabs background, but proved unsuccessful within the 5-7-5 syllabibble (sic) format. At first I didn't even notice the all white crab... it blended in so well to its environ. The spotlight highlighting the crab was undoubtably of dubious nature. I doubt if the poor crab was allowed to remain... perhaps its last stand.

"Moonbeam-Dreams "... Spurred on while listening to a DVD entitled "The Shore" containing nothing but the sounds of ocean waves breaking on the beach.

"Repent "... Repentance: another step toward exaltation.

In the infinite scheme of things, we are not a people of colors, nor other dividing differences, but rather children of light... children of God. 'Borne' into this wonderful world to explore and be tested in this mortal existence, to be then guided back to His presence through living the teachings of Jesus Christ. I'm grateful for the Bible; and the Book of Mormon... another testament of Jesus Christ; and modern prophets, called of God, beginning with Joseph Smith, Jr. who restored His church. I pray that peace be with you as the New Year approaches... in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Trok lom !!!

2004-12-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

"I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence - this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."
-- Lord George Byron

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." - Jeannette Rankin... Also from bioguide.congress.gov

"There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control." - Leo Buscaglia

"We learn geology the morning after the earthquake." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?" - Lord George Byron

"God speaks to me not through the thunder and the earthquake, nor through the ocean and the stars, but through the Son of Man, and speaks in a language adapted to my imperfect sight and hearing." - William Lyon Phelps

Weather: Sunday o'cast and cool... Warm jacket wearing weather. Sunday evening and Monday's early morning much warmer than usual... as the expected rains approach... the full moon still ruling the heavens. Daytime Monday blessed with "Seattle Sunshine"... a light rain with the temperatures remaining moderate and winds low. Perhaps a window of opportunity to gather more manzanita.

Sabbath sacrament service talks and classes most inspired... a challenge to set forth realistic goals for the new year... another to honor one's marital partner as an equal... or better. Two short walks to and from my ride , again, in the brisk morning and afternoon. I was lent a handbook on the priesthood, by one of the brethren who was baptized shortly after I was in March, that I will peruse swiftly. The information in this handbook (B)? answering many questions in the how-to's and where-for's of priestly duties. A scheduled interview with our Prophet, and President, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Gordon B. Hinckley, by Larry King on CNN was preempted at 9p.m., and 12a.m. (PST) with coverage of the tragedy in the Indian Ocean area. (I evidently missed the 6p.m. PST showing).

Rock and Roll!!! BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake OFF THE W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA has occurred at:
3.30N 95.78E Depth 10km Sun Dec 26 00:58:50 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

250 km (155 miles) SSE of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

320 km (200 miles) W of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

1260 km (780 miles) SSW of BANGKOK, Thailand

... and...
A magnitude 7.3 and 6.5 earthquake IN THE NICOBAR ISLANDS, INDIA REGION has occurred at:
6.90N 92.95E Depth 10km Sun Dec 26 04:21:26 2004 UTC... and... 8.87N 92.38E Depth 10km Sun Dec 26 09:20:01 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities (magnitude 7.3):

130 km (80 miles) SSW of Misha, Nicobar Islands, India (pop N/A)

305 km (190 miles) WNW of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

1125 km (690 miles) SW of BANGKOK, Thailand

Location with respect to nearby cities (magnitude 6.5):

145 km (90 miles) NW of Misha, Nicobar Islands, India (pop N/A)

310 km (195 miles) S of Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India

1035 km (640 miles) WSW of BANGKOK, Thailand

... That's two 8.0 Richter quakes, or greater, in two days... 9.0 Richter quake being the greatest I can remember in recent history... spawning more than 25 (and counting) aftershocks over 5.5 Richter in the region The death toll from the quakes and resultant tsunamis (some say 'tidal waves'... a misnomer) are unfortunately very high... some small islands no longer in existence. Google News search 'quake'. I've been watching CNN with utter anxiety... praying that relief comes swiftly, and to the right people at the right time.

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Love Betimes Flees

Endless sighs

ne'er relent

through silent tears

Love betimes flees

Hearts linger

O'er ceaseless

yearnings

Love betimes flees

:Bobby Nichols

12-26-2004

~

~ Temptation

Uncounted are the

poisoned paths

proffered of

singular desire

bade beneath

:Bobby Nichols

12-27-2004

"Love Betimes Flees "... An edited form of what I submitted. I added a last 'Love betimes flees' to the end of the poem... I thought it added some balance to the piece. 'Betimes' defined.

"Temptation "... Use your agency wisely... temptations lurk everywhere. An interesting aside... regarding the "Lord's Prayer" and Latter Day Saints that I heretofore did not know. My apologies for the three "p" words in a row.

I pray all is well... Vakivelaanan !!!

2004-12-25T01:47:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

"Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us." - Charles Dickens

"Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree." - T. S. Eliot

"Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal." - Lenore Hershey

"Call a truce, then, to our labors - let us feast with friends and neighbors, and be merry as the custom of our caste; for if ''faint and forced the laughter,'' and if sadness follow after, we are richer by one mocking Christmas past." - Joseph Rudyard Kipling

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat. Of peace on earth goodwill to men." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." - Norman Vincent Peale

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree." - Roy L. Smith

Weather: Wednesday through Friday a bit chilly with the sun out valiantly trying to warm things up on these winter days.

Wednesday newcomers meeting at church... a video on the life of our Saviour Jesus Christ and some testimonies. Again, a good crowd... and cookies!

BIG earthquake... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:
A magnitude 8.1 earthquake NORTH OF MACQUARIE ISLAND has occurred at: 50.24S 160.13E Depth 10km Thu Dec 23 14:59:04 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

420 km (260 miles) W of Auckland Island, New Zealand

495 km (305 miles) N of Macquarie Island, Australia

1515 km (940 miles) SW of WELLINGTON, New Zealand

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

En Passant

Tropical jelly
long tendrils
hanging

Sea horses,
mouths agape,
passing

:Bobby Nichols
12-23-2004

Dreams of Summer

Whence flowed these
fond sparkling dreams

Memories of hot days
and cool gentle streams

:Bobby Nichols
12-24-2004

The Light

See the Light

Jesus was sent
to save us all

Peace and love
and joy

:Bobby Nichols
12-25-2004

"En Passant "... a French term meaning "In Passing". Also a move used in chess that often beguiles the beginning player. There would be much more to write in such a poem as this... being relegated to only 20 'tiles' left me to ponder more for the future.
"Dreams of Summer "... My favorite summers... cycling from home in the East Bay to Yosemite Nat'l park on 10-speed bicycles with Burt in '70, Jim in '71. Memories of: mosquito bites (once closing my eye for a day or two from swelling); Niles Canyon; Caswell State Park; Planada, where I was impressed at the amount of flies around a small eatery; tossing rocks across the Merced River with Burt; sleeping on or near park benches in sleeping bags; getting wet in Oakdale and Merced when the timed sprinklers came on after turning in; eating dehydrated camping rations; wading in the Toulumne River; Burton's flat tire fixed at an irrigation canal in Modesto; the gears freezing up on the bike I borrowed from my brother-in-law; sometimes having to walk the bikes up particularly steep grades... once or twice a short trip in the back of a pickup truck; my white Schwinn 10-speed that I bought with my own money after working at a Liquor store for minimum wage ($1.50?/hr. USD)... my bike later stolen at my high school (though locked up) as I attended a basketball game; having stupid songs go through my mind as a cadence; orange hats; a brief rain shower near the entrance of Yosemite; chopped-Harley rider amused at our straining our loaded-down bikes on a long flat straight back road in the heat, motioning as if he was pedaling in passing; stopping at small Mom & Pop stores for a snack or water or soda or phone call home; B-52's near Merced, close to the place of my birth; the beauty of Yosemite; pictures taken with an old Kodak "Brownie" camera that I still have; mostly downhill home!!!; getting a ride home in '70, once we made it from Yosemite to Merced, 'cause school vacation ended earlier than we thought; being left behind, alone, don't remember why?, once we made it from Yosemite to Sunol the following year...o.k., I was probably lagging pretty much at that point... but I made it all the way home!; and OH! the soreness!!!
"The Light "... I made a minor edit by adding the word 'us' here in addition to my entry. Jesus is the Light by whence all righteousness is restored to the Earth and by whom all may be saved. I celebrate the Son of God's birth this 25th day of December, 2004, with the prayer that all come unto Jesus, the Christ.
Peace be with you on this joyous Christmas Day... Adieux!!!

2004-12-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

"Today in bloom, tomorrow as afallen petals, like a delicate flower, life is."

--Takijiro Ohnishi

"It is at the edge of a petal that love waits." - William Carlos Williams

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis

Takijiro Ohnishi... a tragic figure in history...
Email from Mom saying my Grandfather Cecil (sês-il... not see-sil) also had a deviated septum in his nose. I don't know if 'it's' hereditary or not either.
The grandkids are out of school for Christmas vacation (Oh Oh Oh !!!).
Weather: The Sabbath was glorious! with bright sunny skies. Monday mostly o'cast with a chill breeze. Tuesday was chill with bright sunny skies giving way to wisps of cirrus clouds late... Even Sacramento crawled from 'neath the fog! Rain expected on Sunday!!!
Finished James E. Talmage's "Jesus the Christ"... A rather scholarly treatise on Jesus' life and times... Most revealing and enlightening... A must read.
My downloaded AceHTML6.0 update from Visicom Media (actually only 5.5 MBytes... not 5.9 MBytes) caused me much grief. The file, apparently, became corrupted the first FOUR times I downloaded it... the fifth time a charm! Oh, the wonders of downloading large files over the telephone lines... "Never give up... Never surrender!"... what was that definition of insanity again?

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Phantasmagoræ

Spectral showers

of love

cast upon

the rocks

below

... an eternity

of meteoric sighs

:Bobby Nichols

12-20-2004

~~~

A Lover's Mettle

Petal by petal

Love's riposte plucked of red rose

A lover's mettle

:Bobby Nichols

12-20-2004

Apex

Epical apex

O, Lawrence... Who dared to test

The mire of ages

:Bobby Nichols

12-22-2004

Phantasmagoræ Deux

Spectral showers of love unrequited

suffers cast upon the rocks below...

An eternity of meteoric sighs borne

:Bobby Nichols

12-20-2004

~

The Ever-Never

Stars nor planets

are beyond

the Ever-Never

Time is a

nothingness

as elsewhere

curves

to end

:Bobby Nichols

12-21-2004

Les Papillons Sont Libres

Nous papillons

voulant fuir cet

espace sentions entre

les ronces,

toutes que temps

chausse-trappes

d'etre rompu

:Bobby Nichols

12-22-2004

~~~~~

"Phantasmagoræ "... Another nonce word for a title (well... maybe a twonce (sic) word... 'twonce' being a nonce word!!!)... 'phantasmagoric' being kin to 'spectral'. My poem-like entry lent much to build upon... it just didn't seem to be able to 'stand' by itself... so I also lend (see Verb 1. lend) a somewhat expanded, edited, form of my entry as Phantasmagoræ Deux. 'Borne'... or 'brought forth' in my use of the term. Note: Google has no listing for the term 'Phantasmagorae'... but there is a veritable plethora of listings for other variants of the word, including a poem... "Phantasmagoria" by Lewis Carroll in 1869... a jewel found!!!
"A Lover's Mettle " a Haiku: ... mettle... riposte. She loves me... she loves me not... she loves me...
"Apex " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a person at the top of a dune... footsteps leading up along the ridge... blue sky above. Gave me pause to reflect on T.E. Lawrence whose book I enjoyed, though have not finished after more than 300 pages, titled "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"... the link being an eBook source of note for reading or downloading from The University of Adelaide Library, Australia.
Another Haiku I entered is more an Homage to a "Sponge Bob Squarepants" character, Mr. Crabs. "Sponge Bob Squarepants" is a cartoon on the "Nickelodeon" cartoon TV channel. You may need the updated Macromedia Flash7 player installed to access the "Nickelodeon" site... and please note that there are different downloads depending on your browser preference... IE6's/AOL's player and installation, being different from Firefox's/Opera's/Netscape's player and installation, for instance. I was inspired by a photo of a red crab, eye-stalks raised on the shoreline of a beach, somewhere, far from here, sigh!...

Titled here as: "Mr. Crabs": "Ar! Ar! Ar! Ar! Ar!... I'm off to make me fortune... in crabby-patties" The only reason to enter is to win a mouse pad... with the photo placed on the mouse pad and the Haiku printed on the mouse pad as well. It'd be a real kick if this entry won!
"The Ever-Never "... Our bubble of space/time is but flotsam, a mote, expanding/encroaching upon the elsewhere.
"Les Papillons Sont Libres "...Translation by Babelfish:
"Butterflies Are Free "...We butterflies wanting to flee this space felt between brambles, all that time traps to be broken.
It doesn't help that my French is lacking... the 'tiles' given mostly French words and snippets... but I did try!

'til Whenever !!! (Whatever!)

2004-12-19T01:29:00.000-08:00

"In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost."

--Anne Sophie Swetchine

"The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere." - Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

"Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost." - W. Channing

"The person of intellect is lost unless they unite with energy of character. When we have the lantern of Diogenese we must also have his staff." - Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

"Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is perilous." - Confucius

"Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast." - John Greenleaf Whittier

"Poetry is what is lost in translation." - Robert Frost

Dear Barbara... No. I'm not Bobby L. Nichols, Jerry's brother. As you did not wish an email back if the answer was in the negative... I do you the courtesy of answering here. I wish you the best of luck in your search.
A package from Mom for Christmas!!! Thanks Mom !!!
Weather: Glorious, just a bit cool, mostly sunny Tuesday through Saturday... more manzanita cut.
Doctor's appointment Wednesday for myself with a head and neck specialist... and Gail with her chiropractor. Same old/same old therapy for Gail... leg & knee (& shoulder? & back?). I was looking into possible surgery to alleviate my sleep apnia symptoms, and maybe opening up my left nasal passage a bit. The doctor said surgery generally will help snoring problems... not apnia, but that I may most definitely benefit from correcting my deviated septum to open up the left nostril. I didn't recall having my nose broken which surprised the doctor. I was in the examination room the minute I arrived, finished with the consult in about seven minutes, finished the new patient paperwork in another seven minutes, and out the door!!! Had a nice 25 minute walk to Gail's chiropractic office, except for the occasional ice on the sidewalks (or lack thereof).
Haircut... $14 plus $1 tip (USD). Getting spensiver (sic) and spensiver.
A large gathering at the church for the newcomers "True to the Faith" class... the largest to date. The class was on 'faith', following the alphabetical order of the book. I tried to contribute, from my reading of Talmage's "Jesus the Christ", that even the disciples of Jesus had a marked progression of faith while with Him. Unfortunately my spoken words came out a bit muddled, as usual... speech being a social weakness of mine.
Big earthquake... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS REGION has occurred at:
18.98N 81.31W Depth 10km Tue Dec 14 23:20:13 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

35 km (20 miles) SSE of GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (pop 20,000)

325 km (205 miles) ENE of Swan Island

360 km (225 miles) SSW of Cienfuegos, Cuba

760 km (470 miles) S of Miami, Florida

My AceHTML6.0 from Visicom Media has an update. I own a pro license, purchased at an introductory discount, so the update is free, albeit lengthy (5.9 MBytes). The application is my main syntax checker for my HTML when BLOGging and creating other HTML pages... very intuitive to use and quite invaluable.

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

ArtAlive!

Strange impromptu
swellings of the
canvas
only
the artist
illuminating
colors

:Bobby Nichols
12-14-2004

~

~

... Beyond Time

Time ends
as never
happened
nor nothing was

Ever the end

But Heaven
will still be
... beyond time

:Bobby Nichols
12-14-2004

"ArtAlive! "... Art is not static. Art is imbued with the creator's passion... the media transcended in the process.
"... Beyond Time "... A recurrent theme.

C' y'all !!!

2004-12-13T22:44:00.000-08:00

"Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformable to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew."

--Marcus Aurelius

More 'blessings':

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." - Charles Dickens

"To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings." - Mary Baker Eddy

"We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of Peace." - William E. Gladstone

"A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world." - Joseph Addison

"Every burden is a blessing." - Robert H. Schuller

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings." - Socrates

"God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty." - Peter Marshall

Weather: Gorgeous Sabbath day and Monday!!! Mostly sunny days ranging from 50° to 60° temps. Had two wonderful walks, to and from my ride to church... short-sleeve shirt weather walkin'.
I've been ordained an Elder to the Melchizedek Priesthood... more spiritual growth... and responsibility. May I be worthy. Next Sabbath I'm looking forward to my Patriarchal blessing.
My newly updated AVG anti-virus ap picked up two incidents of the VerifierBug.class Trojan/virus. It wouldn't quarantine them, for some reason, but I already had the Microsoft patch, 816093, that pertained to stopping the home page hijack, and other exploits?, taking advantage of Microsoft's Java engine. After doing a FIND search on the archive.jar-27b6d966(something) and the archive.jar-27b6d962(something) I ran AVG file scans on the files associated with them and found that the corresponding 'zip' files were the offending critters... and deleted them. Went into the IE6 (internet options) and disabled Microsoft's Java utilization also... since I use, primarily, Sun's Java. The files, interestingly enough, were dated August 2003 ??? Maybe the recent bug, my computer had, now gone, was related.
Meteor shower Monday. I quickly read about the Geminid meteor shower peaking tonight on my wife Gail's Yahoo home page when loading a Care Bear's game site for my 4-year old granddaughter. I didn't think too much about it at the time. When I went to feed Tara and Eeyore, Gail's white Arab mare and donkey, much later than usual about 5:30-6:00 p.m. PST, I spied a bright meteor from the north, as I was coming up our drive grade, that traced all the way through the clear sky to far south. It was the longest meteor duration sighting I've ever experienced. Mentioned the meteor shower to my son-in-law, Richard, and grandson David.
Knotty Pines... a profitable recreation center, bowling alley, is for sale. Located in Pollock Pines, California, just a bit east of where I live, just up the hill from historic Hangtown (Placerville, CA) on U.S. Highway 50. I noted the fact in the Mountain Democrat classifieds. Been there a few times many years past. Not a big place... but very homey. The only detriment I see would be the snow in winter causing... what am I thinking?... what a great time to find open lanes!!!

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Carpet Diem...

Littered greasy
oil-stained rags
seizes hot...

Ignites

Carpet diem...
black

:Bobby Nichols
12-13-2004
~
Anthesis

Pastel petals splay

Flower's passioned reverie

Heady summons play

:Bobby Nichols
12-11-2004

Be True

Heaven beckons...

Our reward
is in sight

Desire His will...

An endless peace
of delight

:Bobby Nichols
12-11-2004

~

"Carpet Diem... "... the 'tiles' gave me pause to recall an incident my wife Gail had with some rags soaked with linseed oil... a household danger. She left them lying, wadded up, in her van for a short time only to return with the smell of burning oil permeating the van and a new black spot on her van's carpeted cargo area. Linseed oil, and other oils and stains and ilk, can spontaneously combust to disastrous effect. 'Carpet diem black' (enjoy the black carpet¿) a not so crafty pun lent from 'carpe diem'.
"Anthesis " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was an intoxicatingly gorgeous flower displaying its pollen on gossamer stalks midst pastel petals of pale lavender and white. A helpful page about the anthesis of a flower.
"Be True "... Here I show an edited form of the poem. My entry lacks "of delight" in the last line. I thought the structure begged the edit, however my 'tile' count would have exceeded the allotted 20 'tiles' for entry.

Sampon !!!

2004-12-11T20:34:00.000-08:00

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."
--Saul Bellow

More from Saul Bellow:
"There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war."
"Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining."

"Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately."

Weather: Friday mostly sunny... too warm for the flannel shirt I wore. Saturday more of the same.
The Elders came by Friday evening brightening an erstwhile dreary day. We were to see a DVD, but we couldn't get the player to show the video... only the audio was present. Luckily, just by the audio, Gail and I realized we had already seen this particular piece. We then discussed the DVD starting with a passage in the Bible about Elijah and his significance to the faith. Evidently the Wednesday class last I missed was on Joseph Smith... a change made impromptu.
A day of cobwebs and a late Friday gave way to napping on Saturday. Gail was blessed with the grandchildren in all their glory.
Gail's car... hangin' in there.

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:

~ I, Arboreal

I, Arboreal
Spatial pervasion total
Null geodesic

:Bobby Nichols
12-10-2004
X Alt @ Ion

Souls ensured dearly
days of perfect
rapture be

Pressed on ye
not stiff-necked
but eagerly

:Bobby Nichols
12-11-2004

~

"X Alt @ Ion "... My thoughts were thus: covenants made and fulfilled... la raison d'être!
"I, Arboreal " a Haiku: ... Words flow... and whence they manifold?... I do not know. Woofing my mentation around this subject engaged the knurls of my encephalon into rigor. Why this poetic¿ effluvial sputum spewed fifth I could not cogitate. Oh yeah... t'was a photo of a top of a tree framed by other trees and a near and distant mountainside... from the aspect of being on high (high up) as well.

Allez ciao !!!

2004-12-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

"And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the
over-graciousness of thy smiling."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

From whence I plucked the above passage...
"Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All And None" by Friedrich Nietzsche from chapter LVIII: "The Great Longing". While I do not embrace his philosophy, I do admire his penned eloquence.
Weather: Wednesday's light rain with moderately cool temperatures allowed for sparse use of wood in the wood stove through the morning of Thursday. Thursday turned mostly sunny... in the mid-60°'s Fahrenheit... gave me a chance to cut some more manzanita limbs.
Updated Gail's and my computer anti-virus and spyware detection definitions (ad infinitum/ad nauseum).
Added from my old website a link, NewsDirectory.com to my sidebar. This site has been a great resource for news and classifieds from just about any media source: newspaper, magazine, television, etc. ... in the world. I particularly like the ability to find a newspaper in the USA by state and area code... dailies and non-dailies being in separate listings. And... it's apparently now available thanks to the great folks at Tucows... whom I've trusted for quite some time. It did choke, however, when I searched for "The Ensign" magazine.
Gail's car... evidently the water pump is going out. Sooooooo, I missed the Wednesday evening class at church for newcomers. The topic was to be on 'faith', as we go through the "True to the Faith" gospel reference alphabetically. Faith is a gift from our Heavenly Father and can give us peace in this mortal existence. Centered on his son, Jesus Christ, continued faith will lead us to salvation if we strive to heed His will. I have faith that Gail's van will hold up until repairs may be made. Note: the driver-side harness belt motor problem is getting steadily worse.

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Of Tears and Angels
Her eyes
were like jewels
glistening from
tears wrenched
softly
Surely a vision
stolen from
the heart

:Bobby Nichols
12-9-2004

~~~

~
In Illume

Grove's visitation
Three bathed in blessed pure light
His faith rekindled

:Bobby Nichols
12-8-2004
Time's End
Time draws wan
stretched unseen
only to end in
an endless
sigh

:Bobby Nichols
12-9-2004

~~~~~

"Of Tears and Angels "... The title was inspired from Friedrich Nietzsche's work (see opening quotation).
"In Illume " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a grove of trees... the shadows interrupted by a bright beam of light coming through to canopy's floor. Three bathed in blessed pure light... Joseph illuminated by Heavenly Father and His Son. Rekindle... "kindle anew, as of a fire"... I love the imagery!
"Time's End "... in an endless sigh.

Jakisiñkama !!!

2004-12-08T01:53:00.000-08:00

"Unless a man shall endure to the end, in following the example of the Son of the living God, he cannot be saved…. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end,…ye shall have eternal life".
--The Book of Mormon
(2 Nephi 31:16, 20)

More "Enduring to the End"

Weather: Friday/Saturday... o'cast & cool. Sabbath Sunday... crisp temperatures and sunny blue skies. Monday partly o'cast to completely o'cast... Tuesday's rain dampened the spirit a bit.

Looking forward to the solstice (December 21?)... I'm longing for days to gain more daylight time. Tired, runny nose... comimg dow'in wid a code?

BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake IN THE HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION has occurred at:
42.90N 145.20E Depth 36km Mon Dec 6 14:15:12 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

65 km (40 miles) E of Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan (pop 199,000)
250 km (155 miles) ESE of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
930 km (580 miles) NNE of TOKYO, Japan

Brother James' birthday the 4th... Happy 50th Birthday Jim!

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku Contest daily contests:

Starlight Dreams
Romantic souls shared
starlight dreams

Our fervour
shone luminous
a perfect fire

Concupiscence answered
we were lovers
replete

:Bobby Nichols
12-7-2004

~~~

~ Desolation

Barren the shade's path
Ancient megaliths cast down
Runes in ruin strewn

:Bobby Nichols
12-5-2004
Thief

Take blindly
with sting

Venal ennui
mendacious being

:Bobby Nichols
12-6-2004

~~~~~

Starlight Dreams "... a love poem.

"Desolation " a Haiku: ... Megaliths came to mind in viewing the black and white photo for inspiration... a clouded sky above a worn path surrounded by sparse weedy grass with large stony outcroppings heaped about. 'Runes' are what might have been on such ancient ruins of druidic bent.

"Thief " a Haiku: ... The 'tiles' were few (about 100 words and partial words/alphabet) and skewed toward thanksgiving of a sort. I sought more obscure verbiage perusing the dictionary (my dog chewed "Funk & Wagnalls") looking to combine 'tiles' or superimpose same: venal..... ennui..... mendacious. 'Mendacious' was formed by superimposing the tile-letter 'm' and the tile-word 'end' and the tile-letter 'a' (in that order) over the tile-word 'delicious'. Not entirely happy with the result, except in the fact that the poem sorta'/kinda' rhymes... and I stayed away from turkey day references. My poetic interpretation: Steal at thine own hazard... thy corruptible,bored, false one.

"... having a perfect brightness of hope..." ...

Hona sainara !!!

2004-12-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."

--Eric Hoffer.

More quotes from Eric Hoffer.

Weather: Monday... clear & cool in Cool... here too. Record cold expected in the a.m.
Tuesday mostly overcast and cool... Wednesday clear with cool breeze. Thursday clear and crisp... actually warm in the sunshine.
Granddaughter Ashley's fourth birthday the 30th of November.
Updated my freeware browser Opera (v7.54)... 16.25 MB download if you need Java... only a 3.5 MB if you do not. My IE6 still buggy on log-on and with Google 'AdSense' ads. Firefox very good at what it does... but I still need some of IE6 capabilities... need to research the Firefox add-ons. Here are some browsers and reviews from Download.Com... where Avant Browser 10.0 build 35 seems to be the most popular by far at this time, but Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 the highest rated among users.
Missed my sister Peg calling me on Thanksgiving... poop! Missed my Mom calling Tuesday the 30th in the afternoon... poop²! I've been in the upper pasture cutting firewood, mostly manzanita, when the calls came in. Been using muscle power: hatchet, small double blade axe, and limb saw. I'm getting some good exercise, but I'm thinking very seriously about getting a small chain saw.
Heard more from the yotikiis (coyotes) the last few days. Tuesday they were westward up the ways on the ridge of our little valley yammering and my in-law's dogs, malemutes and shiba inus, began to chime in. There's nothing mute about a malemute when the howling starts.
BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake IN THE EASTER ISLAND REGION has occurred at 26.86S 113.93W Depth 10km Sun Nov 28 02:35:10 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
445 km (280 miles) W of Hanga Roa, Easter Island

4200 km (2610 miles) W of SANTIAGO, Chile

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku Contest daily contests:

**
Breaker

Arms outstreatched... Glory!
My soul drenched in the sea spray
I feel so alive!

:Bobby Nichols
12-2-2004

PathY

In agony
I realise
your tears shed
are a cry
of yearning
for what
I am not

:Bobby Nichols
11-29-2004

**

~~
Tagger

Shadows in the midst
Cold limestone walls primed to limn
But lack of canvas

:Bobby Nichols
11-29-2004

"Breaker " a Haiku: ... Wonderful photo for inspiration of a female standing legs apart, arms raised wide, engulfed in a blast of spray from an ocean breaker one might get near the edge of a tidal pool when the waves are crashing nigh.
"PathY "... Why ('Y') this path taken? A crossroads, the letter 'y' signifying a fork in the path (road). The poem is evocative on a level I don't wish to tread.
"Tagger " a Haiku: ... A photo of what appeared to be a low ceiling dwelling in a limestone cave. I'm sure I've seen the word 'limn'... somewhere, but why would it pop into my mind? Subliminally... or keyed from the limestone appearance? And then summon up the act of "tagging" which I've never done nor condoned is beyond me. Perhaps I channelled a troglodyte from whence... dunno.

'Iorana !!!

2004-11-28T22:34:00.000-08:00

"The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity."

--Lord George Byron

What love Heavenly Father has for us: the plan of Salvation... only through the Atonement of His son, Jesus Christ... a necessity I pray all become aware of.
Lord George Byron from Oldpoetry.com... what a cool site !!!

A familiar poem by Lord George Byron: "She Walks in Beauty"...

Weather: Thursday light rain... not enough to keep me from cutting wood... heavy fog at night. Friday mostly o'cast, Saturday clearing from rain to allow a full moon's grandeur. Sunday clear and brisk day, slight breezed night with moon still predominant... Orion leaning about 45° - tilting at beasts to the south.
Just for fun: A poem I remember reading in "Through the Looking-Glass", by Lewis Carroll titled "Jabberwocky" which I happened to stumble upon again while Googling one day. Makes as much sense as any of my poems.
Something is playing with my internet proxy settings... spyware no doubt... but I haven't isolated the beasty. It causes my IE6 browser to give errors (see Linux Forum: Linux Security : The dreaded 127.0.01 and not load pages. Since I don't use a proxy server I need to go into my internet tools and ('Connection' tab) recheck the settings. Somehow [ HTTP: localhost at port 8080 ] gets configured which I then have to delete every time I log on... go figger? Firefox browser is unaffected... coincidence? AdAware picked up two low level bugs, Alexa and some other data miner and I downloaded the updates for "SpywareBlaster" and created a new system snapshot to try to keep the protection 'fresh'. Still no luck. Going ta Google further...
Gonna try GMail File System as a file storage utility that I learned of on DSS satellite TV's "The Screen Savers". It maps itself as a Gmail drive in Windows. I wonder if I can store poetry files that can be linked to from my BLOG like an FTP site. Worst case is I'll have an extra backup of files. There's supposed to be a limit of 5MB or 10MB per file which for me is no big deal. More GMail add-on utilities.
BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake IN PAPUA, INDONESIA has occurred at: 3.63S 135.48E Depth 35km Fri Nov 26 02:25:06 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
95 km (60 miles) W of Enarotali, Papua, Indonesia (pop N/A)
275 km (170 miles) NNE of Dobo, Aru Islands, Indonesia
Hokkaido, Japan hammered again...
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake IN THE HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION has occurred at:
43.00N 145.09E Depth 44km Sun Nov 28 18:32:14 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
55 km (35 miles) E of Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan (pop 199,000)
235 km (145 miles) ESE of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
930 km (580 miles) NNE of TOKYO, Japan
Saturday evening: "Lord of the Rings 'Return of the King'" on Starz!!! (Satellite TV movie) Last of the Tolkien trilogy on TV. Time to shake the dust off my Tolkien library and re¹⁰⁰-read to get the detailed account refreshed in my mind's eye.
Sunday the 28th... wonderful Sabbath Day. Borrowed Gail's van to get to and from church. Lessons included the Millennium (as it pertains to the Resurrection), tithing, and the Sacrament. My readings in James E. Talmage's "Jesus the Christ" has me through: the 'Last Supper'; a new commandment: "Love one another"; the promise of the "Holy Ghost"; Jesus with the apostles Peter, James, and John in the 'Garden (orchard) of Gethsemane'; and Judas' betrayal... all in quick order. Such a great love Jesus has for us all to do the will of His Father.
Celebrated granddaughter Ashley's fourth birthday early with her large extended family at my daughter Chrissy's home. Cake and ice-cream and lots of presents for little Ashley. Gail had picked out a couple of beautiful porcelain dolls to present. Mom... I'll e-mail some pix asap.
I've been approved for the 'Google AdSense' program. I'll give it a go and see just how unobtrusive it appears and if any good will come of it.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

**
Creition

Poets are

quietly lachrymose

Words well

relentlessly

through fingers'

poignant path...

languishing only

as soft whispers

escaping

:Bobby Nichols

11-27-2004

Awake Ye Heavens!

Awake ye Heavens!

Long last will

He reign

His very love

ever beyond time

:Bobby Nichols

11-25-2004

Antecedent

Ylem spumes and spews

Space and time null convergent

Dark matter phased, skews

:Bobby Nichols

11-24-2004
SunFlower

Yellow sunflower

Eatable, spittable seeds

Such a funflower!

:Bobby Nichols

11-26-2004

**

~~ T³

A living star rests

Salmon amongst the pebbles

Tidal treasure trove

:Bobby Nichols

11-28-2004

"Creition "... I neglected to make the word "fingers" possessive, ie: fingers', in the entry which wrecks havoc with the continuity of the poem... a solecism I regret. 'Creition' a nonce word formed from creation and the suffix '-ition' which Funk & Wagnalls' defines as 1. Condition or quality 2. Act or process, or the result of an act or process.
"Awake Ye Heavens! "... another hearkening.
"Antecedent" " a Haiku: "... 'Null' or light-like... 'Ylem'. The photo for inspiration showed two flumes of white water merging together in a rocky environ... I chose a more cosmological bent. More on 'Ylem' ( eye-lem ): An interesting art link at ylem.org... and still another word on the subject...... and still some more links to sate the soul.
"SunFlower" " a Haiku: "... just for fun!
"T³" " a Haiku: "... A wonderful salmon colored starfish pictured in the photo for inspiration with five webbed arms, (like the second picture shown in the encyclopedia link... but much more vibrantly colored and fleshy appearing), rests amongst pebbles in a tidal pool.

Jang kébedait malék !!!

2004-11-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

"By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy."

--George Bancroft.

More from George Bancroft:

"Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul."

"The public is wiser than the wisest critic."

"In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person."

"Avarice is the vice of declining years."

"Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape."

Weather: Wednesday the 17th/Thursday cool days. A bit of a light breeze late Thursday while I was cutting some wood. A doe deer took pause while I was contemplating the approach of sunset... A woodpecker in a nearby oak looking for bugs. A half moon graced the evening skies early - obscured on occasion by wood-smoke from wood-burning stoves wafting and light fog from the various and sundry ponds drifting through. Friday mostly o'cast with fog... cold. Gail's car overheating for some odd reason, but, we made our appointed rounds with only two agonizing stoppages to add water and cool the engine down. Sunday blustery Sunday... clear and cool Monday/Tuesday... Tuesday starting out with frost on the leaf ladened ground. Wednesday the 24th has blue skies with but a slight chill as I cut more wood.

Wednesday the 17th... Newcomer's class lesson from the "True to the Faith" book was on education. Our teacher for the evening a young man just out of high school preparing for his mission. He did very well in his preparation and presentation, and we had a good round of discussions on the benefits of continued education in all facets of life. My meeting with the new Bishop afterwards... quite enlightening. I'm preparing for further growth within the Church... much to cogitate upon. Our meeting ran a bit late and I was surprised with Gail and her father arriving at church looking for me as we were leaving.

Bishop thought to enlighten me by having me research the term "common consent" and how it pertains to the organization of the Church. I found and printed a number of references I became interested in... mostly from LDS.org. Here's a few:

"Q - What principles govern the organization of the Church?"
"Common Consent"

Mom and Robin called Thursday night to wish me a happy birthday... I decided I'd cook my own B'Day dinner, Gail had left for a while, and so drove to the store in Georgetown, CA, for victuals. Anywho... I made some broiled Cajun chicken, noodles Alfredo, spinach, and Rocky Road II ice cream. Gail later arrived after an aborted trip due to fog to a cousin's funeral. Gail's stomach was upset so she didn't want to share of my feast... but she had a bit of ice cream later.

November 19th, 1975 - Gail and I married for the first time in Lake Tahoe... KFC for lunch for me and McDonald's for Gail about the time of her chiropractic appointment. A bit more chicken, and ice cream, for me for dinner.

BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)

Wednesday, November 17, 2004
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake IN THE FIJI REGION (South Pacific) has occurred at:
19.96S 178.80W Depth 620km Wed Nov 17 21:09:13 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
75 km (50 miles) N of Ndoi Island, Fiji (pop N/A)
355 km (220 miles) SE of SUVA, Viti Levu, Fiji
395 km (245 miles) WNW of NUKU'ALOFA, Tonga

A magnitude 7.3 earthquake OFF THE W. COAST OF S. ISLAND, N.Z. has occurred at:
46.57S 164.83E Depth 10km Mon Nov 22 20:26:25 2004 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:
270 km (170 miles) W of Invercargill, New Zealand
345 km (215 miles) WSW of Queenstown, New Zealand
More ...... also see "Shake Me!" on the side bar.

Grisoft's AVG 7.0 Free version (anti-virus) has been released!!! I downloaded the 9+MB .exe file as well as the two pdf files for reference. I've used the free version of AVG 6.0 for quite a while and found it invaluable... and quite intuitive to use and update.

ieSpell 2.1.0 (freeware for IE5 & IE6) released. I downloaded this updated version, 2.5 MB, since I constantly used the previous version in spell checking my BLOG... though it doesn't look like it some times.

AND downloaded Earthlink's free spamBlocker plugin for Outlook and Outlook express to clean up my junk e-mail through Earthlink (I have never received spam-mail in my Gmail account!!!)

Fig leaves on our two fig trees are dropping in droves from the cooling weather... soon to be bare.

Bear tracks, according to my wife Gail and grandson David, found in the wet ground on our driveway. Gail also said a bobcat (or mountain lion?) making noises in the lower pasture.

NBA Basketbrawl... very ugly... another "black eye" for sports.

A gaggle of coyotes (or yotikiis [yo-tê-kys] as I sometimes call them) made themselves known with a murder of yips and a herd of yowlings. Gail's female basset, Poop, had been tied up outside while Gail was raking and burning leaves, I was in the upper pasture cutting firewood, Poop evidently exuding a pheromone that seems to be attracting the male members of the gaggle. Doggy quickly brought indoors.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

**

The End of Darkness

Rising angel

messenger bright

signals

darkness passing

His arrival within

white loving light

:Bobby Nichols

11-24-2004

Advent

Trumpets eastward blare

Aurora dance in the night

Behold the Lion !

:Bobby Nichols
11-23-2004

**

"The End of Darkness "... may it be soon.

"Advent " a Haiku: "... the trumpet of the Angel Moroni. Poetic license taken... not all temple trumpets face the east. At least one faces west, Nauvoo, and possibly Taipei and Seattle.

As is the norm, stress from within and without plague Gail's and my lives. "Things" coming to their inevitable head. I pray that "things" get better and this isn't...

'au sa liu mada'....

2004-11-17T02:16:00.000-08:00

"Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain."

--Martin Mull.

More mull:

"'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens." - Miguel de Cervantes

"Worry is a useless mulling over of things we cannot change." - Peace Pilgrim

Weather: Sunday... blue skies above... perfectly cool brisk weather for short walk (20 minutes) to and from ride to church. Monday/Tuesday cool days.
I participated, my first time, in preparing the sacrament for the Sabbath. I was one of three to bless the bread and water, though I did not say either of the two prayers. This gave me a deeper testimony on the importance of the sacrament... a confirmation and renewal of covenants made to God and His Son. Later, at home, I re-re-read my manuals and the Doctrine&Covenants pertaining to the sacrament to further enlightenment. Social anxiety not too bad on my part... more a reverent solemnity.
A tweak or two to my BLOG template made... most unobtrusive.
Called Mom Sunday night, just before 9 p.m. her time. Everything's o.k. up north. Hey Mom... no pictures yet!
E-mail from my brother Robin re: a bowling tourney (ABT)... he came in 2nd on 11/13/2004 in his division... cool! I'm assuming he participated in the open division (scratch) as he's no bowling piker (can you say 200+++ average). My tourney days are long gone, I fear. I had so much enjoyment in the competition of leagues and tournaments, scratch and handicap, that it's painful to have left that part of my life hanging due to money and health. Perhaps the future bodes better.
BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)

* A magnitude 7.0 earthquake NEAR THE WEST COAST OF COLOMBIA has occurred at:
4.61N 77.54W Depth 10km Mon Nov 15 09:06:55 2004 UTC
* Location with respect to nearby cities:
95 km (60 miles) NNW of Buenaventura, Colombia (pop 235,000)
155 km (95 miles) SW of Quibdo, Colombia (pop 74,000)
160 km (100 miles) WNW of Tulua, Colombia (pop 161,000)
385 km (240 miles) W of BOGOTA, Colombia
More ...
Firefox 1.0 (browser) has been released!!! So far only a minor hic-up here and there. Over-all I'll keep it as my default browser for now for further testing. My Opera browser seems to act up more than does Firefox... and IE6 will always be there when I need it.
Monday and Tuesday: Cutting/sawing firewood and re-routing phone lines for Gail's and my computer dial-up. For Gail's phone line this entailed crawling under the mobile home and squirming about in the still moist dirt and debris... yuck. Both lines finally finished... the firewood will (always) be an ongoing project.
I performed a thorough scan on my Win98SE box that took over 8-hours to finish, and updated both Gail's and my computer for anti-virus definitions (AVG) and adware/spyware definitions (SPYWAREBLASTER... SPYBOT SEARCH AND DESTROY... ADAWARE), all freeware/donationware.
Checked out Craig's list for our general area for cars and trucks, and other stuff. Not really in the market yet... just wanted to see what's up and available. Maybe try this route to rid myself of a bunch of stuff.
Wednesday: Going to the DMV for picture and eye test to renew my driver's license... whoopee. However, it reminds me of a funny I read, probably in Reader's Digest, many years ago, about, I believe, Sammy Davis, Jr. I think it was Sammy because he had one glass eye and would have suited his humor to a "T"... but I could be wrong. Anyway... he went to take his eye test at DMV and was told to cover one eye with his hand and then read off the letters on the chart out loud. Being his good eye this caused no problem. When he was asked to read the chart with his other eye instead of trying to read the chart with his glass eye he merely took his other hand and covered the same eye again, his glass eye, and re-read the chart. By changing which hand he covered his glass eye with he gave the impression that he had changed which eye he was reading the chart with. For those not faint, or feint, of heart here's another funny I remember about a man with a glass eye and his proctologist... It's funny what one's memory and the right key words typed into Google can find for you! And yes, going to the DMV is a pain in the gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus!!!
Happy Birthday Melanie !!!... wherever you are.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

BumbleBee

Flower to flower

The deeds of the bumblebee

Fascinate one's soul

:Bobby Nichols
11-17-2004

"BumbleBee " a Haiku: "... I love bumblebees. I could watch them for hours. I graced a poem some time ago titled "A Sunday Spring Walk... in Garden Valley", entered in a BLOG session on May 2, 2004, with a short observation of a whimsical bumblebee trying to take sustenance from a clover flower. The picture for inspiration today shows a bumblebee lit on some purple lupin flowers with a backdrop of leafy green.

Matcaci !!!...

2004-11-13T05:11:00.000-08:00

"What is the highest secret to victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny."

--William R. Alger.

More from William R. Alger:

"Public opinion is a second conscience."

"The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire."

"The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little."

"Words of love, are works of love."

"Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond fields of the mind."

"We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain."

"Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason."
... and more.

Weather: Saturday clear and cool: 'shirt sleeve' weather. Managed a short walk before noon on the way to my ride to the Temple. Monday was overcast... in the low 60°'s Fahrenheit... my late 30 minute walk refreshed by "Seattle Sunshine". A short 30-minute walk on Tuesday in the dark aided with a lantern for cars to see... Wednesday a walk in "Seattle Sunshine" of about 3-miles. Thursday... rain. Friday gave blue skies... an hour walk ~3-miles.

Went to the Oakland Temple, my third such visit since being baptized in March, and had a wonderful experience. The Oakland hills were clear and sunny... the Temple bathed in light. San Francisco's skyline just barely visible midst the fog. We were early for the appointed session so I was able to do two sessions of the ordinances I'm allowed at my stage of progression as a member of the Aaronic priesthood of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I've just finished a Temple readiness class on Sunday in preparation of further progression. The peace and spirit felt inside the Temple is incredible, tangible. Being able to do the ordinances vicariously, in this case, is humbling and an honor... doing God's will. Though I can't wait until our new Sacramento Temple is completed, 2006 ?, I have always admired the beacon of light that is the Oakland Temple (opened in 1964) where I lived, relatively near, in the San Francisco Bay Area (ten different cities: '62-'67 & '69-'86 & '89-'90).

Called Mom Saturday night, 9 p.m. her time, and had a nice long chat. She has the opportunity to go back home, England, in March of next year... leaving March 9th.

E-mail from my brother Robin says my cousin, Steve, is home on leave from Iraq. Concurrently the news has been broadcasting that there is a major offensive ongoing in Fallujah, Iraq. I pray for the Iraqi peoples' and the coalition forces's safety.

BIG QUAKES: (From my e-mail alert notification through the bigquake mailing list.)

A magnitude 7.3 Richter earthquake IN KEPULAUAN ALOR, INDONESIA has occurred at:
8.14S 124.79E Depth 38km Thu Nov 11 21:26:44 2004 UTC
Time: Pacific Standard Time (PST) Thu Nov 11 13:26:44 2004
Location with respect to nearby cities:
100 km (60 miles) WNW of DILI, East Timor (pop 130,000)
260 km (160 miles) NNE of Kupang, Timor, Indonesia
355 km (220 miles) ENE of Ende, Flores, Indonesia

AND

... 6.9 Richter quake in the South Pacific:
2004/11/09 23:58 M 6.9 SOLOMON ISLANDS Z= 10km 11.11S 163.68E Date: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 4:46 PM Depth 10km Tue Nov 9 23:58:23 2004 UTC
Time: Pacific Standard Time (PST) Tue Nov 9 15:58:23 2004
Location with respect to nearby cities:
205 km (125 miles) ESE of Kira Kira, San Cristobal, Solomon Isl.
240 km (150 miles) W of Lata, Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon Isl.
445 km (280 miles) ESE of HONIARA, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
For maps, additional information, and subsequent updates.

Firefox 1.0 (browser) has been released!!! I've downloaded it and will check it out against Opera (free version) and IE6 to see how it shakes out. I'll also add it to my thumbdrive since it's such a small file (4.802MB total download). This will add to my small Linux library recently enhanced with Knoppix (OS on a disk) that I purchased for just over $5.00 USD. I was convinced in getting Knoppix by watching a fellow church member resurrect files from a crashed Windows XP OS from an another church member's laptop. I also have The GIMP for Windows, a Linux ap, for mangling graphics that I rarely use and an old 32-bit debian GNU Linux OS that I have yet to install on an older computer. Guess it's time to learn Linux command line code.

Recent headlines: The passing of Arafat... guilty verdict in the Scott Peterson murder trial. Scott's sentencing is next. To know that a final judgment awaits that will last through eternity is enough for me.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

Salvation

Salvation...
Enter His
eternal love

The completion
of resurrected
beings immortal

:Bobby Nichols
11-12-2004

Centinel

Negatively bent
An hundred leggy plumed beast
Marches distant sway

:Bobby Nichols
11-13-2004

Capering Psychoses

The very workings
of a porous ego
altered
unleash
flagrant raw desire
Psychoses capering
essence-peeled

:Bobby Nichols
11-13-2004

Love's Lament

Distress rises

Crystal dreams glisten
bleeding ruby red

Desire slain

Our glass soul's
untamed crescendo
love's lament

:Bobby Nichols
11-10-2004

Temporal

Romantics muse bent
Entwined souls inspired
Enduring life's
alluring charm rent
Love's embrace desired

:Bobby Nichols
11-10-2004

~~

"Salvation "... unfortunately the ether gobbled up this piece - it was right at the deadline for entry and just disappeared.

"Centinel " a Haiku: "... Centinel... a sentinel. I used the more obscure form due to the hundred-legginous of the beast. The photo for inspiration was actually a black and white ("Negatively bent") of many like trees crowded upon the shore of a lake, possibly, that appeared to be one of head and body with the trunks looking like legs. Perhaps it's the lack of coffee/tea since my baptism that gives rise to fancy in the wee hours of the morn.

"Capering Psychoses "... I'd be amazed if this made sense to anyone(let alone myself)... too few 'tiles' and the selection most bent, as was I.

"Love's Lament "... not a warm fuzzy love poem.

"Temporal "... enduring worldliness. The poem's saving grace is that it sorta' rhymes.

Fiimaan illaah !!!...

2004-11-06T01:55:00.000-08:00

"Stride forward with a firm, steady step knowing with a deep, certain inner knowing that you will reach every goal you set yourselves, that you will achieve every aim."

--Eileen Caddy.

More 'stride':
"Order marches with weighty and measured strides. Disorder is always in a hurry." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"Progress is the stride of God." - Victor Hugo
"He who tip-toes cannot stand; he who strides cannot walk." - Lao-Tzu
"A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride." - Max Lerner
"It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides." - George Sand
"I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Weather: A low pressure system had been spiraling in the mid California state area: Thursday rain showers early... the day ending with mostly sunny skies. Mostly sunny on Friday with the weather staying clear for the weekend for what appears to be perfect weather for the Temple trip on Saturday as well as the Sabbath. Sweet !!! I managed a 3-mile walk before dark on Thursday and a short walk just shy of a mile on Friday. Sundown now arrives just after 5 p.m. PDT.
Wednesday's "True to the Faith" class on Debt and Divorce... both of which I'm a failed expert on. It's a shame I learn these principles in my late double-prime years (I'm soon to be 17 X 3). It's a blessing that the LDS youth have such great information available to them from all aspects of Gospel life.
Thursday early a.m. Gail may have had an allergic reaction to some "Nexium" prescribed for acid reflux. It's possible she's one of the rare cases the warning on the directions advises to watch for. Much interpersonal stress thereafter, possibly due to her disorientation and fear. Thursday afternoon we spent some time unraveling feelings by discussing "where I'm coming from" and "where she's coming from"... assuaging any misconceptions and re-affirming our pair bond.
I imparted a few words of wisdom Thursday evening to Gail while she was trying to rip seams with a scissors from a new drape she's sewing (the old sew and sew!): "You don't pound a nail with a cucumber". Her seam ripper had been made useless, somehow. I'm thinking duct tape over my mouth for a while might not be a bad idea.
Typed up a new resume for daughter Chrissy and printed an ap for unemployment insurance off the EDD internet site... form de110i.pdf, as well as printing up a job flyer that I had created, with a cool mountainscape as a backdrop, over a year ago. I be a typing, Googling, printing fool this day. Chrissy's husband, Richard may be off work 6-8 weeks following pin emplacement(s) in his shoulder.
Way too early on a Friday a.m.... my BLOG is unavailable to post to for some reason. I've been banging my head against the ether for over half an hour getting nowhere. Reminds me of a quote: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" - Benjamin Franklin. As Old Ben might have said: Bon Nuit!!!
I purchased two pairs of slacks at a Big and Tall men's clothing store that Gail found in Folsom. I purchased the one for the Temple trip and the second was half price on a promotion... both for just over $32.00 USD total. Recently I picked up 2-packages of T-shirts on sale at Sears, and I've been lucky in finding some Levi's blue jeans at second hand shops... two pair recently for $4 - $5 USD each... but finding the slacks for a 160 kg person like myself had been difficult. My clothing needs are pretty much taken care of now... and that pretty much takes care of my clothing budget for a while too.
Elders Allen and Eldridge came by Friday evening with a video called "The Restoration" on the restoration of God's church... the story of Joseph Smith's search for religious truth. Gail and I found the video very moving.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

Chromatically Radical

The poem-body, I,

scrawls verses of color

punctuated by spiders

casting silky spells

of words strewn black

:Bobby Nichols
11-6-2004

Pachyderm

Wry elephant eyes

Whence enchanting dermalscape

Perchance a mud bath

:Bobby Nichols
11-5-2004
Mosquito

With eggs in despair

time is a mosquito's fury

Dispatched it wings

Its feast a desperation

bent on bloodletting

:Bobby Nichols
11-4-2004

Tryde and True

Friendship

time-driven through

thin and thick

Desire

the tempest

proud and hot

Love

silent flows

silky and soft

:Bobby Nichols
11-4-2004

"Chromatically Radical "... a whimsy.
"Pachyderm " a Haiku: "... Photo of an elephants eye and eye lashes surrounded by an expanse of grayish-brown intriguingly textured skin.
" Mosquito "... My second Mosquito poem (see also "The Hunter" on the sidebar), the first from the contest. The 'tiles' were very few to choose from, about 100 total, that I'm sure will lead to little differentiation amongst the poems entered in the contest.
"Tryde and True "... Quick and balanced. 'Tryde' a variant of 'tride'. This was one odd selection of 'tiles'. The assortment was sullied with 9-repetitions of the word 'Blood' and 1-'Blood's' and 1='bleeding', along with various perturbations... (sic)... relating to such. This didn't leave me with much to work with in the balance... so although somewhat awkward, I'm happy with the result.

�n�godziih doleel !!!...

2004-11-03T23:03:00.000-08:00

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

--John Quincy Adams

"A, O, way to go Ohio" !!!

--lyrics to "My City Was Gone"
by "The Pretenders".

The lyrics provide an interesting commentary on the election just over and seem to be echoed throughout the net. Though the song by "The Pretenders" was more a commentary about 'not being able to go back home again', I find it most appropriate in view of the events of 9/11, our nation can never go back to that secure feeling of home... again.

Weather: Blue sky Tuesday... temperatures perfectly cool. Wednesday rain showers.
PRESIDENTIAL RACE: VOTED !!! Gail and I , however, managed to cancel each other out in our selection for President. To each their own.

Wednesday proved to be a day of reason... and President Bush is well on the way to re-election... barring gaffs by the Electoral College.
Preceded by a 4.0 and 4.9 Richter quake: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake IN THE VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA REGION has occurred at:49.26N 128.87W Depth 10km Tue Nov 2 10:02:13 2004 UTC. There have been many aftershocks in the 4.0 to 5.0 Richter range. The Honshu region of Japan continues to be active.
More info on all quakes
Received two fraudulent e-mails enticing me to give them billing info purporting to be from Earthlink. Immediately reported to Earthlink's fraud unit. Them scammers be tricksee out there trying to get your ID and monies... they be.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

**

HyperStasis

Ether clouds aglow

Projected astral matrix

Nebular mist sowed

:Bobby Nichols

11-3-2004

Illapse

Phantoms laugh

coursing transient thoughts

pondering inhabited

unbidden covert desires

An instrument

so caught unshielded

wakes possessed

knowing darkness mires

:Bobby Nichols

11-3-2004

**

~~

Victory

Staid... the course of right

O, Ohio, beacon bright

Graced this land with sight

:Bobby Nichols

11-3-2004

"HyperStasis " a Haiku: "... Hypostasis is defined within the link as a metaphysical "essential nature or underlying reality". Hyperstasis is not a word defined so easily... it's not in the dictionary nor encyclopedia. So where do I find these titles ? The poem always comes first. Then the agonizing of coming up with a title to fit the mood of the poetry. Sometimes I think I'm making up a word only to find it already in use, though obscurely, on the web. This title is one example. After Googling I found my preferred definition from a poem Beyond Tachyon - by Thomas (Torg) Hadley by which states: "there is no stasis but hyperstasis which is a frequency of flow so intense it is appearing to be still, a consistent inconsistency". Cool !
" Illapse "... Shown above is an edit of what I actually entered. The fourth line was entered without the word 'unbidden', the 6th line entered without the word 'unshielded', and the last line was entered simply as "knowing darkness". The poem seems better rendered this way, but not within the rules of the contest. The title "Illapse" easily understood (yeah right !!!). Finding the word for the title was, however, most serendipidous... I stumbled upon it searching antonyms & synonyms & definitions, and then diverging from there: 'phantom'...'spectre'... 'illbient'... 'illation'... Illapse !!!
"Victory " a Haiku: "... An homage and commentary to the people of Ohio who voted righteously, in my view (MY BLOG). I originally titled the poem "Vanquished... The Pretenders" then dropped "The Pretenders" leaving only "Vanquished..." but felt that both titles would be too mean spirited. I used a variation of G.W. Bush's "stay the course" theme, the word 'staid' defined here, if it's not too obvious, in the first line.

Hasty bananas... 'til sundae: with nuts and whipped cream on top of three different ice creams: pralines and cream, double dutch fudge, and strawberry; with chocolate sauce and caramel slopped in all over... and a big maraschino cherry or two on top !!!

Bobby's Blog... " Process Poetic "

" There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. "

--HomerIn an alternate reality:HEADLINE NEWS - November 4, 2008

MCCAIN WINS !!!

I urge a YES vote on Proposition 8.

Memories...Sweetlyit beckons medesire tohear the roarof surf on shorememoriesof the sea7-24-2008

Realms of RhymeRealms of rhymea poet's mindretreats toenvisionwhat wondroushavenin pursuitof worlds untoldto muse 7-14-2008

" The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. "

-- George Bernard Shaw

Listen Give pause to thine humble prayers Turn thy mind's thoughts to God's love ... and listen 11-1-2005

" A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. "

" If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags ? "

" Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing. "

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become."

--W. H. Auden

"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."

"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."--Henry Ward Beecher

Khudaa haafiz !!!

"Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!"

" Crux ( αωε ) "... 'Crux' defined; and from the Greek alphabet... I am in awe.

" A Daydream "... I started in another direction (waves of green grass swaying in the wind melodically) based on the 'tiles' I had first uncovered, then reconsidered when I found the "ocean" 'tile' and diverged from there... as is my wont.

" Awaken " ... Another pious piece profferred.

" Vanity " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a rose-colored full Moon above a craggy canyon rim in an azure sky, probably at dawn, with a few craggy trees about... one in the appearance of reaching out at the Moon.

" The Watchers " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of two cheetahs on guard over a kill while a third partook of the feast. " Fair Beauty " ... a piece of fluff.[Hand high, flat, palm down, fingers wagged all together] !!!

"When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare."

--James Thurber

~~~LamentationMourning seasons lostLeaf forborne an hoary oakLaments the acorn:Bobby Nichols6-29-2005~~~

" Lamentation " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was a repeat offering of a blackened-bark oak tree bereft of leaves amidst a spring glory of renewal for all else. Perhaps a bit better than my last attempt? Goom bye !!!

"Is it only a dream that there'll be... No more turning away?"

"Eternal life does not begin with death; it begins with faith."

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

Life Light sustained life blossoms The fruits of love His creation everywhere found To the end endure :Bobby Nichols 5-11-2005 ~~~~~~~Niagara Hazarding torrents Jaunting to cataract's edge Awe in foment boils :Bobby Nichols 5-11-2005

"Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators."

"Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing."

"To refrain from imitation is the best revenge."

"Imitation lacks but "L" from Limitation."

"Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

The TrappersA long time in the river mouthsthe rock remainedIts bold facebut throwing water spraybeating in passingeyes of fire:Bobby Nichols4-19-2005

"Chess is mental torture."

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth."

Kyoto Discord Fend not for the earth Until the politicians Are thus endangered ? :Bobby Nichols 2-17-200

"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."--Angela Y. Davis

untitled Sea... Calm serenity Rising, falling, soothing I long for thy closeness ... ocean :Bobby Nichols circa October 2004

email test #6 to my BLOG

"People seldom improve when they have no other model, but themselves to copy after." --Oliver Goldsmith

"I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence - this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake." -- Lord George Byron

Love Betimes Flees Endless sighs ne'er relent through silent tears Love betimes flees Hearts linger O'er ceaseless yearnings Love betimes flees :Bobby Nichols 12-26-2004 ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~Temptation Uncounted are the poisoned paths proffered of singular desire bade beneath :Bobby Nichols 12-27-2004

Merry Christmas

"Today in bloom, tomorrow as afallen petals, like a delicate flower, life is." --Takijiro Ohnishi

"In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost." --Anne Sophie Swetchine

ArtAlive! Strange impromptu swellings of the canvas only the artist illuminating colors :Bobby Nichols 12-14-2004 ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ... Beyond Time Time ends as never happened nor nothing was Ever the end But Heaven will still be ... beyond time :Bobby Nichols 12-14-2004

"Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformable to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew." --Marcus Aurelius

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."--Saul Bellow

~~~~~~~ I, Arboreal I, Arboreal Spatial pervasion total Null geodesic :Bobby Nichols 12-10-2004 X Alt @ Ion Souls ensured dearly days of perfect rapture be Pressed on ye not stiff-necked but eagerly :Bobby Nichols 12-11-2004 ~~~~~~~

"And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the over-graciousness of thy smiling." --Friedrich Nietzsche

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are." --Eric Hoffer.

"The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity." --Lord George Byron

"By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy." --George Bancroft.

~~~~~~~~~~ The End of Darkness Rising angel messenger bright signals darkness passing His arrival within white loving light :Bobby Nichols 11-24-2004 Advent Trumpets eastward blare Aurora dance in the night Behold the Lion ! :Bobby Nichols 11-23-2004 ~~~~~~~~~~

"Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain." --Martin Mull.

BumbleBee Flower to flower The deeds of the bumblebee Fascinate one's soul :Bobby Nichols 11-17-2004

"What is the highest secret to victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny." --William R. Alger.

"Stride forward with a firm, steady step knowing with a deep, certain inner knowing that you will reach every goal you set yourselves, that you will achieve every aim." --Eileen Caddy.

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." --John Quincy Adams "A, O, way to go Ohio" !!! --lyrics to "My City Was Gone" by "The Pretenders".

--Homer

In an alternate reality:

HEADLINE NEWS - November 4, 2008

Memories...

Sweetly
it beckons me
desire to
hear the roar
of surf on shore
memories
of the sea

7-24-2008

Realms of Rhyme

Realms of rhyme
a poet's mind
retreats to
envision
what wondrous
haven
in pursuit
of worlds untold
to muse

7-14-2008

Listen

Give pause
to thine
humble prayers
Turn thy
mind's thoughts
to God's love
... and listen

11-1-2005

"All words are pegs to hang ideas on."
--Henry Ward Beecher

" The Watchers " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of two cheetahs on guard over a kill while a third partook of the feast.
" Fair Beauty " ... a piece of fluff.
***[Hand high, flat, palm down, fingers wagged all together]* *!!!***

~
Lamentation

Mourning seasons lost

Leaf forborne an hoary oak

Laments the acorn

:Bobby Nichols
6-29-2005
~

" Lamentation " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was a repeat offering of a blackened-bark oak tree bereft of leaves amidst a spring glory of renewal for all else. Perhaps a bit better than my last attempt?
Goom bye !!!

Life

Light sustained life
blossoms

The fruits of love
His creation
everywhere found

To the end endure

:Bobby Nichols
5-11-2005

~~~~~~~

Niagara

Hazarding torrents

Jaunting to cataract's edge

Awe in foment boils

:Bobby Nichols
5-11-2005

The Trappers
A long time in the river mouths
the rock remained
Its bold face
but throwing water spray
beating in passing
eyes of fire

:Bobby Nichols
4-19-2005

Kyoto Discord

Fend not for the earth

Until the politicians

Are thus endangered ?

:Bobby Nichols

2-17-200

"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
--Angela Y. Davis

untitled

Sea...

Calm serenity

Rising, falling, soothing

I long for thy closeness

... ocean

:Bobby Nichols
circa October 2004

"People seldom improve when they have no other model, but themselves to copy after."
--Oliver Goldsmith

"I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence - this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."
-- Lord George Byron

"Today in bloom, tomorrow as afallen petals, like a delicate flower, life is."

--Takijiro Ohnishi

"In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost."

--Anne Sophie Swetchine

ArtAlive!

Strange impromptu
swellings of the
canvas
only
the artist
illuminating
colors

:Bobby Nichols
12-14-2004

~

~

... Beyond Time

Time ends
as never
happened
nor nothing was

Ever the end

But Heaven
will still be
... beyond time

:Bobby Nichols
12-14-2004

"Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are. Pass then through this little space of time conformable to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew."

--Marcus Aurelius

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."
--Saul Bellow

~ I, Arboreal

I, Arboreal
Spatial pervasion total
Null geodesic

:Bobby Nichols
12-10-2004
X Alt @ Ion

Souls ensured dearly
days of perfect
rapture be

Pressed on ye
not stiff-necked
but eagerly

:Bobby Nichols
12-11-2004

~

"And verily, O my soul! Who could see thy smiling and not melt into tears? The angels themselves melt into tears through the
over-graciousness of thy smiling."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are."

--Eric Hoffer.

"The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity."

--Lord George Byron

"By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy."

--George Bancroft.

**

The End of Darkness

Rising angel

messenger bright

signals

darkness passing

His arrival within

white loving light

:Bobby Nichols

11-24-2004

Advent

Trumpets eastward blare

Aurora dance in the night

Behold the Lion !

:Bobby Nichols
11-23-2004

**

"Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain."

--Martin Mull.

BumbleBee

Flower to flower

The deeds of the bumblebee

Fascinate one's soul

:Bobby Nichols
11-17-2004

"What is the highest secret to victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny."

--William R. Alger.

"Stride forward with a firm, steady step knowing with a deep, certain inner knowing that you will reach every goal you set yourselves, that you will achieve every aim."

--Eileen Caddy.

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

--John Quincy Adams

"A, O, way to go Ohio" !!!

--lyrics to "My City Was Gone"
by "The Pretenders".