Train and trivia

I should be in bed but here I am at this late hour copying my computer files and getting ready to return to Montana. I am glad I can sleep on the train tomorrow (today!) as I'll only get a few hours sleep before I have to get up to catch the train.

A busy day packing and preparing to leave. I also made four batches for pumpkin muffins for my mother and brother to eat after I leave.

Everything is packed and ready to go. I had planned on checking my luggage tonight after the eastbound train left Minot but I didn't get packed in time before the train depot closed for the night. The forecast is for snow tonight which will make tomorrow messy.

Monday night was trivia. Our team was Rod, Austin, Bonnie, Gene, and I. Our team (Bahama Mama) did great. We won the first trivia contest and beat the lawyers. Our team tied with the lawyers with 18 correct answers. We would have had 19 correct but I had insisted the answer to "Which overweight actor starred in the 1915 movie, "Pool Sharks"?" was Fatty Arbuckle Some of our team said W.C. Fields but I thought 1915 was before his time. The correct answer was W.C. Fields. Argh! Several weeks ago I was convinced Fatty Arbuckle was the correct answer and it was W.C. Fields. My team has now banned the mention of "Fatty Arbuckle".

Since we had tied the lawyers, we had to answer a tie breaker question. "How many times has the Morton Salt girl changed?" Bonnie thought 5 or 6 times and no one else had a clue. She guessed 4 times. The lawyers guessed 2 times. The correct answer was 6 times and we won as we were the closest. We won a $20 gift certificate to be used next week.

The same team can not win more than once a night so it didn't matter in the second game. Still we wanted bragging rights. We ended up with 15 correct, good enough for third place. The lawyers won the second game.

Austin won the final quarters question and got the final amount of $13.50.

I'm going to miss the trivia nights.

Old logos

Recently I was going through some of dad's old papers and receipts from the 1950s and 60s. These logos caught my eye. I don't believe any of these logos still exist, and GMC is the only company that still exists.

Some of you may notice the Oliver logo. It is not a memorable or distinctive logo. But as I never had heard of the Oliver company until I moved to Montana I was surprised to find there had been two local dealerships in the area in the late 1950s. Maybe my ignorance can be excused as this was before my time.

I like the other designs though the Plymouth logo doesn't look that great when small. The DeSoto log is interesting. Who in their right mind would name a car after a Spanish conquistador?

Isn't it amazing to find phone numbers of "25", "500", and "4981". Those were some old days!

Female chimps invent spears

An interesting recent study is in the news. Apparently female chimpanzees invented spears in order to hunt and kill. That's right, females, and not males, invented and use this weapon. This makes sense as it goes with the common belief that females are smarter than males. I believe 57% (and rising) of U.S. higher education graduates are female. Females would more likely have the intelligence needed in order to create a weapon.

Evolutionists believe chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor. The study mentions we should rethink the traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in the human race. I wonder, could it be that human females invented the first weapons and started the arms/weapons race?

When Teddy Roosevelt said, "Talk softly and carry a big stick", was this stick one his wife invented?

Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

Science News
February 22, 2007

Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Chimpanzees are genetically the closest living relatives to human beings, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Scientists believe the precursors to chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate. But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

This group of chimps is shy of humans, and the females, who seem to do most of this type of hunting, are especially wary. "I am willing to bet the females do it even more than we have seen," she said.

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

"The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.

Toilet repair

Today I replaced the toilet tank flush valve on one of the toilets in my mother's house. The old one often wouldn't seat properly anymore and would leak causing the tank to refill.

The former valve might have been an original part of the toilet. No parts were plastic! Which is good as the nut and thread combination was quite tight and it took quite an effort by my brother and I with a very large pipe wrench and another large plier to free the nut. A plastic fixture may have broken instead of unscrewed.

It is some effort to replace one of these valves as one must drain and take the tank off the toilet's base. I didn't have the seal on quite right so I had to drain and remove the tank a second time after the first test flush. Everything works now and no leaks.

Another project completed before I leave for Montana next week.

Late winter gray

Today I went uptown to do some shopping. It is a gray day. A typical late winter day. The sky is a featureless solid gray. If one did not know that the sky is blue, one would think that gray is the color of the sky. Ugh.

The only thing good about the sky here in North Dakota is that there are no mountains limiting the view of the large sky. That would enhance the dull depressing impact of the sky's lack of color and light. The larger sky at least gave the feeling of more light. The bad thing is there are no mountains to look at.

People mention that either Spring, Summer, or Fall is their favorite time of the year. This time of year - late winter - is no one's favorite time of year. How could it be so? Gray featureless skies, leafless colorless trees, brown grass, dirty gray snow. It is not very cold, nor is it warming up. One feels like they are in limbo.

While out and about shopping, I decided to visit the local mall. I haven't visited the mall since I came here in December. Not even for Christmas shopping. This is a mall I worked on as a construction laborer many years - decades - ago when I was young.

It was morning when I visited the mall, and a Friday, so I didn't expect many people to be there. There weren't. Most people here work and don't have time to spend a weekday shopping. Minot is a small city in North Dakota. There are not enough people out of the mainstream here to be out and about shopping to give the impression that visiting the mall on a Friday morning is a common or exciting thing to do. At the mall there were probably as many employees as shoppers. The shoppers for the most part either were teenagers or college students, or old and retired people. Excitement was not in the air.

Comparing to my visit last year I noticed many stores were still there, a number were not. The music store was gone. That makes sense in this digital age of music.

I wandered through a few other stores but absolutely nothing interested me to purchase. I half hearted wandered through a few book stores but I have tons of books already yet to read.

I noticed the mall's video arcade has shrunk. No one was there. The games inside looked dull. Decades ago the video games were exciting, now days the better games are on a person's home computer or gameboy.

The novelty store looked tired and repetitive. The merchandice many be new or interesting to teenagers and young people, but I've seen similar stuff before. Been there, done that.

The art/poster gallery seemed to have the same old prints. Some are classic, but I've seen them over and over before. The new stuff seemed to be uninspired. The abstract horse print I saw there last year was gone. Just as well as I still do not have wall space for such a large print.

Wandering through stores seems to be such a pointless exercise when I have no desire or need to buy anything. I have what I need and most everything else just seems to be a waste of effort. Just another item to store, move, dust, etc.

I can't wait until Spring and green grass and color.

U.S. Density

This is an interesting map showing the population density across the U.S.

While I formerly lived near the tall spike in Minnesota, I am happy to live in less dense Montana.

Anna Nicole result

A decision has been made on where to bury Anna Nicole. In the Bahamas next to her son. *whew* Finally.

By the end of today when the decision was announce I was beat. I am glad the judge ruled today instead of his announced goal of tomorrow noon. I am not sure I could have made it through another day. Anna Nicole's life and death was like a Shakespearian tragedy. A play that lasts a few hours is draining enough; can you imagine the drama, revelations, and twists and turns over three long days? Still it was worth watching.

Now on to the rest of Anna's complicated life: the daughter and which man is the father, the house, and the money.

After the Anna Nicole decision was made I went for a bicycle ride. My ride was for 8 miles under a cloudy sky with a stiff southeast wind. I needed the exercise to get my residual tension released. While my ride wasn't as long as I would have like, it helped.

Anna Nicole

Not a lot to write about on my doings lately... the last two days I've been transfixed by the televised court room drama on where to bury Anna Nicole Smith's body. Thank goodness for cable TV.

It has been said repeatedly before by many, but what a train wreck her life was! Her pursuit of fame and celebrity didn't seem to be grounded in reality and with being aware of consequences for one's actions.

The pursuit of fame and celebrity is such a shallow obsession. Some people make fun of geeks and others who obsess over things like Star Wars, Star Trek, certain TV shows or genres, comic books, computers, sports statistics, and on and on. But these obsessions don't seem as destructive or empty as the obsession with fame and celebrity. A geek's obsession could be said to be a quest for knowledge or mastery over a subject. What is an obsession for celebrity a quest for?

I have to admit, watching Anna Nicole's life and death is fascinating. It is like looking at a car wreck; one is horrified and fascinated and glad they are not part of it.

By the way, I think Larry Birkhead is the father and he seems to be a decent guy. His testimony today was riveting. Too bad he couldn't have helped Anna Nicole. And Howard K. Stern? Pathetic.


Also part of my recent "taking it easy" is my stomach occasionally acts up. Nothing serious - just occasional gurgling. I don't know if I am fighting off some type of flu, or if I ate or drank something that I am fighting off. It is annoying but I shouldn't complain as I have not been laid low like my brother and mother had been.

Space eye

Isn't this beautiful?

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Helix nebula, a cosmic starlet often photographed by amateur astronomers for its vivid colors and eerie resemblance to a giant eye.

The nebula, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, belongs to a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these colorful beauties were named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets like Jupiter.

Click here for more info. One can also do a Google search on "Helix nebula" to see more photos.

Hangover and a movie

Saturday I attended Rod and Ed's party. I'll write more about it another time as I am waiting to see if I get a few photos that I can post. Ronnie was able to take a photo of the crazy "fairy wings" that Rod and I weren't able to capture with our cameras. I hope that she remembers and sends me a copy of the photo. I am hoping with all the photos Rod took he thought of taking photos of the grouse, pheasant, and walleye as they looked and tasted great.

We went through bottles and bottles of wine and some people stuck to beer. At the end of the night a few of us were in decent shape and others... not so sober.

I was in the "handling my liquor well" category. I didn't start drinking wine till I had some food, and while I sampled every one of the dozen wine bottles opened, I didn't seem to be affected. Once I realized I would be the one driving Rod home later in his pickup, I stopped drinking. No sense taking a chance of more wine affecting me later.

Still I woke up this morning thirsty and with a slight headache. Hangover? After my 12 mile bicycle ride late this afternoon (you didn't think I got up any earlier than normal, did you?), the headache disappeared. But maybe I should have eaten lunch today because by supper, and now, I am feeling on the weaker side and not my best.

It would be just my luck to finally catch the flu bug. Last weekend my brother was felled by the flu. Then a few days later my mother caught it. About the same time my mother was feeling the flu's effects, I could tell the flu bug was trying to get to me from how my eyes, sinuses, and throat felt different. But the flu failed as I never caught it. Tune in tomorrow to see if all that wine weakened my defenses.

This afternoon I watched a movie, "The Human Stain". Big mistake! This movie is incredibly depressing. Avoid watching it at all costs. I felt lousy emotionally after watching the movie. The movie can be summed up by: "Life sucks, then you die." I'm not kidding. They die in the end and no one is punished.

From the movie poster, you think - ahem - this could be good. Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman star. She is having an affair with him. Nicole Kidman as a 34 year old having an affair with Hopkins - an old man - is not sexy. He is way too old for her. Wait.. the story was written by an old man? That makes sense.

Cattle auction

Friday my brother and I visited the local livestock auction for their regular Friday auction. We arrived after 11 am and stayed until after 1pm.

The auction has plenty of cattle, and unlike the auction in Missoula, does not take a break for lunch. A few women from the auction's in-house cafe came by and asked if anyone wanted to order and have their meal delivered. Some people did so. Otherwise I noticed some people left then came back later.

The room wasn't full of people, but there were plenty of people there. 95% of the people were men. Unlike last year, when there were a number of men in their 60s and 70s, the majority of men today seemed to range from 30s into their 50s.

There were plenty of cattle for sale. The auction quickly and efficiently moved the cattle through the ring. Some ranches brought in a number of cattle. One fellow had 70 head of nice steers and heifers. The 70 sold all one group. Other ranchers had groups from 30 to 50 head. Due differences in sex (steers and heifers are sold separately), and weights, many of the other rancher's cattle were sold in smaller groups. It was not uncommon to have groups sold at two to three dozen at a time.

While I was there the cattle sold were mainly yearlings from 400+ to near 900 lbs. A few calves were also sold.

The cattle prices were definitely less than a year ago. The highest price calf sold for $1.29 while a year ago a calf sold for $1.70. Last year the prices usually were $1.00 to $1.30 lb. This year the price range was mid .70 to $1.10 with a few really nice cattle selling as high as $1.16.

The following pictures show part of the 70 head of cattle. The auction brought in 20 to 30 head at a time, let them mill around a bit so the buyers can look them over, then got them out so the next batch could arrive.



There were lots and lots of black and black Angus cattle. I was surprised a little to also see a number of light/white/tan Charolais cattle.

Apollo moon images

There is a web site with photos from Apollo 11 through 17 (except for Apollo 13 which did not land on the moon).

These are very neat photos as they are 360 degree views on the moon's surface from each of the Apollo missions that landed on the moon.

With your computer's mouse you can move the images just like you were standing there and turning in a circle.

With each image there is a sound recording made around the time the image was taken.

As seen in this photo, other than the colorful man made objects, everything is either black or gray.

http://www.panoramas.dk/moon/mission-apollo.html

Happy V-Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

I hope you have a nice day. No girlfriend or sweetie for me at this time so this is a quiet - and inexpensive! - day for me.

Here are a few images from a 1930 animated cartoon. This was before the Hays Movie Code went into effect in 1934 so that explains how they got away with her pants falling down. I know, juvenile humor, as this is certainly not the way to treat a girl who wants a kiss!




This is how she wanted to be kissed!
How about a wedding cake kiss?
Lastly, how a kiss should be done - where time stands still.

Again, Happy Valentine's Day!

Oh yeah... I almost forgot - congratulations to my friend Rachel. I learned last night she just got engaged. She - or I should say her fiancé - plans to have a meat cake at their wedding. I think that is neat. It almost makes me want to drive to Seattle in March to attend their wedding just so I can have a slice of the meat cake.

Trivial frustration

*argh!* So close, but no wins for our team in trivia Monday night.

Barb was hemming and hawing about coming to trivia. She had worked all weekend and wanted a day of relaxing at home before her Tuesday and Wednesday night pool leagues. Rod had to pick up Alan as Ed's car still had troubles. So I walked to the trivia contest. The bar is only 3/4's of a mile away and the weather was decent. The wind was less than 10 mph and the temperature was only a few degrees below zero.

It had snowed a few inches Sunday night / Monday morning but most everyone had shoveled the snow off their sidewalks. I only had to walk on the street a few times.

Gene and Bonnie were there already and Rod and Alan arrived shortly after I did. Austin and Barb didn't come.

Tonight Rod came up with our team's name: Anna Nicole's Baby's Father. Our team name got the biggest laugh for team names.

None of us had watched the Granny - I mean Grammy - Awards Sunday night so we had to guess for the answer. Subconsciously I must have heard an ad as I suggested it was the 49th Annual Grammy Award show, and was correct.

We started off the first game on a hot streak as we got many of the first 10 questions correct. We fell apart on the last questions as we chose the wrong answers for a number of them (the southern most city is in Chile, not Argentina). We ended with a score of 14 correct which was only good for second place. The lawyer/legal team - naturally - won with 17 correct answers.

The second contest was more challenging. The answers our team got correct:

• I knew that Little Annie Fannie was the cartoon strip in Playboy magazine (I do more than just look at the photos!)
  

• Pele was know as the Black Pearl,

• a Mexican hairless is a chihuahua,

• "Good night, Mrs. Calabash--wherever you are!" was said by Jimmy Durante,

• Superman's boss is Perry White,

• Bashful is alphabetically the first of the Seven Dwarfs,

• Ringo in the 1939 movie, Stagecoach, was played by John Wayne,

• First day covers are collected by Stamp collectors,

• Sir Walter Scott was associated with the settling of Virginia,

• The color of lights on a ship's port side is red,

• the poet at JFK's inauguration was Robert Frost,

• Audrey Meadows played a housewife on the Honeymooners,

• The Pacific island with Mount Suribachi is Iwo Jima.
  

Questions we failed on:

• The horse's name in the song, Jingle Bells, is: Bob tail Ring

• The most expensive seats in a bull fight are "in the shade".

• Al Jolson, Danny Kay, and Neil Diamond all played the Jazz Singer. Saying they are all Jewish was not enough.

• Mau Mau uprising was in Kenya - not South Africa

• The alliance of 57 nations was for WWII, not the first Gulf War.

• J. Paul Getty said "A billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to.", not Rockefeller
  

We got 14 answers correct again. The winners tied with 15 correct answers. We were so close. I think if we had Austin and Barb with us we would have won.


For the quarters question "Who was the first President to elope?", many quarters went into the bucket for incorrect answers. When the guesses became infrequent we got a clue that his name was closer to the end of the alphabet. The answer was Tyler in 1841.

For the question as to "What did ___ (forgot the name) invent in basketball?" Many, many wrong answers. Bonnie won with "dribble". Gene had suggested she guess that answer. By now the really good prizes were gone and Bonnie had the choice of a box of Rice Crispie bars or a hat. She chose the Rice Crispie bars. To our surprise they were soft - and edible.

The final quarters question (for the bucket of quarters) was: What does a Belonephobic fear? Bonnie guessed blood. Wrong but we were told it was close. I thought of needles. Two people were ahead of me and the second person guessed needles and won. Argh! So close again!

The bar provided free food this evening. Someone cooked up pheasant stew, deer sausage, and boiled potatoes in a sauce. All very tasty. Our team ate during the break between the two contests.

After trivia night was over I walked home to get more exercise and to clear my lungs of cigarette smoke from the bar. *Ugh!* As the snow crunched under my shoes steam rose from sewer grates into the night air. Minot set a record overnight low temperature last night with a temperature of -21 F.

Next week the bar is not having a trivia night as they are having a rock/paper/scissors contest.

Test of smarts

I got this test via my friend Linda. It is a couple dozen or so trivia questions and doesn't take too long to answer, especially as the questions are on a timer and will go to another question if you take too long to answer it.

Click on: http://www.flashbynight.com/test/

Here are my results. They give me an ego boost in time for tonight's trivia contest.

3 batches of wine

Saturday I went over to Rod's house to help him bottle the three batches of wine he had made. Rod hadn't planned on having all three batches ready at the same time, but that is how it worked out.

Rod made blueberry, cherry, and banana wines.

Rod has an old antique glass hydrometer, and he showed me how he uses it to measure the amount of sugar in the wine.

The blueberry and banana wines were at 10% alcohol while the cherry wine was at 13%. No wonder the cherry wine tastes the best of the three!

Then we siphoned the wine from a carboy into a bucket. This was to reduce the chance of siphoning any sediment at the bottom of the carboy into the bottles.

In the following photo the wine in the bucket is the banana wine. The third photo shows a couple of wines still in their carboys along with boxes of empty wine bottles that need to be prepared for filling.



The farmer is disinfecting the wine bottles with a solution. Then Rod fills each bottle after which the farmer places the cork in each bottle.



We bottled about 30 bottles each for the blueberry and cherry wines and 28 bottles of banana wine. Pictured here are the banana and blueberry wines.



Then Rod wanted to quickly make some wine labels. He hadn't counted on my coming up with offbeat ideas for labels. Naturally I had some ideas and suggestions and hours - many hours - later we came up with three wine labels. Rod had a headache by the time we were done, though part of the reason might have been all the wine we had sampled.

The first wine label was mainly my idea, which accounts for it being the most irreverent and goof-ball of the three labels. Since this was for the banana wine I suggested the label feature a monkey. After a long search we settled on this as the monkey image.

Once we had the image the name "Hunky Monkey" popped into my head. It does look like the monkey is posing. Rod handled the text's font and coloring.

I haven't drunken enough of the banana wine yet to know, so it may be an exaggeration to add the tag line "It'll Grow Hair on Your Chest". Besides that is more of a tag line for a whiskey and not a nice wine like Rod made.


We did the cherry wine label next. I started with a connection to George Washington and the cherry tree. We couldn't find an image of this. We couldn't even find a decent image of George Washington.

We did find a few good images of cherry trees in blossom with the Washington Monument in the background, but Rod felt the connection to the wine was too much of a stretch. Beside we had noticed an artistic rendering of two cherries that was good. Rod prefers to have drawings of the fruit on his wine labels. I admit Rod's label does look classier.

I wanted to give the wine a name - more of a name that just 'Cherry Wine' - and still was stuck on Washington and that led to 'president' and 'presidential'. "Presidential Cherry Wine" doesn't sound good so we ran 'presidential' through Babelfish and most translations weren't that interesting.

Then I came up with the idea of translating 'presidential' into Japanese because of the Japanese connection to the cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C. That is how we got the Japanese word on the label.

Poor Rod, he wanted a simple classy label and now he has to explain the label to everyone to whom he gives a bottle of the wine. "And why is there Japanese on the label?"


Lastly we designed the blueberry wine label. Again I went down a crazy tangent as I tried to tie 'blueberry' to Fats Domino through his song "Blueberry Hill". Rod humored me initially.

We couldn't find a really decent image of Fats Domino that would work on a wine label. We did think about using a black & white image of Fats dancing with his arms up in the air but the pixel size was too small and it was too irreverent for a classy wine.

Rod looked for images and drawing of blueberries and we decided on this image as it was more than just of blueberries and would be distinctive from the cherry label.

Now for the wine's name. With this as an image I struggled. I was still thinking about Fats Domino and Blueberry Hill and that did not work with this image. This image looks closer to a traditional wine label and evokes a location. The problem is that many wines have names related to the location of their vineyards. We didn't have a vineyard. We wanted a name that meant something to us and not merely a cute sounding name.

We struggled to choose a North Dakota name that would work with the picture. Nothing came to mind since mountains are rare to non-existent in North Dakota. I started thinking of a Montana name. I suggested "MacDonald Creek" after Glacier's Lake MacDonald as the image reminds me of where MacDonald Creek enters the lake. But Rod, never having visited Glacier Park, kept thinking of hamburgers when placing the MacDonald name on the label. We scrapped the name.

Blue. Blue. Blue. Something related to blue. Then it hit me: Cobalt Lake. My first trip with my hiking group was to Cobalt Lake in Glacier park. While there weren't any blueberries there, we did see a number of other berries: thimbleberries, elderberries, and huckleberries. Cobalt Lake it is.

Poor Rod, he makes the wines and I name them something totally unrelated to him. I chose the color of the words which explains why the color has nothing whatsoever to do with blue or purple. Rod chose the text's font and background pattern and color, which is the classier part of the label.

So "Hunky Monkey" was mainly my idea, " Cherry Wine" is Rod's idea, and "Cobalt Lake" is a combination of our ideas.

Now... to enjoy the wines!