Looking North over Bozeman Pond

Another beautiful evening in Bozeman, Montana.

44 inches

I've given up bragging about my shoulder scar at the gym. The other person always one-ups me with an even more horrifying surgery story. Plus, I sometimes feel that I'm being implicitly judged based on the muscularity of my shoulder or the size of my chest (;-0).

Awwwww

Had a rough day? Chill out like this kitty:
Rescued Taiwanese kitten naps on a Mac keyboard

Yummmm, Tortillas

Coming to an art museum near you. (h/t boingboing.net)

I wish I knew of a Bozeman restaurant that made its own tortillas.

Basil

a) big mike's only gardening failure this season
b) an ingredient in margherita pizza
c) Toni Basil - featured on the radio at Mackenzie River Pizza Company on 9/26. She created this video in 1982:

Time for a breather

My neighbor's dog loves to play fetch. She usually tires out before I do.

Bigger Mike

This "Big Mike" is outweighs me by almost 100 pounds (he's shorter by 2 inches, though).

New York Times: The Ballad of Big Mike

Fun with wikipedia

A fun (?) timewaster: search for people on wikipedia.org.

Here are some results for bloggers from my blogroll:
Chrismukkah
Dude (The Dude Abides)
Erin Murphy (Inside-Out)
jesse james
Lemon Curry ?
Michael Cole (bozeman-mt)
Wulfgar! (A chicken is not pillage)

Strangely enough, only one of the blogs (Chrismukkah) is famous enough to have a relevant wikipedia entry, though several entries are pretty close (e.g., Wulfgar!).

okcupid.com

Per my "Collecting Data" and "Efficiency" posts, I'm in the process of answering questions for the free matchmaking service okcupid.com. Apparently the questions are submitted by other users (after they have answered >500 questions themselves).

So far, I've answered questions related to smoking, monagamy, abortion, dental habits, snuggling preferences, evolution, arithmetic, how frequently to keep in touch, eugenics...

Collecting data

According to this, Aristotle held that women have fewer teeth than men. My theory is that Aristotle gave up on collecting real-world data after the first (involuntary) examinee bit his hand.

Traffic on 19th Street...

...sure is rough. Hah:

Efficiency

What Makes You Click? Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating: "the match outcomes in this online dating market appear to be approximately efficient in the Gale-Shapley sense."

"Efficient" is being used in a technical sense here. What's scary is that I immediately understood that sense. Wiki link.

Nobel Peace Prize winner to speak at MSU

David Trimble will speak at MSU on October 15: ticket info.

Dead Rabbits

a) a common feature on Babcock (the street I take to work)

b) a gang in 1850s New York (dramatized in the movie Gangs of New York)

Don't stop Believin' ... aw heck go ahead and stop

So, I bought a coke at the MSU Sweet Shop today (I'm back to my awful 2 per day habit ;-(. They were playing on the radio... a song from my high school years:



I must've liked the song back the early 80's, since I still know the lyrics, but isn't it time to give it a rest?

Fash

a) Puppet mascot for Old Navy: www.heyfash.com

b) to vex (Scots) - "Dinna fash yourself laddie" (James Clavell's Tai-Pan)

Scar-y photo

I've come to terms with my scar, I think. I'm glad it's not visible when I wear a shirt. If you are not sqeamish (about scars or hairy backs ;-), heres a photo of it 12 weeks after surgery: Scar_12weeks.jpg. (I could shave my back, but I think the scar will be there forever.)

The lovely peasant lass in the photo background is from the Philbrook Museum.

Roots

I've been working on my family tree - mainly as a way to get in touch with history. Here are the countries for which I've traced an ancestor:
* France - my most recent immigrant ancestor came over from Napoleon III's France
* England - the "Cole" line
* Scotland - inferred from my ancestor's name "Montgomery"
* America - distant Indian ancestry on my Mother's side and my Father's side. Probably Cherokee and ?

I'm pretty sure, but haven't verified, the following:
* Ireland
* Scots-Irish
* Netherlands

Imagine you had a time machine and travelled back to England/Scotland in the year 1100. Pick a random person. If that person has any descendants living in 2006, then he/she was (almost surely, like 99.9%) one of my ancestors.

Everyone reading this blog is a cousin if you go back far enough; and "far enough" is not really that far.

Ethicality

Interesting in reading big mike's prose stylings on the topic of engineering ethics? If yes, then click over to ethics300.blogspot.com.

Warning: the blog also covers ordinary ethics & morality and some religion and politics...

Offender Registry

MT Sexual and Violent Offender Registry: Bozeman. I'm not exactly sure what use "we the public" are expected to get from this registry, but I guess more info is better than less.

Banaaaaaaaaaaaaana

Heh. The following song was popular when I was in college - I was surprised to hear it at Mackenzies Pizza recently.




I remember these banana-related characters from watching too much TV in the 70's:

Ski time approaches

Getting closer...

I'll buy a season pass to Bridger Bowl, as usual. And, if I can find the right ski buddy/buddies, I'd like to visit Snowbowl, Red Lodge, Big Sky, and Moonlight Basin.

---
Here's the opening scene from Warren Miller's Cold Fusion:

I like Pie

What a great day at the the Museum of the Rockies last Sunday! I went to see the reptile exhibition (way cool) and stayed for the Pie Auction. Having been to auctions before, I was a spirited bidder. I bought a Pumpkin Pie and a Coconut Cream Pie.

Fashion blogging

NPR commentator Lori Gottlieb contemplates Gain Weight, Lose Perspective: When Sizes Grow. What's interesting to me: she speculates that future women's sizes will incorporate imaginary numbers (i.e., multiples of the square root of -1) and negative numbers. (I realize she was being facetious.)

My surprising inference was that this trend to "less than zero" sizes is driven by fairly slender women. I guess a "size 0p" would be a consolation prize for those women who lost the zaftig lottery.

Hmm - it's not restricted to women's fashions: I measured some of my trousers, and the waist measurements are a couple of inches more than what the label says.


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I wasn't invited to the recent get-together of Progressive MT bloggers (maybe because my blog is non-political ;-), but maybe this post means I'll be invited whenever the MT fashion bloggers throw a party...

Clematis

NY Times letter

FYI, in a recent letter in the New York Times about movie locations: "Bozeman is certainly no 'small town' ". Compared to places like Livingston and Malta, that's exactly correct.

Montana Film Office: Bozeman has info about movies, TV shows, etc. filmed in Bozeman.

Another foto of me - woo-hoo :-?

(I also snapped a pic of my shoulder scar, but, based on my sisters' reactions, decided not to post it to this blog.)

Tomatoes

I hope these tomatoes ripen before our first freeze.

Regrettably, I'll have to skip WNGD, since my garden has zero privacy.

MSU Mascot

Another view of da kitty.

Typical Montana front yard

I like to walk around the neighborhood to get landscaping ideas.

Final novellas

Two last novellas from my summer reading, both from the early 1900's:

Call of the Wild (Jack London) - a must for anyone with the slightest bit of affection for the canine-kind, or interest in the Noble Savage.

The Man Who was Thursday (G.K. Chesterton) - the hoariest of secret agent cliches is a major plot point, but that's OK because this novella probably originated the cliche.

Wagon wheel

I bet a "flat tire" was a real PITA (pain in the ankle) back in the Old West. Could you call the AWA (American Wagon Association) for a tow?