Grandpa's New Snack Buddy!

Let's give a big welcome to the newest member of the Armstrong family. Currently named "Girl Puppy" Armstrong, she was picked up today from the Huntley Animal House Shelter. She is 9 weeks old, a Labrador/Boxer mix (we think), and is the best little puppy you could imagine. Her main feature seems to be licking people, which prompted Tammy to suggest Aard-Bark. We are currently taking suggestions for names, so if you have a good name for a girl puppy (that rules out our favorite, "Barf Bag"), please submit it in the comments.    

I will probably be passing on more videos and pictures in the next few days. We have Mike to thank for pushing us to go get a dog soon, and Nathan to thank for coming out from Chicago to help us go look for dogs. He has graciously consented to stay over for a while tomorrow and babysit the new puppy while we go to the White Sox - Red Sox game with Bill and Dale. So thank you Nate and Mike for making this possible. And thank you Grandpa for beefing him up with snacks when we come down to visit at the end of August. I'm sure she will be very happy to sit and watch you play Solitaire on the computer if there are Twizzlers involved.    

Up Close and Personal With Nature

Most of you who know me know that my idea of nature is playing craps at a casino called Four Winds. We went camping a lot when I was a kid, both with Scouts and with my family. Ann and I extended that into camping when we were first married, usually going up to Wisconsin with Lighthalls and/or Robinsons. It almost always rained (ask Mary) and when the kids came along, camping got more difficult. Many a night we spent in the car at the campground with a crying baby trying to get them to sleep (Nate was not a good sleeper even then). So the following pictures of me out in the wild are in stark contrast to my normal life. We are just back from a week stay in Portland, Oregon, the jewel of the Northwest. Mike and Tammy live there now and it was nice to see them again. Mike is between classes at Portland State and so when the weekend came and Tammy was off work, we decided to head for the hills. And the ocean and the river.   

First up was a drive to Council Crest Park in Portland, which offers a beautiful panaroramic view of the mountains that surround Portland. The pictures below are of Mount Hood, which tops out at about 11,240 feet. It is a volcano, which explains the steep sides and is home to twelve glaciers. You could also see Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Ranier from the summit of Council Crest.    

On Saturday, we headed for the Willamette River which bisects Portland into eastern and western regions. We boarded a jetboat with 30 other people and headed south toward the Willamette Falls. Along the way we learned about the history of Portland and the River, and we got wet. Every so often, the driver would come to a sudden stop and the water would shoot over the bow and soak us. On the way back, we practiced spinning the boat, which also got us wet. Mike seemed to get the worst of it riding on the outside seat, but we were all pretty damp when the ride was over.    

We got a chance to see many of the Portland bridges up close and personal.    

And we passed a bay where World War II veterans were refurbishing a PT Boat.    

The falls were enjoyable, although we couldn't get very close to them.    

Then on Sunday, we drove out to Seaside, Oregon to visit the ocean. We had a nice time walking through the waves, watching the dogs splash, strolling along the boardwalk, and buying salt water taffy.    

 

We had a great time visiting Portland, but we are now resting up for the Chicago Wizard Comic Convention in two weeks. Bruce Campbell and Christopher Lloyd. Sounds like fun.    

Another End of an Era

Several newspapers are reporting that Borders Books is closing all 399 stores that are still left in the United States. They closed several stores last winter in an effort to come through their bankruptcy and find a new buyer, but all attempts have failed. It is with mixed emotions that I read of their demise. I have a lot of memories of Borders Books. Forty years ago, when we moved to Chicago, there were few if any large book stores. Many towns in the northwest suburbs had small bookstores (I remember fondly the one on Rte 120 on the way into McHenry), but it was exciting to go to a large book store and see all the choices they had. When I started teaching in the gifted program in the early 1980's, I taught with Michelle Weber at the middle school. She was an amazing teacher and I learned a lot about teaching exceptional children from her, Lorraine Plum, and Marie Plozay. Michelle's (now former) husband was an accomplished artist in stained glass. Every year, the Oak Brook Shopping Center had a juried art show that he was invited to. So each summer, Ann and I would drive to Oakbrook Center to see the art show and to go to the Borders Bookstore there that was one of the few in Illinois. The drive took about an hour, but it was a summer ritual to go to OBC. And we spent a lot of money we didn't have on books of all kinds: science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and math books for the most part.    

Unfortunately, as more and more Borders and Barnes and Nobles moved into the Northwest suburbs (like Deer Park and Crystal Lake which are a fifteen minute drive), the small bookstores couldn't compete. And so instead of having more options because of Borders, we now have fewer options, which is really sad.  And now we don't have Borders either.    

Now you might wonder why a faithful Kindle e-book reader like me would care about bookstores since most of my books come from an online store. Well, I still buy a lot of books at bookstores. Probably twenty a year. Ann and I went to the bookstore on Randall Road this week and I bought the new Games magazine and a large anthology called Happily Ever After:   

It consists of 33 retellings of classic fairy tales by noted fantasy writers like Neil Gaimin, Gregory Maguire (who wrote Wicked), and Charles DeLint. It has been interesting to read, and yes it does come on Kindle, but it is nice to have a book in hand every so often. Other than Jujy Fruits, reading is my only real vice. So I do spend a lot of money on books, both electronic and paper.   

Nathan's first job while in college (not counting the job he had setting up for the nuclear waste removal demonstration - I'll let him explain that job in the comments if he wants) was at the main Borders on Michigan Avenue on the near north side of Chicago. It was a great location, right on the Mag Mile, in the same block as the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop, which had great hot chocolate in the winter. Nathan would get off at midnight and ride his longboard for the three miles home to his apartment. He said he was going fast enough that he didn't notice the bad neighborhoods. And most nights he wouldn't mind getting mugged just for the novelty. Working at Borders Books was a terrible job. You were graded on how many people you could trick into giving their e-mail address. If you didn't get enough, you were put on probation for a month. So we started sending Nathan e-mail addresses we made up to put into the system. For a week I had an e-mail address at gmail, then canceled it and opened another with a different address. Same with every other e-mail host out there. He met some people at Borders that are still friends, but he's glad to be out of a retail job. It is counter-intuitive, but if you love books, don't work at a book store. At least not a big box bookstore, because a love of books just gets in the way. Especially when someone asks you for a recommendation and you've been told you have to push the latest  Danielle Steele bestseller. It's probably not the same at Quimby's Bookstore on North Avenue, but they only have four employees, so it's hard to get a job there.    

So I am sad to see the end of Borders Books, but am hoping that some smaller specialty bookstores might pop up in the next few years to fill the void. Maybe a bookstore like the Centuries and Sleuths book shop in Forest Park that specializes in histories, biographies, and mysteries. If a bookstore specialized in science fiction, mysteries, and math books, I think I could stock it all by myself. And I wouldn't have to be thinking of going to IKEA to get another bookcase for the basement.  

Poor Biorn

From Vimeo and The Animation Workshop, the story of Biorn the Viking, who is having a hard time getting into Vallhall:    

Thank You, Ronnie!

That's Ronald Reagan. As my sister-in-law Randi let me know, in 1984, President Reagan proclaimed the third Sunday of July (that's today, July 17) to be National Ice Cream Day. Probably the best decision the Teflon President ever made. Now we don't need a special day to eat ice cream. I make sure I get some ice cream in me at least three times a week. Whether it comes from the store in a Ben and Jerry's container and I have to scoop it myself, or it comes as a Strawbanna Sundae from Julie Anne's in Crystal Lake (they're back), it is the perfect way to end the day. So Ann and I went out this evening to honor the way ice cream has helped us preserve our freedoms for these many years. Or something like that. I didn't read up on the background too much. Too busy thinking about what I wanted to order. Choices, choices. So I went with a banana split - but without the cherries - that's fruit isn't it? I didn't go to Dairy Queen to get fruit (well, maybe strawberries, but I had caramel instead of pineapple).        

Just so you can plan the rest of your week, Tuesday is National Daiquiri Day and Friday is the day Mike celebrates National Hammock day by using his second favorite treasure he found in Costa Rica (Tammy is his first). Arbor Day, bah, humbug! These are the important holidays, my friends. Enjoy them.    

Want A Pop?

Galco's store in Los Angeles sells pop (or do you say soda). That's all - soda pop. They have 500 different varieties and don't sell Pepsi or Coke products because those companies have all kinds of requirements about how you set up your shelves. Best cola? Fentimans Curiosity Cola, botanically brewed since 1905.  Need a diet pop? Try Stewarts Black Cherry Diet Pop or Jones Sugar Free Green Apple. Orange drinks, cucumber pop, banana sodas. Plus they do also sell all the old time candy you can't find in the Jewel Grocery store. Beeman's and Black Jack gum, Bottle Caps, Clark bars, Sky Bars, and Zagnuts, and my favorite from the little grocery store I used to go to in the 50's when Alan and I went fishing - Zero bars. Is this heaven? No, it's Iowa Galco's. I think I may have found the store I want to work at in my retirement. I think one of these would make out fine in Arlington Heights.     

Home Again, Home Again

One of the nice things about being back home is seeing the changes that have occurred on the old homestead in a week's time.   

The perennial garden is in great shape. When we designed this ten years ago, I was impressed with pictures of English cottage gardens. The lack of defined ares in the garden was very appealing to me. Now I know that a professional gardener would say we don't have a cottage garden, but I was mostly interested in having a jumble of flowers of different looks and textures pushing up against each other. We have a few thin areas to work on this fall, but it looks very nice in July:    

Pretty much all the flowers in our garden are standard Illinois perennials. We were looking for flowers that were hardy in Illinois summers and could tolerate the winters. We ended up with about 25 different varieties altogether.  A really good source if you are looking to plant perennials around here is Perennials for Illinois by William Aldritch.    

 

The Russian Sage on this end has been beaten down by the storms from the weekend, but it looks like it is beginning to recover. Next to them are coneflowers and daylilies. The orange flowers are butterfly bushes.   

Daylilies and spiked gayfeather in this section. On the left edge of this picture are the monk's hood flowers that bloom a deep purple in late September and October when everybody else is done.    

The little yellow flowers are coreopsis, which I love until you have to cut them back, one at a time, all 400 of them.   

The statue in the center of the garden was a gift for Ann from her colleagues when she retired in May. It looks nice there.  If you click on the picture, you can see it a little better.   

The Hosta garden is obviously doing well. Ann is trimming the balloon flowers and the phlox in the back from across the fence. The bird bath gets a little action in the spring and fall. The neighbor is in charge of feeding the birds.   

New for this spring is a raised vegetable bed. We missed having fresh produce after we stopped growing vegetables 15 years ago. We had a run of three years in a row of poor results and gave up. So I built a 6 foot by 12 foot bed out of 2 by 8 cedar and filled it with a gazillion bags of soil. Unfortunately we got a little carried away planting and we're having territorial issues.    

First, squash takes a lot of room. More room than we remembered. And we probably planted the tomato plants too close. So they are slugging it out and there's not much we can do at this point. We have squash just about ready so it's time to fire up the grill and break out the olive oil.    

 

The tomatoes along the back (1 Roma, 3 regular, and 1 grape) are crowding out the peppers that are in front of them, so Ann dug out two peppers today and moved them to open space.   

 

We should have a few more tomatoes soon. We have gotten two Early Girl tomatoes so far. We eat them like apples while we are standing out by the garden. It's the Ohio way. Although I may have to put a permanent salt shaker out there. They are better with a little salt.   

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes - Aaaaaaah!   

The open spot is not really open. There are onion plants in there that don't seem to be doing much of anything. That's OK. I'm not too big on onions unless they are breaded and deep fried, but we figured to use them cut up when we are cooking or put them on Dave's hamburgers as we grill them. Those are bush beans in front. Slow cook them with bacon and they are mighty tasty.   

So that's the tour of the backyard flora at the Armstrong back 40 (I would have done fauna, but it's still a few weeks before we get the new dog).  It may only be a quarter of an acre, but we use the space wisely. We'll send you a tomato in the mail when they are ready.    

The Windy City ...

.... is Van Wert, Ohio, it turns out. On our way to visit Dad in Ohio, we followed a couple of trucks that looked like this:     

They were huge and we didn't realize what they were hauling until we crossed the Indiana - Ohio border and started to see these:    

These look like toys from a distance like this, but when you pass the propeller on a truck on the highway, you realize how big these wind turbines are.  They stand 350 feet tall, and the propellers are 160 feet long. There are two wind farms just outside Van Wert, Ohio, which is about halfway down the state of Ohio near the Indiana border. It is about 30 miles from St. Marys, where I grew up. One of the windfarms is in operation. I found this article describing the windfarms. When finished, a total of 152 wind turbines will be running, which will provide electricity for about 75,000 homes. Another wind farm closer to Lima, Ohio is due to be built in the next two years. That one should have around 200 turbines. According to the company's fact sheet:    

Offsets carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 1.3 billion pounds per year. That is the equivalent of planting an estimated 525,000 acres of trees – (Van Wert County and Paulding County combined are 530,000 acres), taking 114,000 cars off the road, or reducing the consumption of over 2.1 million barrels of oil. If electric cars were widely available, this project will produce enough electricity to power 479,000 electric cars for a year.    

The project is generating 300 construction jobs now and will mean 15 to 20 permanent maintenance jobs. It also generates 1.1 million dollars in lease payments to the farm owners who house the turbines. Sounds like a win-win situation for everybody. Besides, the windmills look really nice spinning lazily in the wind.   

90 and Counting!

We have a milestone coming up later this summer and I'm not talking about the Cubs' 100th loss. My dad, Richard Armstrong, is turning ninety in late August. Here he is last summer at his grandson's wedding:      

To celebrate the occasion, we are having an open house, sponsored by his three kids, Alan, Mary Lou, and I. We hope to have the open house on either Saturday or Sunday of Labor Day weekend, September 3rd or 4th. We'll know better after this week when Ann and I will be in Ohio and can look for places to hold the open house. it will be a fairly low key event, just a chance for people to come and talk to Dad and help him celebrate. I'll put up more information when we have something solid. Unfortunately, that weekend also will see the wedding of two of my favorite people, Scott and Lori. Sorry I won't be there, guys. But please take lots of pictures of Bob being silly. I enjoy those.      

Eggs For Kids

You may know the group SmashMouth which is featured in the following video, along with a clip from the movie Mystery Men. You may remember them from the Shrek soundtrack, also.   



In a rather bizarre story, one Twitter writer urged the band's lead singer to let him film him eating 24 eggs. The story got picked up by other users, ended up on wikipedia and youtube with lots of people asking Smash Mouth to eat eggs on film. Today, the band spoke out on the issue. As soon as people have donated a total of $10,000 to St. Jude's Children's Hospital, Smash Mouth will eat the eggs - hard boiled, I hope. You can donate here if you like. As of now, 418 people have donated $6830.05 to St. Jude's. The website is www.causes.com and you can set up a page for people to donate to just about any legitimate cause. So if you have an extra $20 and don't know what to do with it, I can't think of too many causes more deserving than St. Jude's Children's Hospital. Watching Smash Mouth eat 24 eggs is a bonus.    

Eyes To The Skies

Ann and I, and Mary and Dave went to the Lisle Eyes To The Skies Festival on July 3rd. It is the typical festival with carnival rides, local bands, corn dogs and pulled pork sandwiches. What it has that is different than the twenty or so other village festivals over the Independence Day weekend in the Chicago area is this:   

 

Yep, a balloon launching. And not just one.    

The nice thing was that you were allowed to wander around the balloon field while the balloons were setting up. People were eager to answer questions like how much does it cost (balloons can run as much as $45,000 each) and how much training do you need to pilot the balloon (10 to 14 months and it costs about $6840 to get trained)? But it might be worth it to have a balloon that looks like this at night when you light it up. I think I would like the one that looked like the globe. Although the penguin was neat, too.    

 

We had a great time and are already talking about going to the big balloon fest in Albuquerque, New Mexico sometime. Sounds like an RV road trip to me. Woooooo!    

    

                               

The Root Beer Stand

In St. Marys, Ohio, the root beer stand on Celina Road was the place to hang out with your family. It was a great place to get shredded chicken sandwiches and root beer. You pulled up in your car, a carhop came out and took your order, then brought everything on a tray that hung from your car window. Tonight for dinner, Ann and I drove up to Richmond to the Dog N Suds,   

a classic root beer stand that has made few changes since the 1950's.  There is still only a sign menu that you read from your car:   

As you can see, the menu is straightforward 50's drive-in fare, with an emphasis on hamburgers and  hot dogs. Ann had the pork tenderloin sandwich, which, although not as good as you get from Behm's landing in St. Marys, is still pretty good. Sandwiches can come as a basket with fries and cole slaw, or you can order onion rings. No strawberry pecan salads, mango fruit cups, or chicken caesar wraps. No avocados, no sprouts, no monterey jack cheese. If you want something a little different, have tater tots instead of fries. And for dessert, ice cream and funnel cakes. The only concession to today is that the carhops enter your order on a palm screen, before bringing out your food tray and hanging it on the car window. You can get your root beer in a big frosted mug just like the old days. And when you are done, how do you let them know to pick up your tray? The old-timers know, turn on your car headlights, that's right. All in all, it was worth the trip, even if Anderson's candy store was closed as we went through town. Come visit some time and we'll take a drive back to the fifties.   

Believe me, this is good food, and I better not hear any nonsense about your cholesterol. In the 50's, we didn't have cholesterol, so lighten up and eat your corn dog. You'll be fine.