A soldier has invaded our house!

Drew's got the whole look going: camo suit, helmet, shades, face wrap (?), gloves, and gun.

How can this be comfortable?

Look at how my dog Zeke relaxes! My neck and back hurt just from looking at him like that.

Thoughts on Crocs

What, may I ask, is wrong with wearing Crocs? You don't know what Crocs are? They are those rubbery-looking slip-on shoes that have exploded in popularity over the past year or so. I think originally they were designed for gardeners, but once people realized how comfortable they are, they began to grow in popularity (side note: I have a friend who worked for a law firm in Boulder, Colorado this past summer. Said friend told me that lots of the attorneys would wear Crocs to work when they didn't have to appear in court or meet with clients).

Both Drew and Sam have Crocs and really love them, and I recently purchases a pair for myself (mine are plain black). I wore them around on Saturday night when we were in Portland and I was the brunt of some good-natured ribbing at the hands of my two best friends.

So asking you, my dear readers, to leave me your thoughts in the Comments section about Crocs.

Here is the some more info on Crocs.

***News Flash***

Not sure if you've noticed this yet, but we have a pretty good football team right now. Go Ducks!

P.S. Check out a few photos from this morning of students waiting outside Autzen Stadium to pick up their tickets to this Saturday's game against USC.

I LOVE this picture

A few weeks ago, our best friends the Zimels visited Portland from their new home city of Austin, TX. I posted some pictures from that weekend. One of the things that the Zimels did while in Portland was to get family photos taken by Bethany Fegles. Missi went along to help out, and Bethany ended up snapping a picture of Samantha and Elijah. I love their expressions!

I actually AM still here...

I've just been super busy, and blogging has been pretty far down on the priority list. It's been a combination of school work, law review stuff, work projects, and job hunting. And oh yeah, I sprained my ankle as well. On Monday morning I was playing in the LBA - Legal Basketball Association - when I stepped on somebody's foot behind me. I went down like a ton of bricks and I knew it was bad as soon as it happened. I spent a couple days on crutches and now I just have to wear a protective brace. The doc has said that I need to stay off it 4-6 weeks, but that is gonna be tough considering I am playing on a basketball team and an indoor soccer team.

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks.






On Saturday we're taking the kids to the UO-WSU football game, so that will be fun. On Friday night we've got our annual Editor's Cup kickball game.

A great bumper sticker

I saw this bumper sticker driving in to school today:

"Your worst nightmare is my perfect vacation."

I checked to see if the car was being driven by Bear Grylls, but alas, it was some other adventurous soul...

Does it rain a lot in Oregon?

Here's an article from my favorite R-G columnist, Bob Welch:

Rainy rep undeserved, but we'll take it
By Bob Welch
Columnist, The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, September 30, 2007

Early Friday, about 2:30 a.m., I awoke and heard it, but my life had become too un-Oregonized to recognize it at first. Rain on the roof.

In November or January, waking to rain as an Oregonian is like waking to roosters as a farmer - so much a part of your routine that, over time, you hardly notice the sound. But the reality is that once the cloud faucets turn off in the spring we go into a seven-month stretch - with a few drizzly days of exception - and find ourselves un-Oregonized.

We forget who we are - The Rain State. Land of Ten Zillion Drips.

We wake to seemingly day after day of blue skies. (In July, August and September, fewer than a third of our days are considered "cloudy.")We enjoy desktop-photo weather that the rest of the nation doesn't realize we're enjoying. But here's the truth: We're really a part-time rain state with a full-time rain "rep." It's the perfect combination for slow-growthers like me who, if not Tom McCall "visit-but-don't-stay" types, aren't interested in becoming SoCal North.
Seventy-two percent of the rain in Eugene comes in a five-month stretch - November through March - that represents only 42 percent of the year.

"October can often be marginal, but, yes, those months are going to give us roughly three-fourths of our rain," says George Taylor, the Oregon State University climatologist. "Our annual precipitation is about the same as Washington, D.C., and New York, but their rain is spread out through the year and ours is skewed to the cool season." Until Friday, 81 of the previous 90 days had come and gone without any measurable rain. And 14 of the past 15 months in Eugene have been below average in rainfall. But the stereotypes of outsiders, thank goodness, die hard. Thus, I imagine people watching ESPN's "GameDay" program from Eugene - some of it recorded Friday during rain showers - and probably thinking: Typical Oregon.

I love it, even if it is a lie.

A typical Sept. 28 in Eugene is rain-free. Since 1983, it's rained on that date only three times. In fact, any September day is typically rain-free. Our mean September rainfall is 1.54 inches of rain, far less than the Septembers of such cities as Dallas, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Oklahoma City; Atlanta; Boston; Indianapolis; St. Louis; Washington, D.C.; and Miami.
And yet people in those places think of Oregon and think of the smell of wet flannel. (Yes, yes, and we men shave our beards with axes!)

Never mind that while I was speaking in Oklahoma City once, the rain was coming down so hard that drips were falling on the podium, courtesy of a leaking roof.
Nobody will ever think of Oklahoma as the rain state; and Oregon will, thankfully, always be thought of as exactly that. You get introduced to give a talk in some relatively dry state - "our speaker tonight is from Oregon ..." - and the audience expects Noah with a lapel mike and a few rain jokes.

I happily oblige. "Whataya call two days of rain in Oregon?" I ask. "A weekend."
They laugh. Inside, I laugh. But with the nation's eyes on Eugene Saturday, I was worried. Worried that our wonderful summer-fall weather would continue through the weekend, leaving millions of California-Oregon TV viewers Googling "Mayflower" or "United Van Lines."
Fortunately, we were saved by an early shift toward Phase II of our climatological year; Friday's thunder and hail was a particularly nice touch.

"We're a bimodal state," Taylor says, "but we get a fairly rapid transition. Once things start going, we fall off the table pretty fast." Meaning those "cool season" rains, if not already here, are coming soon to a gutter near you. And, once again, we'll become Oregonized, true children of the rain.

For us, temporarily. But in the minds of outsiders, 365 days a year.