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National Geographic’s Really Wild Animals: Monkey Business and Other Family Why do monkeys always monkey around? And are their families even wilder than yours? Spin wants to know! National Geographic’s animated globe-on-the-go looks up some of his favorite critters in a worldwide tour of animal families. Turns out that most primates – from baboons to bushbabies – like to hang out with their friends and relatives. They aren’t the only ones! Spin also checks out a bunch of different types of animal families such as elephants, octopuses, ostriches, and bullfrogs. Fabulous footage and swinging music videos will drive you straight up the family tree! Join Spin for MONKEY BUSINESS AND OTHER FAMILY FUN. It’s just one of the many Really Wild Animals adventures in this award-winning series.
Customer Review: Very rapid pace
My 3-year old young son loves monkeys, so I thought this would be good. We’ve only watched it one time. The problem is that it is too fast paced. Rather than showing video of monkeys in their habitat and observing their behavior, it switches from shot to shot too fast, while trying to be funny. You never see monkeys behaving like monkeys. It almost makes me dizzy watching it. It might be better for older kids.

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Blockbuster geeky movies
So about two weeks ago I saw the new Star Trek movie (at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, in their second-run theater), and this weekend I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also at McMenamins). I really liked both of them—Star Trek in particular was fully redeemed for me after I had some serious doubts about it—and it occurred to me, as I started to write this up, that both of these movies are in the top five highest-grossing 2009 movies in the U.S. (Transformers, #1, and Star Trek, #5) and both are intrinsically geek movies. Is that a great thing or what? Naturally I have some thoughts about each movie, but in case of spoilers you’ll have to click through to read them. You’ve been warned. Keep reading

Travel adventures thus far
This year—and this summer in particular—we’ve done quite a fair bit of traveling, possibly more than we have in the past. I’ve chronicled some of it as it applies to beer over on The Brew Site, but have been sorely lax in documenting the various trips here. Here’s a summary of the notable travels, with more detailed posts to follow for some of them: During spring break in March we visited Baker City for fabulous pizza and, well, seeing someplace new. In May, we spent a weekend in Portland doing some shopping and visiting friends. June was a big travel month: an anniversary trip spent in Lincoln City followed two days later by a longer visit to San Diego to see my brother. In July, we made a day trip up to Hood River, which I already chronicled here. Later in the same month, we made a quick day trip to Eugene. For beer. August saw our annual family reunion convene for a camping trip at the coast, just outside of Garibaldi. And, travels in August (and thus far this year) have more-or-less concluded with this past weekend, where my wife and I spent a night at Kah-Nee-Ta Resort (and Casino).

Home Equity Loans For Bad Credit Borrowers – Tips and Advice For Applying
When it comes to taking out a loan with bad credit, most people are aware of the difficulties that it can create. Given the recent economic recession that has occurred, it is not surprising that there are many different lending establishments that are very hesitant to offer loans to poor credit borrowers. The [...]

Notes on our San Diego trip
Last week, we went down to San Diego for a quick(ish) trip to visit my brother and his wife. We left Tuesday afternoon after I was off work, drove all day Wednesday, and then returned on Monday—doing the full San Diego to Bend drive in one day. I won’t recount the full blow-by-blow here (and I’m blogging my beer notes of the trip on The Brew Site, of course), but just a series of notes, observations, and tidbits. (A big reason for the visit was because my brother and sister-in-law are expecting their first child this August, and the baby shower was on Saturday. So we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.) At about three and a half hours from Bend, Weed is a town you can’t ignore: it’s the junction of Highway 97 and Interstate 5, and is the first "real" town you hit in California when traveling down 97. (I’d count Dorris, but that seems more like a truck stop/border crossing than a town.) I find the town fascinating: its population is exactly 3000, it sits in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, and in many ways it’s the gateway to Northern California. And it’s like Bend in several ways: it had its start as a lumber town, has a similar climate and the same elevation, and now derives a good portion of its economy from (mountain) tourism. What little I’ve seen of it—besides the fast food restaurants and gas stations marking it as an Interstate connector—seems charming and picturesque. Tuesday night we stayed in Anderson, California (just south of Redding) at the Gaia Anderson hotel. Even though it was just a waypoint on the trip, it was actually quite a nice place for a really good price. It’s new and built to "green" specs—energy efficient, with water conservation in mind, and organic and health-conscious. And it’s just off the freeway, which was convenient. The drive that first afternoon—Bend to Anderson/Redding—took us about 4 hours and 45 minutes. The next day, we drove about 11 hours through to San Diego, hitting rush hour Los Angeles traffic and losing about an hour and half to it. I completely hate Los Angeles traffic. And that pretty much mars the whole city for me. Driving through central California, south of Sacramento on that long, lonely stretch of I-5, is long, tedious, and a bit depressing. Desert and failed agriculture, with communities that only seem to have sprung up to service the Interstate. How people can live there is beyond me. And it’s crazy hot, from Redding on down; on our return trip, it was 105 degrees in Redding! At one point the kids wanted to open the windows so I let them briefly. It was like opening an oven door. After Wednesday, we were in San Diego four full days before returning on Monday. It was a great trip, and the weather—which had been forecasted to be 70 and overcast the entire time—actually turned out sunny, clear, and nicely hot (but not too hot). Which was a good thing, because Friday we hit the beach and had a great day—the water is cool but much warmer than the Oregon Coast, so we were able to actually, you know, go in it. My brother and I spent most of the time out in the surf, while I kept an eye on the kids and the women stayed on the beach. At one point I was far enough out so that when a wave crashed over me—intentionally—I couldn’t touch bottom. That was a bit spooky. Sunday we all went to the San Diego Zoo. Something like 16 of us total. It was a bit chaotic, but a good day. And it was hot—the hottest day in San Diego since we arrived. There were several sunburned people to show for it. Interesting fact I learned (but didn’t personally verify): apparently the Howard Johnson on Hotel Circle has a lifesize Hulk Hogan statue in the lobby. As much as I dislike Los Angeles, I like San Diego. The big negatives are (obviously) the traffic and the urban sprawl; everything is very spread out, along freeways, and tuned to the stripmall. Something might be "just across the freeway" but to cross it you might have to jump on, exit a mile down the road, loop around and cross another exchange just to get there. But for that, it’s appealing and likable. And of course, it’s a great beer town. Not much to say about the Monday drive home except that we went straight through (stopping only for gas, bathroom breaks, and fast food), and made it in 14.5 hours. We left at about 7:30 in the morning and were home by about 10 that night. The kids held up remarkably well, better than I hoped. So it’s doable—but I’m not sure I’d want to do it again. Although you do save money if you don’t stay overnight…

Travelogue: Lincoln City, Oregon, June ’09
In June my wife and I spent the weekend in Lincoln City, Oregon, for an anniversary trip. It was fairly low-key, and though we’ve been to Lincoln City a number of times before, we’re usually passing through; our last "big" trip there was in 2006. This time around we were able to spend some more time than usual exploring the town. I’ve said before, Lincoln City is one of my favorite Oregon Coast towns, and it may well be moving close to the number one position. It sits about halfway between Newport and Pacific City, two other towns I really like; it’s big enough to be a destination city but small enough to be charming and quaint; it’s the easiest coast city to reach from Bend and sits at a relatively major intersection of Highway 101 and Route 18 (a connector for McMinnville, Salem, and Portland); the weather is (anecdotally) more temperate than other areas on the Central Coast. Most of this travelogue entry is going to consist more of random notes I jotted down than any particular narrative. Lincoln City is funny in that it seems more like two towns than one, due largely to the fact that most of the town is stretched out along Highway 101 and is roughly divided into distinct north and south sections. When the highway hooks east around a promontory, you feel isolated enough so that you think at first you’re leaving the town (if you’re unfamiliar with the area). The "northern town" stretches roughly from the Lighthouse Square and Chinook Winds Casino area to the Factory Stores; the "southern town" looks noticeably older and houses the Taft Historic District, before Highway 101 curves south and east around Siletz Bay. Chinook Winds Casino is to a large extent what Lincoln City is known for these days, from a tourism standpoint. We spent some time there, naturally, but didn’t win anything. (Overall I rate their casino experience as "kinda meh".) More interesting was the fact that they were celebrating their 14th anniversary the same weekend we were; not only did they have Billy! Ray! Cyrus! live in concert both Friday and Saturday night that weekend, but they also had a fireworks show on Saturday night that we were able to see from our room overlooking the beach. (A hint for those foregoing the concert experience but still want to catch some of the live music: in the gift shop, a vent in the back corner pipes in the music from the theater really well.) Yes, we splurged a bit an got a nice beachfront room for the weekend, at the aptly-named Beachfront Manor Hotel. It was quite nice, and we had a terrific view of the beach and ocean from the deck. Just up the road from the Beachfront Manor there is another hotel called Surftides, and they have a restaurant on premises named Mist that we checked out. It’s a hell of a neat place—the lounge in particular has a funky ’70s maritime Tiki bar feel to it, with low-backed faux-leather chairs, bench-style seating in one section, a sunken bar, and a central open fireplace with a hammered-copper hood above it. (No torches, though, so it’s not a complete Tiki experience.) They have good drinks and good pizza and a decent beer selection (for a small coast town)—stop in for happy hour. At the other end of the day you might want to try Richens for breakfast; they’re a bit pricey but they serve up some of the biggest (no joke) portions of, well, everything on their menu. Seriously, I couldn’t finish my omelet (with bay shrimp and Tillamook cheddar, I think it was), and that’s unusual. And just look at the size of these mimosas: Yes, those are large wedges of orange on the sides; you almost need both hands to drink these. We ordered them expecting the typical champagne-and-OJ in a champagne glass! Though the prices were a bit on the high side, don’t expect anything too fancy—they’re a down-home diner with comfort food and no pretensions. I enjoy that sort of place, my wife not so much, so your mileage may vary. (But I recommend it.) Cognitive dissonance: there’s a restaurant named Lil’ Sambo’s right there on Highway 101, on the north end of town. It’s a pancake house, and even has a statue of a tiger out front with a big stack of ‘cakes and lots of melted butter… yeah, it’s like that. There’s even a Google Street View so you can see for yourself. We discovered what may be the greatest used bookstore ever (outside of Powell’s): Robert’s Book Shop. We stopped in because I wanted to check it out and it was across the street from a series of quaint gift shops we were visiting; from the street it looks like any run-of-the-mill used bookstore in an older building but it looks promising. You enter, and right away you know you’ve found a gem: the shelves are packed, and spaced pretty close together—two people don’t easily squeeze by each other. You wander the shelves, checking subjects and picking up the occasional book, when you realize that you’ve reached what you thought was the end of the room (based on how big you thought the store was from the outside), and there’s another large room of books beyond that. And then there’s yet another larger room beyond that. And you wander back the other way and head towards the "back" of the shop and there are more rooms than keep going like the others. This place was like, five times bigger on the inside that it appeared on the outside, and they’ve packed an astounding number of books into the place, so it feels like you’ve entered a TARDIS. Lots, lots, lots of great books and I could easily blow a day there. If you love books, there is simply no excuse not to visit Robert’s if you’re in Lincoln City. At the south end of town is the Taft Historic District: a shopping district with a bunch of public parking and beach access. Mo’s Restaurant is located there, and you can get a (free) WiFi signal from the parking lot nearby, in front of the Looking Glass Inn. The beach from Taft is pretty awesome: it fronts the Siletz Bay and has a real park-like quality to it, the kind of beach you want to bring a grill and several coolers down to and spend the day, with a big driftwood bonfire. (Several groups were doing this, sans the bonfire.) A bit of a walk takes you to the entrance of the Bay where the beach turns into the "real" ocean beach and curves north. There’s a ton of driftwood and really good beachcombing to be found here. And a lot of people were fishing and crabbing right off the sand in the Bay. Some warm summer day we’re going to go to Lincoln City and just spend the day chillin’ on this beach, with the afore-mentioned grill and coolers. And maybe a bonfire. In the older northern stretch of town—you’ll know it when you drive through it, it seems like it might once have been considered "downtown"—the Bijou Theater claims to be the oldest theater in Oregon (their website says since 1937). In the same stretch of town, close to the Bijou, the Old Oregon Tavern looks similarly historic. It intrigues me, but I’m sure it’s just a seedy old dive bar. Inexplicably the sign has a rainbow on it. (Sadly, I did not take a picture.) And finally, while walking along that stretch of "old downtown" shopping, I came across the greatest (or most evil?) car ever: I have some other notes about Lincoln City, but they’ll wait until our next trip. In the meantime, you really should go visit.

A book I’d like to read
A few years back, Law & Order had an episode where the killer planted a body part in the wreckage of the World Trade Center so that the crime would be covered up, looking instead like collateral damage from 9/11. It almost worked (but didn’t, of course) and got me thinking that the same type of plot device could be used in a different historical context, for instance the London Blitzkrieg during World War II. So of course I began working the idea around in my head: a body is found in the rubble of a London building, and it turns out to have been planted there to cover up a murder. But since I’ve very little experience reading detective fiction I’ve decided that rather than trying to put that idea to paper myself, some writer out there must already have tackled the subject of mystery fiction set during World War II London. And I’d rather like to read it. So, the question: does anyone know of such fiction, and/or could point me in the right direction? (Besides Amazon and Google searches, I mean. I’ll do that too, but those are no substitutes for actual recommendations.)

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