Archive for June, 2009
First Day of Summer–Brrrrrr!!!
As we headed out to the gym this morning the outdoor temperature read 48 degrees. What bizarre weather!
In a Groove – 85 at Mt. Si
After Wednesday’s two-over par 38 I couldn’t wait, of course, to get back out on the links. In spite of the light drizzle and occasional showers I headed to Mt. Si for an early afternoon round. I didn’t strike the ball as well as Wednesday, especially off the tee, but my short game was very solid and I recorded a consistent 42-43 for an 85, one of my best rounds ever from the blue tees. A missed three-foot birdie putt and an eight on hole number 16 kept me from a potential best-ever round.
Those showers, btw, ended the record-tying twenty-nine consecutive rainless days. We got a real drenching in the early evening and the plants and trees are looking revived already.
Still No Rain
It’s official: it’s the driest spring in Seattle history with 29 straight days without rain equaling the 1982 record. We don’t usually have this kind of parched stretch until July-August. It’s been nice but hard to keep all our plants happy.
Whew! Two-Over Par
After work I stopped at Mt. Si to practice on the driving range but it was such a nice, mild day and there weren’t many folks on the course so I headed out for a quick nine holes. After an uneventful bogey on the first hole I went par-birdie-par over the next three. I got lucky on a few errant shots like the mishit 7-iron on number six that bounced off a tree back into the fairway instead of heading into the woods. From there, I hit a superb sand wedge from forty yards to within eighteen inches of the hole and a tap-in par. Then there was an impressive 290 yard drive on number 9 leading to an easy par there. So I finished with a 38, my second lowest nine-hole score ever.
Guns and Burgers
Posted by nbdog in Commentary on 17-Jun-2009
I heard today (The News Hour, June 16th) that there are more retail guns stores in the U.S. than there are McDonald’s restaurants in the world. What a bizarre culture we live in where it’s easier to buy AK-47s than quarter pounders and fries.
And thanks to recent federal legislation it will be legal to carry all those munitions in national parks.
Gold Mountain Golf
Health Care
We’re doomed! I just read Atul Gawande’s June 1 New Yorker article (“The Cost Conundrum“) on the huge regional variances in U.S. health care costs. Just as in the banking calamity the problem has its roots in simple greed. Doctors and hospitals make more money in a system that allows them to see selected patients on a piece-work basis, order multiple tests, prescribe numerous drugs and operate on as many of them as possible. The profit is in quantity not in quality of care; and certainly not in preventative medicine. Thus were a nation stuck with mediocre health care at the highest per capita cost in the world. I can’t imagine the lobbyists in DC will permit any real changes in this cash cow.
Class of ’69 Forty Years Later
Whew! Forty years ago today –on Friday the 13th no less– I waltzed out of the University of Toledo with a B.A. degree… and no more sense of what I was going to do than when I first registered. What a wondrous four years it was! I couldn’t get enough of any discipline; well, except calculus. There was botany, astronomy, logic, economics, social psychology, state and local government…, it was all fascinating. Oh and my official major, of course, Spanish and those countless hours memorizing dialogs in the language lab. I recall the delightful discovery of Baroque music as I spent many afternoons studying in the “music listening room.” Certainly, I spent way too many hours as well playing basketball, sometimes first thing in the morning and again until the gym closed at night.
- Nixon sworn in as President
- Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
- Beatles gives their last performance
- first ARPANET (later the Internet) link established
- Jets beat the Colts in Superbowl III
- most powerful tropical storm in history, Hurricane Camille
- Wendy’s sells its first hamburger
- Mets win the World Series
- Seseame Street debuts
- martial law declared in Madrid
- first Led Zeppelin album released
- WalMart opens for business
- Chicago Eight trial begins
- the first artificial heart transplant
- British troops deployed in Northern Ireland
- initial flight of the Boeing 747
- Manson/Sharon Tate murders
- Woodstock
- first ATM machines installed
- draft lottery reconstituted
Front Yard Touch-Up
Posted by nbdog in Around the house on 7-Jun-2009
We finally finished our rock walls and new plantings in the front yard. It took three trips in the little Volvo to get the almost ton of rocks we needed. We like this new way to manage the slope from the east side of the yard and it gives us a new space to highlight some colorful bushes and flowers.
Nutmeg50@hotmail.com 
CEO Greed
Posted by nbdog in Commentary on 22-Jun-2009
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