I'll start this Blog with a song since I love music so much, where I got the title from; great duet and great song.





I don’t feel old but at 61 some would say that I am. Anyway, I finally decided to make a blog on 2+2. Don’t know how well I can keep up, or what to spew out but I’m sure something interesting will take form. Plus, I have to keep up with Ray Zee. So now I have an extra excuse to hang about this palace of sin.

I am a bibliophile and love to read and have an extensive library; I enjoy music a great deal and have a large CD collection (now old fashion I know); I like to travel when I can; I enjoy fly fishing and learned the art from my dad years ago; and I’m a curmudgeon if not an outright Misanthrope. I’ve had three careers so far, the latest one the best as a professional scientist. I may start a fourth has I’m in a transition phase right now.

Immediate reason to start this blog though is that I will be traveling to Europe (France, Denmark and the UK) starting Tuesday, Oct 21. So if I have time, I will chronicle for the 2+2 enlighten bloggers here my Eurotrash adventures. I will be visiting my friend Stuart (and his wife Lisa), whom I have known since my undergraduate days at the University of Oregon. He currently lives some miles from Toulouse out in the country. He travels for work so I also get to visit Copenhagen and London, because I will just tag along with him for much of his work travels.

Below are my friend Stuart (in red) and I in Xian, China 2005.




As to my character and worldview - Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.




I will also post about music and books, other travel reports, fishing and general ramblings on why the universe is a cesspool.


I'll end my first post with an album recommendation. I won’t provide a link; just looked it up. The best small jazz/blues/swing band you never heard off. Album came out on late 90’s - A Night Out with Blue Plate Special. Check it out, you will not be disappointed.

welcome to the blogs zeno. i look forward to seeing and reading those things from you that i have little knowledge of that you are endowed with. excuse the preposition.

Arrived yesterday after an uneventful but long flight and connections. I just stayed up first day to plough trough the time change. Worked well: today i feel great. Just relaxed , weny for pleasent walk, swam in host's pool, ate great lunch on deck, read some Spike Milligan. Also went to small village market to get food. We will have rabbit for dinner soon, it is soaking in white wine now. Host is excellent cook. Will post some pics when i can.

I look forward to your musings as I have in The Lounge. I know you post a lot In SMP, but that place makes me think too much and my brain starts to feel funny. Anyway, I'm glad to see you made it to France ok. I can tell that it's had an effect on you, in that you misspelled some words and you don't give a ****. But that's your style anyway.

Love Spike Milligan.

i'm now in Copenhagen getting run over by crazy Danes on bicycles. also using friend's ipad so expect more spelling errors than normal. will not post pics untill my triumphant return to the states. many Danish woman are stunningly beautiful.

Yes, there are some gorgeously bred women and men in Denmark. I lived there for about a year once and felt very ugly when not drunk on Tuborg and schnapps.

visited the national museum today, will finish visit tomorrow, museum is free. then I will visit the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Housed in a building so impressive it is used by god when on vacation.

Can't believe a year has passed by. Fell down on keeping up on this for a variety of reasons but won't dwell on them. Anyway.................Since it is fall again and some may be harvesting the last of their garden etc., thought this would be useful to some:



Fried Green Tomatoes; I made some last night. They turned out very yummy. The green tomatoes are from my garden; I had to harvest them because of cooler and freezing weather. I got the recipe online, which I modified some. In general, it was a three stage process, plus cooking. See below. Slice the green tomatoes about ¼ inch thick. Then coat in flour (bowl on left). Then coat in egg and milk mix (1/2 cup milk and egg whites, do not use the yolk). Then coat with a mix (1/2 cup each) of half corn meal and half bread crumbs (pan on right). Also add in two teaspoon of sea salt and some fresh ground pepper.




Heat a large skillet with ~ ½ inch of vegetable oil over medium heat. Toss in the coated green tomatoes. Open a beer and drink while watching these gorgeous babies cook. In the pan; cook till golden brown – take care when you flip; the second side will cook a bit faster than the first.



Finished product, they came out nice and crisp with no oily saturated surface, nor does the oil penetrate and make the tomatoes soggy, which is truly horrible and usually how they are done (the first coating with flour helps with this). Eat while hot as soon as you can. Add more sea salt and fresh ground pepper to your taste. Eat, Cook, and Gulp Beer - Repeat until full.



Satisfaction guaranteed.

yep they are good, this seems to make you look like a southern boy zeno.

you missed out on oregon buddy. last two years there it has hardly rained and only had bright sunny days. although not much water in the rivers. good chinook runs but i never got anything over about 28 pounds. mostly around 20 to 22

Good for you Ray. Were the Chinook out of the Rogue?

I will be in Oregon this winter, in fact will be driving to Oregon (to my place on the Southern Oregon coast ~ an hour drive from the Rogue River) in a few days and arrive sometime in early November. Just in time for some of the salmon/steelhead/trout season. Will stay ~3 months.

If I catch something worth bragging about I'll post it here.

mostly out of nehalem bay and tillamook bay for the fish.soon thry will be packing in the rivers more. just starting.
i used to fish the rogue in the 1970,s. mostly for steelhead. rogue river up to shady cove.

Five-string Banjo. Purchased about a week ago; I plan on teaching myself to play and I'm already practicing using instruction booklet etc to get the basics down. Once I'm good enough, I hope to play with Bela Fleck.

or post us a video right here pal.

I'm on the road...........

Missed this first time around. Welcome back.

In reference to the first post, I used to be in the high end video equipment rental business and a long time ago I received a phone call from Robert Plant wanting a quote for an editing system to be set up at his Northern California house. Unfortunately he didn't follow through with it.

So to finally catch up, being a good year since last posting : I retired and I made my permanent move to Oregon this August-September. I live somewhere on the Southern Oregon coast, not too far from a small town and a small salmon invested river. Beautiful country. I own a few acres of land, a small very modest home, a large shop building, and a cozy bunkhouse - for wayward fishing fanatics.

Have a wood stove so I've been cutting and splitting some wood, mostly from my own place but also got some free wood from my neighbors.

Rains have finally started so the salmon will soon be coming in, in good numbers I hope.

Moving is a real pain. I moved from the Southwest to the Northwest, back into the country that I spent my first 35 years in. Good to be back. But the shear task of moving, I did the U-Haul thing and towed one of my vehicles; but particularly all the damn paper work and changing of documents, license, titles, insurance and etc., etc., is sort of mind boggling. Hope I do not have to move again.

Will post a few pics I think of future garden area and my acres of forest. I have a large pile of branches etc to burn that will make an excellent bonfire. The fire restriction needs lifting before I can do that but with the recent rains that will be soon.

Need to work this winter on putting up a fence for the garden I plan on planting in the spring. Too many deer, they are almost tame, about to not have a fence. May plant some fruit trees and berries (blueberries and huckleberries) also. Will not need to fence those in.

All for now............

zeno ol buddy if you dont fence in the fruit trees you will have a nice row of barren sticks sitting there in the spring. newly planted deciduous trees are like candy to deer.

at least put a 5 foot welded wire fence out from their branches

coming down 101 i had to 4 wheel it over a downed tree. looks like more of those on the way. lost power for a half hour already but back on. rain gauge had 4 inches since last rain and it might hit another 6 inches form this storm. need to start carrying a chain saw when i go out. been a bunch of times ive had a tree down on the road in front of me. most times i could hook a chain to it and drag it back a feet to get around.
but 5 minutes with a chain saw and you are on your way.

My road up the river was covered with small debris and limbs this morning but nothing really big. Some one was up road earlier and I think moved some larger debris and limbs off the road. The chain saw idea is good (which I have) but I like the chain thing to. Need to get one.

Yard is full of limbs. Will leave them there as it will just be added to this weekend. Then I'll clean it up.

manzanita got a tornado. the whole main street is full of downed trees and a bunch of houses and businesses lost roofs and parts of the buildings.

Nasty weather here this morning. V.Strong winds and driving rain. No tornadoes though.

Good thing about living near/in rural small towns: You meet up with neighbor(s) at the local breakfast place and can chat and catch up on up-river and down-river news. Also, they offer you pay to come and trim their fruit trees for them, as happened to me this morning.

Bad thing about living near/in rural small towns: The local bad druggies, usually meth heads and the like, that are into small petty crimes and live in trashy places that depress land values. The good druggies, old pot heads from the 60's-70's for example, are usually Ok people and have nice flower gardens and tend to keep up their homes.

i wont live in a city ever. small towns are all i want to be in. at least you know who the meth heads are and they arent killers. most are regular joes with a problem.

Went fishing, came up empty - sort of. Saw a family of river otters, 8-10 wild turkeys, and going up river saw a herd of about a dozen elk. One large 5-point bull and one small spike bull, the rest cows. Lots of boats and fish in the river(s). Going out early tomorrow, high tide right at sunrise. Beautiful evening with no wind and nice sunshine. A fish would have made it a perfect day but nonetheless it was very worthwhile.