thistownvt

scribbles ...

• I saw the police's radar/speed warning trailer on Woodstock Ave. on Saturday. It seemed to be having issues with the traffic flow (hint: we were all doing more than 27 mph). Did anybody else notice that when it was set up on West Street a few days ago, they had the speed limit wrong? It compared your speed to a 35-mph limit, but the posted speed is 30 mph from the top of the hill just east of the railroad trestle. Oops ...
• Well, we know who's winning the parental influence tug-of-war, at least when it comes to music. On the way to the boys' first professional hockey game (Adirondack Phantoms 4, Albany Devils 3), I was searching unsuccessfully on the FM for something more appropriate than Cat Country (gack) and generic office-muzak "rock" stations. Katya asked if I wanted to hear the end of a book on CD. I said thanks, but I was looking for something a little more exciting, to get into the mood for the game. "Yeah!" piped up Callum from the back seat. "See if you can find VPR classical!" ... . For the record, the first band on the PA at the game was AC/DC. Hell's bells!
• Verticals, for those of you not into news jargon, are web sites "reporting" on their own content. They're common in the world of what passes for sports journalism this side of the Atlantic: mlb.com; nhl.com, etc., etc. This morning's headlines are all about Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewer's shiny new MVP, testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs; specifically, he has admitted to testing positive for artificial testosterone, although he says he can prove he was drugged by an outside agent. It's the first few hours of the story, so the headlines on Google News are almost all a variation of "Braun tests positive." That's why one stood out: "Braun deserves benefit of doubt" ... from mlb.com.
• Just for Gordon ...
• Mythbusters were testing whether homemade cannons work when it went a teensy bit wrong ... like putting a round shot through a house and into a minivan on a freeway wrong. Oops. Update for fellow geeks: It was the build team, not Adam and Jamie.
• An update from my friends with the beef (grass fed, humanely slaughtered and downright delicious from Pawlet, VT. ... The cows came in a little smaller than last year, so they are just $400 per quarter ... cut, wrapped and frozen. Drop me a line and I'll forward your their contacts. I'm a confirmed carnivore, and I approve of this message.
• To my Caps fans friends ... Alex Ovechkin is Alexei Yashin: Spoiled, selfish players with oodles of talent and no desire or commitment to the team. Coach killers. Prima donnas. Come to grips with it now and you won't be so disappointed in 18 months when he forces a trade to the Rangers or Los Angeles.
• One theory has it that the reason Microsoft's word processor is not called "Words" is because of the limits of its spelling database and truth-in-advertising laws ... . So it's rare, nay, almost unheard of, to find a distinctly more useless automated spell-checking "tool." Unless you use WordPress. The built-in editor just rejected "bocce." OK, maybe hoping that software will ever be able to help our alphabetically challenged brethren distinguish between "loose" and "lose" or "reign" and "rein" is too much*. And technically "bocce" is a foreign word, although there's no analogous English word, so it's not like I was trying to slip in bonsoir for "good evening" or anything. The game's called bocce in Italy and bocce in Flatbush. In the words of Big Al Small, "Adam-12, Adam-12 ... report of a two-O brootal in progress ..." *Although it does flag "rein" to make sure users don't mean "reign," it doesn't work vice-versa. And it offers two different lists of suggested replacements for bocce and "bocce." The winning entry: How about a nice glass of Chianti and a game of bodice after dinner?
• Amazing hike in Pine Hill Park today ... Rocky Pond via Droopy Muffin / Underdog up and Overlook / Salamander down. Callum made all 4.8 miles; Finn needed a lift for about oughtpoint2. Lots and LOTS of people on foot and wheels. Met one guy from Woodstock -- here with his family -- who was talking about how often he brings friends to ride, then have a bite at a local eatery. Woodstock's loss = Rutland's gain.
• I have friends in Pawlet who keep a few cows and sell the beef by the quarter periodically. The cattle are free-range, grass-fed, humanely slaughtered (not an oxymoron); the beef is excellent. It's $500 for a mixed quarter (so not a front or hind quarter) ... just under 100 pounds, cut, wrapped and frozen. Drop me a note and I'll put you in touch with my friends.
• The weather forecast is for 1-4 inches of snow tonight into tomorrow morning, with the worst of the storm skirting us to the southeast. Of course, the forecast six hours before Irene was for 1-4 inches of rain, with the worst of the storm skirting to the southeast. Then the storm turned due north ...
• From the top: 8:45 AM -- RAHA learn to skate / learn to play hockey program for kids at Spartan Arena. 9:15 AM -- Race-day registration opens for the Halloween 5K put on by city rec. Race time is 10. 10 AM -- The One City One Prompt event, a two-hour shared writing experience, starts at the Fox Room of the Rutland Free Library. My comrade in blog Jim Sabataso has all the info. 10 AM -- Killington opens for the weekend ... only one run to date, but it never hurts to remind Boston that you're here when you get snow in October. 10 AM -- Vermont's finest farmers' market (don't take my word for it; it won an online poll this fall from the American Farmland Trust) wraps up its outdoor season at Depot Park until 2 PM. 6:30 PM -- Halloween Parade steps off downtown. So just the usual stuff going on ... gotta love Vermont.
• Finian, 5, is a big fan of Star Wars. In fact, he recently announced he's "obsexxed" with it.
• I am off to New York City on Friday with Michael Smith and Jim Sabataso to do a panel discussion at the Pratt Center after a screening of Art Jones' most excellent documentary "The Blood in This Town." It will be exciting to see how small-town revitalization plays in a big-city setting. Should be a lot of fun.
• A few weeks ago, I spent the days leading up to the weekend putting up "OPEN" posts for every business, nonprofit and community group that sent in emails declaring they had sufficiently recovered from T.S. Irene to welcome customers. I tried to interest a couple of people (including a state agency) to partner on a website to do just that in more organized fashion, but everybody was too busy to get it accomplished. So I'm excited to see the Vermont Country Store has gotten vermontisopen.com up in time for the rest of the leaf season and into the winter. A huge thanks and good work on behalf of the small business community in the state who don't have the resources to get this done.
• There was so much going on last weekend ... one more week of prime foliage season to enjoy the fall activities, but the weather will never be better. We were out and about (boys' soccer, Art in the Park, Castleton homecoming) and it still felt like we missed so much must-do stuff. Fall in Vt. is the best ...