Category: Local

I’ve been meaning to post a link to this story, but hadn’t had a chance. A few weeks ago, we had over 100 micro-quakes underneath South Sister. A retired math teacher in Albany says that the earthquakes aren’t over. Why? His headaches tell him so.

Retired math teacher Jerry Hurley of Albany believes the seismic rumbling isn’t over beneath the bulge swelling the land at the South Sister volcano in the Central Oregon Cascades.

How does he know? His headaches tell him so — and after 21 years charting the links between those headaches and earthquakes near and far, he’s used to the snickers, chuckles or outright guffaws, but is quite serious about his tie to the Earth rumbling beneath our feet.

Apparently he’s been getting these headaches for 20 years. The comments on the article are entertaining, and I’m with the comments: the guy sounds a bit loopy.

It’s April 15th (Have you done your taxes?), and what do I wake up to? About two inches of snow. I took pictures last night when it first started, but my image upload script on this blog has gone nuts, so I’ll send ’em over to Barney for the story he’ll probably be posting on Bend.com about it (which I’ll be linking to when it happens). Meanwhile, I might have to go throw the studs on my car so I can make it to work this morning.

Update: Here’s a story on the storm.

Jon found this one and it’s been added to the Blogroll: Brainside Out (which, if you read the domain wrong like I originally did, it reads like “Bra Inside Out”).

Saturday night, the annual Sadie Hawkin’s Dance at Bend HS was closed down early because the students at the dance were getting a bit too cozy:

“Quite honestly it’s like having sex with your clothes on,” said Mary McDermott, a teacher and the school’s activities director, describing the style of dancing.

Apparently there were signs on the doors said no freak dancing and no grinding (like high schoolers are going to read that stuff). Now, I understand their reasoning for wanting them to not do it, but it just reminds me of the old lady when I was growing up that used to walk around school dances with a ruler and make sure you were 12-inches apart when you were dancing. By being bastards about it, they’ve all but encouraged it from happening as much as possible in the future. Ask the offenders to leave — forcefully if you have to — but don’t blow the rest of the dance for everybody who are there to just have fun and be social.

What gets me is that I know Bend HS, and all the other high schools in Bend, have a tropical-themed dance every year, and they let that go on when the women and men are about as close to naked as you can get in public. At least the folks at Sadies had their clothes on.

Update: Link to story added. Duh…

Bend is growing fast, and is making national headlines. How? By the fact that we’re the biggest city in the West that doesn’t have a public transportation system. Here’s the story at the Fresno Bee that appeared over on CNN as well. It’s an Associated Press story that originally appeared in the Oregonian a couple weeks back.

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Usually you’d have eBay for something like this, but what if you just want to get rid of it, and it’s something that would be better off gotten rid of locally? Bendites now have a solution. From their site:

SWAP is designed to promote reuse of materials in Central Oregon. It is a free and convenient way for individuals and businesses to exchange reusable or surplus products and prevent them from ending up in the dump.

Do you have used plastic buckets, glass jars or wood pallets collecting dust in your garage? Place a listing on SWAP for reuse by someone else.

Are you looking for used building supplies, packaging material or fabric scraps? Search our SWAP database. We may have what you are looking for and then some.

I have some excess stuff that I think I might just end up listing on there. The hard-to-find search screen is here.

We got a good chunk of snow here in Bend in the last 24 hours — a good six inches or more, depending on where you live. I know I had to dig my way to my car this morning, and my commute took a good hour this morning (usually 30 minutes). Story and pics over at Bend.com.

On the way to work, and when I got to work, I took a few pictures. The first two are me just pointing the camera blindly while driving, not even caring if they came out, and the last one is from my office.

    

The rumors are that it’s supposed to warm up a tad (though I doubt the 42-degrees that AccuWeather seems to say we’ll hit), and then snow again later tonight. So it’ll warm up, melt a bit, and then freeze. <sarcasm>Yahoo.</sarcasm>

The Associated Press via KGW reports on a study by Sperling’s BestPlaces, which reports that Portland Oregon is the 6th most stressful city, following Tacoma, Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and New York. The full study can be found here.

I’m sure that the entire state in general is probably pretty stressful. With the unemployment rate and the budget being all messed up, and having a pro sports team like the Jail Blazers being the only one in the state, I’d be (am) a bit stressed, too.

Hell, live in Deschutes County long enough, and it’ll drive you mad. Before long, you’ll start bickering at co-workers in public.

Thanks Rob for the link.

Looking outside right now, it’s a whopping two degrees. And we’re down to about 24 hours left of firewood.

Dangit. That means I have to turn the furnace back on, which I really don’t want to do.