PSoTD

Guess I'm eventually going to have to lose the Oktoberfest attitude...

You Are Samuel Adams

You're fairly easy to please when it comes to beer - as long as it's not too cheap. You tend to change favorite beers frequently, and you're the type most likely to take a "beers of the world" tour. When you get drunk, you're fearless. You lose all your inhibitions. You're just as likely to party with a group of strangers as you are to wake up in a very foreign place.

In Kenova, West Virginia. 3,030 pumpkins? Maybe next year we'll check it out.

It is a beautiful day in Central Pennsylvania.

But as I remember it, pretty funny.

When we lived in Indiana, milk was delivered to our house. In the early 1970s, however, when we moved to California, that service was not available in our area. Which brings me to this little tidbit about Livermore, California:

More than 40 years ago and until the early 1980s, a water tower graced the property. It usually was painted with an "LHS" for Livermore High School, except when pranksters from that upstart school, Granada High, would change the "L" to a "G." Another thing that Hexcell did was let us know the time. Every weekday at precisely noon, a whistle would blow. You could set your watch by that whistle.

This reminiscing also got me to thinking about other things around town that once were but are no longer. Some of the things no longer with us are the Snow White Drive-in on South L Street; the A&W drive-in on First Street that had real carhops and great burgers; Mally's Restaurant on First Street; and the Livermore Sky Ranch, the city's original airport that was open from 1929 to 1966.

Other places that once graced our town were Holdner's Dairy on Stanley Boulevard, now the Peppertree Shopping Plaza; the Livermore Beverage Company that was housed on Sixth Street in a residential area but provided great service for many years; and finally, for this list at least, the Village Canteen and the shoeshine stand that graced the front. They sold sodas, candy, cigarettes and risqué magazines that would be tame by today's standards.

I remember this Livermore. I never quite understood the draw of Mally's, the times we went there were lots of flies buzzing around, and really diminished my appreciation of the food.

But Holdener's Dairy... that brings back memories. (Here's the history of the dairy) I remember, when I first got my driver's license, volunteering to go get two gallons of milk and a couple loaves of bread at Holdener's. I'd drive my Mom's Ford Chateau van, and love every second of it. A year later, I still had to do it, but it was a chore, and with three growing boys in our family, a chore I had to do close to every other day.

It had a long loop driveway, and the folks that worked there would come sprinting out to your car to get your order. They'd run back to the covered area of the drive-thru store, then run back out with your order and take your money and give you your change. There were huge eucalyptus trees all over the property. It was old-fashioned and quaint and actually kind of cool.

Livermore had a "no growth" development policy in the 1970s which probably forced Holdener's to stick around a bit longer than many other dairies in other towns. The no growth policy eventually was overturned, because cities like Pleasanton were growing into Livermore anyways and not really keeping overpopulation down, and Holdner's property value became too great to remain a dairy business. I think it closed while I was in college at Sac State.

It's odd, the things we remember as symbols of growing up.

It's October 22nd, and the snow shovels are for sale. SNOW SHOVELS!!!!

There's some sort of deeper message when Katie Couric is on the cover of Good Housekeeping, and the first thing you notice is how much airbrushing must have been done. If the purported goal of news is the search for the truth, what does it say when the goal of promoting those who read the news is to falsely enhance their image?

It couldn't possibly be a right...

If you're looking for something...

Never heard of this description before, but I thought it was funny...

Other top turnoffs include "muffin tops" (too-tight pants that leave the mid-section looking like a muffin top).

How low-tech beats high-tech.

Can you get Pringles in Argentina or India or Thailand? This map appears to indicate no. I don't know why, but I'm surprised, I thought they were ubiquitous.

Why does this make sense to the Catholic Church?

I kid you not.

The First Baptist Church of Central Florida will soon have a 199-foot-tall cross at its west Orange County campus.

Orange County commissioners on Tuesday approved construction of the cross — which is 51/2 times higher than zoning allows in that area — by a 6-1 vote.

The Rev. Clayton Cloer made the same pitch Tuesday.

"The cross is not a sign; it is a symbol. A sign identifies; a symbol expresses," Cloer said. "To compare the cross to a Wal-Mart sign or a McDonald's sign . . . is what we believe would be an incorrect comparison."

What a ridiculous distinction. I look forward to the first adult entertainment location asking Orange County Commissioners to allow them to build 199 foot male and female gender symbols.

We're putting on an addition and remodeling some of our house. It's a pretty interesting process (although trying) and now that we're in the actual construction and deconstruction part of the process, here's a tidbit I've learned:

You Never Remodel Alone.

No, I'm not talking about contractors. I'm talking about neighbors! People you know, and people you don't know, notice the trucks and dumpsters and deliveries and noise and work going on at your house, and everyone wants to know - what are you doing?

It's actually pretty cool. We all take our neighbors' homes for granted unless there's change or problems. And yes, our neighbors' have the right to make change, but we have a vested interest as well - after all, we're going to view the house for the foreseeable future. And so neighbors want to know - who's doing the work, what's being done, what's the vision, etc. And of course, we enjoy talking about it, since it's the biggest new thing going on in our lives at the time being, and it's something we live with everyday, and we're pretty much the only ones who know what the end result will be. So, it's a big plus added to the minuses of dirt and disorder and no kitchen and the other temporary hassles of remodeling.