Via: Flickr Title: 06-19-07_1924.jpg By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 19 Jun ’07, 7.25pm CDT PST
Seen at Walgreens: a rabbit not long for this world, given the nature of his nesting material.  And no, I did not pose it there – someone else out here in the bland, featureless suburbs has a somewhat roccoco sense of humor.
Oh. Wait… this just begs to be cheezburg0red.
OpenNTF.org – Print attachments with OLE Aut
This ALMOST works, but it prints all the worksheets and I only want it to print the first one. The docs say “we do it this way to print all the worksheets” in a rather insufferable way.
How do I post photos to my blog?  First you’ll have to configure an external blog, (do that here). You’ll be guided through the set-up process, and at the end you can try a test post to make sure everything works.
When that’s done, you can blog any public photo you see on Flickr. When you’re looking at a single photo, for example, http://www.flickr.com/photo.gne?id=23754, you’ll see a “Blog This” button above it.
Note: If you don’t see the “Blog This” button, you probably need to make the photo public (click “edit” next to the privacy indicator under “Additional Information” on the photo’s page).
Click the “Blog This” button for the photo you want to post. If you’ve set up your blog, you can post immediately by adding a title and body for the post. There’s a link to your blog as well so you can check that the entry looks OK.
You can set up as many blogs as you like.
You can also create your own Flickr moblog. When you upload a photo to Flickr via email, and you have at least one blog set up in Flickr, we can post your photo to your blog automatically. Check your settings here.
For the record, I don’t use Flickr’s new moblog setup – mine is done old skool, with a combination of “email to Flickr” and “Flickr Blog This” settings. I’ve been meaning to check out the newer method, but the old one works just fine, with the occasional tweak or re-creation when I change blog templates or switch from one blogging platform to the other.
I have several blogs configured to use Flickr – Razzberry Vinaigrette is a Blogger one that I use as an occasional backup to this one, but is mostly a photoblog for specfic photos I want to highlight.
I don’t use Flickr as my photo database, but if they went casters up, I’d have a lot of dead image links that would have to be fixed. That’s not very likely at all, though they might offer some kind of migration tools, as Yahoo Photos is doing for its users before it closes in September (since they merged with Flickr, the latter service will probably get the lion’s share)
Note to self: Flickr/Yahoo/our broadband service are linked, and if I were migrating photos to Flickr from Yahoo Photos, as a broadband subscriber I’d have free “pro” status on Flickr for as long as we’re broadband subscribers. My annual “pro” account is up next month (I got a paid subscription around the time of the London terror bombings 2 years ago) and it might be worth a call to customer service to see if I could talk them into it.
CatGenie – The Worlds Only Self-Flushing, Self Washing Cat Box
This is truly weird – what if the cat has to “go” when the CatGenie is in cleanup mode?
I’ve disabled/removed the code for SnapShots previews; it seemed like an ‘Oooh!’ when I saw it on another blog, but has become an ‘Ehhhh’ because any mousing around caused the previews to pop up unexpectedly.
While Googling around looking for how to configure it, I ran across several mentions of it as an annoying feature, so maybe it’s just as well I’ve deleted it. If I can figure out how to set it to be less annoying, or to pop up on just a few types of links, the code goes in the “Footer” template of the current theme, just above the
Via: Flickr Title: Cowboy breakfast By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 16 Jun ’07, 11.43am CDT PST
We just had breakfast at the Creekside Cafe in Steamboat Springs; it was delicious and also the outdoor seating was really pleasant if a little crowded. What caught my eye was the party of locals in black hats by the entry, as they all had big rodeo buckles and wore their hats througout the meal in approved cowboy fashion when breakfasting alfresco. I wonder what the long-time local residents think of all the new development that turned Steamboat from a sleepy li’l one-eyed rancher’s town into an internationally renowned ski resort?
We drove by my Aunt Florence’s old house afterward – yes, it’s still there. It wasn’t the house on the corner of Merritt, it was the next house, and aside from a different color stain on the old faux-log siding and bigger aspen and pine trees out front, it’s almost unchanged, although the current owners converted the former garage (which was nearly useless in winter) to an entryway/mudroom.
My memory of place and time can be so unreliable, but when something slots into place, there’s almost an audible “thunk!” sound in my head. It was like that when I recognized the “bones” of Florency’s little old house, which was finally triggered when I saw their neighbor’s house, which was also nearly unchanged. There was a wide shared side yard between the two houses with roses, and there’s still a flower garden there.
When I was a kid, I used to play with the kids next door while Mom worked on straightening out Florence’s finances or tried to talk some sense into Marty, who used to buy new lawn mowers and snowblowers rather than change the oil and maintain them properly. He was well-liked in the neighborhood because he loved running his machines, whether it was cutting the “common” shared back lawn for all the neighboring houses in summer, or clearing driveways in winter. But he never could figure out how to fix things when they stopped working (like cars, or power tools, or gas-powered equipment), so he’d just buy new ones and give the old ones away. This may have been part of why he was so well-liked in the neighborhood.
Steamboat is busy today – there’s some dang car rally going on and Lincoln Ave/US 40 is blocked off for a car show called the “Mustang Round-up.” I’ve never seen or heard so many highly customized Ford Mustangs in my life, and half of the participants are staying up here by us.
Later on, we’re going to be out for the day and into the evening, and then we leave tomorrow. More later.
As the incessent moblogging makes clear, we’re not in Illinois at the moment. In fact, we’re on a 4-day weekend trip to visit some of our favorite places and meet up with my sisters for one last little item on our “To Do” list concerning Mom and her final wishes.
But more on that later. Today’s topic is urgent: a restaurant review that includes a dramatic bailout maneuver.
My husband David and I took the scenic route to Steamboat today – we were in Boulder for a couple of nights doing the sentimental journey thang, and then in a fateful decision noodled around through Rocky Mountain National Park instead of taking a more direct southern route. It was pretty, but we hit road construction – but then, we probably would have hit road construction if we’d taken the “fast” route, too.
We got into town around 430pm and found that the condo gods had put my sisters and brother-in-law (relax now, it’s a 2-bedroom) in the unit directly above ours. Which made meeting up really convenient – I had given Timmy the tip about where we’re staying (The Ranch at Steamboat, via Mountain Resorts) and a very, very nice place it is. They’ve got a 3rd night free deal during the month of June, and it’s very comfortable and homey in the condos, with a pool and hot tubs and a great view down the Yampa Valley.
Anyway, we discussed where to have dinner, and we wanted steak. There were 2 “western steakhouse” type places downtown, the 8th Street Steakhouse (“Best Steaks In Town” ) or the Old West Steakhouse. The ad for the first place, I read aloud: “Grill your own steaks on our lava rock grill.” That sounded fun in theory, but also left unspoken was the assumption that we also had the option of NOT grilling our own steaks if we didn’t feel like it. The other place had an agressively Western theme as you might imagine, and thank GOD I remembered the address correctly.
One of my sisters actually called and made reservations at the 8th Street Steakhouse, whose website blurb reads:
This downtown Steamboat tradition is known for serving the finest hand-crafted steaks and seafood in a magnificent western ambience. A great family dining experience touches every detail, from the authentic saddle seats for kids to the free s’mores desserts. Cook one of our prime grade strips, bacon-wrapped filets, juicy ribeyes, or kobe strips over our 20-foot lava rock grill; or sit back as we perfect our baby-back ribs, slow-roasted prime rib, Alaskan King crab legs, or Australian lobster tails. Start your night off with our award-winning stuffed mushrooms, accompany your 16oz prime NY strip with our fresh steamed asparagus or moist twice baked potato, and finish it off with one of our homemade desserts.
Okay, first of all, I was not aware that “magnificent” was synonimous with “dated, worn, and slightly tacky.” We should have known when we unrolled our napkins to find really cheap steak knives, but oh, well. The waiter told us that if we wanted steak, they had the best in town, but we’d have to go downstairs (we were seated upstairs), choose our steaks from the “butcher shop” meat case, and then walk it across the dining room to the lava rock grill in the front corner of the restaurant.
When we saw the prices next to the different cuts of meat, that’s when we all snapped out of the “go along with the adventure” mood – we were shocked that we were being asked to pay 3 or 4 times the grocery store price for a piece of meat that we’d still have to cook ourselves. Personally, I was concerned that I’d pay a lot of money for a ruined steak, because I wasn’t too confident of my ability to cook the dang steak without turning it into a piece of half-burned hash. Something about seeing the cuts of meat under glass made the disparity in price between a real butcher shop’s wares and the restaurant’s stuff a little too galling. And then we found that the “side” dishes were also overpriced, and ala carte.
I had found the ad for the place and felt irritated that I’d just assumed that we’d be able to order our steaks in the normal way, too. One of my sisters had called for the reservation, but we’d all sort of decided on 8th Street rather than the other restaurant, Old West Steakhouse, I’m not sure why.
So we bailed, but not before paying for our salads and drinks – we had separate checks, but the total for David and me was $21.00 and change; we had soft drinks and a serving of salad for that price.
Off we went down Lincoln Ave., the main drag. My sisters spent part of their childhoods in Steamboat, and I visited a lot here with Mom when we’d have to come in and help my aunt and my disabled cousin now and then. So the change in Steamboat is pretty marked, but some things are the same. F. M. Light and Sons, the cowboy outitters’ store, was still there. We walked down to 11th and Lincoln and there was the Old West building, with the Old West Steakhouse restaurant up on the side street. I was fervently thankful that I’d remembered the address from the restaurant guide.
That turned out to be a good meal with good service, and we were happy to pay the going rate – and some of us ordered wine on top of it. It was a friendly place, with seating upstairs and a little bar. In addition, they had a set of comfortable old leather couches with a coffee table that you could sit at and eat appetizers, or even your entire meal – the coffee table had one of those lids that lifts up and becomes a dining surface while you’re sitting there relaxing. And in the other room, they had these funky whiskey barrels that had been converted into tables for two… stacked up 2 high, so that the upper tables were reached by a short ladder. Fun place. And of course, by the time we left, the entire staff knew the story of how we’d walked out of the other restaurant, so you wouldn’t believe how often somebody came by and checked on us to see if we needed anything.
All in all, a lesson learned – if a restaurant ad says it’s fun to cook your own food, don’t assume that you’ve got no other choice. Actually, we could have ordered cooked entrees at 8th Street, but they were all overpriced, too. Some people might like the concept of cooking their own steaks, but we sure didn’t. At least, not without a beach and a sunset to go with it.
