Random Thoughts

[mood swung]

The rest of it, and this planet, may soon follow that first half.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/08/lhc. ... index.html

[Otis Westinghouse]

SL has renounced all worldly goods and is living in a monastery in the Australian outback.
JM limits himself to ranting about Berba.
Gilli is too depressed over Berba to even rant.

[verbal gymnastics]

Where the fuck is everyone?

List of the missing includes:

So lacklustre
Jackson Monk
gillibeanz

Did half of England fall into the ocean?

Good to see you were missing me WSS! Obviously my devastating wit and repartee has not been missed at all...

And don't go for the old "the list of the missing includes you Verbal" stuff either

In two weeks time I have to go out to business lunches EVERY lunchtime. Granted some of the restaurants are very nice but FIVE lunches in a week

[migdd]

Why can't I just live on a cruise ship?

[mood swung]

I guess we all survived the particle collision. Go, us!

VG, quityerbitchin'. I have been to exactly 5 lunches in all my years of work. I am tired of eating in!

I think you owe us some new baby pictures.

[BlueChair]

Not sure it's cause for celebration just yet, but apparently I have a job offer coming my way from the parent company of one of Canada's main national TV networks.

[ice nine]

There are people on this board who can write a full blown essay on every topic put on the board. I don't know how you guys do it. It must take you a good hour to post. I'm lucky if I can post one coherent paragraph.

[CostelLover]

Why can't I just live on a cruise ship?

You can!

http://www.aboardtheworld.com/lifestyle

Send us a postcard once in awhile, will ya?

[migdd]

Yes, I've seen that; however, I might have to go back to work to be able to afford it and I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it!

[mood swung]

Woke up to a gas panic here in E Tn. WTF?


Gotta see if my bike's tires will hold air.

[mood swung]

Woke up to a gas panic here in E Tn. WTF?


Gotta see if my bike's tires will hold air.

And if my knees can do 5 miles.

[BlueChair]

Gas prices here increased 13 cents overnight last night.

[mood swung]

40 cents here. And supposedly the distributors will be charging $1.00 more per gallon starting today.


updated to say, that at 3, my daughter texted me to say that gas was now at $4.50. I paid $3.69 this morning. I believe it was around $3.60 last night.

[verbal gymnastics]

I think you owe us some new baby pictures.

Don't worry, I've got some lovely ones to send you in due course

I'm now on holiday/vacation for a week.

And I am on the Board on a Friday night because Mrs VG has gone out for the night. So it's just me, the computer, beer and crisps. The computer will soon be switched off whilst I watch Clerks 2

[legman open to offers]

The gougers (sp.)will tell you it's because of Hurricane Ike. Price of gas here went from $3.32 to $3.60 in less then 24 hrs. Total bullshit, and highway robbery.

Let's all hold a good thought for the Texas coast and all that are going to be affected by Ike. It is going to be a bad scene after this monster storm. Dallas area has been getting majority of the evacuees.

Galveston Bay will get a horrible shot from Ike after the eye passes and the backside of the storm blows inward.

loto

[migdd]

The price at the pump is totally unjustified and spurred by consumer fear and retailers' greed. The price of crude actually dropped today to below $100 a barrel, its lowest level since last April. Hold off a few days to fill your tanks.

I feel for those in Ike's path. He looks like a monster!

[Who Shot Sam?]

Just realized it's our 11th wedding anniversary and my wife's on the other side of the world - Chennai, to be exact.

Sent her an e-mail that I hope she gets. We knew she was going to be away this year but damn time slips through your fingers.

[legman open to offers]

Apart but still together... Happy Anniversary Mr. & Mrs. WSS

[Otis Westinghouse]

Congrats!

$4.50 per gallon of petrol is still only a little more than half what you'd pay here.

[mood swung]

I realize that, but this is an increase of nearly $1 overnight. On gas that was already in the tanks.

Gouging.

[pophead2k]

The North Carolina attorney general issued seven subpoenas today to stations that jacked the price up to a disgusting 5.49 a gallon!

[CostelLover]

That's weird. How can they get away with that?!? For whatever reason, gas prices here in northern California haven't been affected either way from Ike. Price per gallon at the corner store dropped down to $3.66 almost a week ago, and that's where it still is.

[johnfoyle]

All I know about racing is from Dick Francis novels so I've always been cynical about it's machinations. However this story caught my eye and , on a day of mind-boggling news , it was captivating.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/raci ... 32019.html



BALLYMACOLL STUD
Conduit as a foal being suckled by his foster-mother in a field at Ballymacoll Stud, Co Meath, three years ago. On Saturday the colt stormed to victory in the St Leger at Doncaster


Conduit, a motherless foal bound for stardom

By Sue Montgomery
Tuesday, 16 September 2008

After any major success – indeed, any success at all – the factor most stressed by the victorious trainer is the teamwork involved to get the equine athlete into the position of honour. After Conduit's sparkling St Leger success, Sir Michael Stoute's first words were for his stable jockey Ryan Moore, who had done so much educational work on the gallops with the colt but had rejected him for the race. And his first pat on the back was for Umar Saleem, who tends to the latest Classic hero's everyday needs and whose pride in his charge was so evident.

But the behind-the-scenes plaudits go way beyond the training yard, particularly with an owner-bred horse like Conduit, who is an end product of 60 years of nurturing in the one spot, the sweet meadows at Ballymacoll Stud in Co Meath. And particularly in his individual case, for within half-an-hour of his birth his dam lay dead next to him, and if ever a newborn foal needed human efficiency, he did.

For all its rewards, both financial and emotional, the bloodstock business is not for the faint-hearted and the coming of Conduit was dreadfully difficult. Allanah Gilbert, in charge of the delivery ward at Ballymacoll, takes up his tale as the 16-year-old mare Well Head's ninth pregnancy reached its sad conclusion. "The foal was stuck half-way and we had been trying to help her," she said. "We pulled and pulled and pulled and, finally, he popped out.

"He was in a sorry state. His eyes were all bloodshot and he had blood in his nostrils, just from the pressures he had endured. His mum just never moved, just lay there in the straw. We brought him round to her head, and although she talked to him softly for a little bit, really she was out of it and she didn't last long. While we were tending her, he sat quietly in a corner, watching."

After Well Head died, she was milked to make sure her baby son had that vital first drink from his mother. "After we bottle-fed him we had to leave him, and he just cried and cried," said Gilbert, a 23-year-old New Zealander. "And he'd bang on the door with his little hoof. It was horrible and heart-rending, but for their own good you can't stay with orphans and cuddle them."

But for little Conduit – or Charles as he was known then – succour was on the way, in the form of a foster-mother. By the next morning she had arrived; not one of his sleek own racing kind, but a hairy-legged skewbald vanner in the best tradition of stout, matronly wet-nurses.

Mare and foal bonded almost immediately. "We'd bottle-fed him nearly 20 times, but it's not like the real thing and by then he was getting quite hungry," said Gilbert. "He'd have drunk a whole milk factory. He was sucking more than he could ever swallow and it was pouring out, all over his little face. Once he found her udder he was in heaven."

The youngster's early travails were not yet over, however. Once he was old enough to be put in a paddock with his contemporaries, his troubled start told against him, and he was bullied. Those picking on him included subsequent Derby runner-up Tartan Bearer. "We had to move him to be with foals younger and smaller than him," said Gilbert.

On the track, Conduit, a son of Arc winner Dalakhani, first burst on to the scene when he turned the 10-furlong handicap that opened Derby Day into a rout. "I'd gone that day mainly to watch Tartan Bearer," said Gilbert, "but after what Charles did, I almost forgot the Derby."

Horses have been reared at 300-acre Ballymacoll Stud, now managed by Peter Reynolds, for two centuries. Conduit's story there began when Dorothy Paget bought the place in 1946; the mares she moved in included his five-greats grand-dam Solana, whose daughter Sunny Gulf was among those acquired by Michael Sobell and his son-in-law Arnold Weinstock in their purchase of the estate in 1960.

Conduit's St Leger was the third for that family, after Sun Princess and Millenary, and the 48th Group One prize for the famous pale blue silks. And devoted Gilbert was on Town Moor to see it. "When he galloped past the post I had to double-check to make sure it had really happened," she said. "I'm proud of all of our horses, but this one has a special place in my heart."

[mood swung]

There's green, and then there's really really really green.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/2 ... endly-mom/


Have to respect that kind of dedication. I might do cloth napkins, but tp? I've done my time already.

[mood swung]

Well, I'm not gonna look at my 401k. Not gonna do it.

I'm gonna spend all day at ICanHazCheezburger and affiliates.