Life in Portland Area

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I am happy with the start of the new year. I had some time off from the holidays and had time to transcribe the electronic records I had gotten for my appeal. The District Court provides a CD of the proceedings. This is a picture from their recording. I also used my camera to make a short five second (may take about forty seconds to download) excerpt of Judge Melnick declaring my crimes of trespass and stalking. He was a little cross with me as I had just said I disagreed with his decision and didn't think there were grounds for his Order. It is such a hoot. I really don't think of myself as a stalker or criminal. What to do? Transcribing is a pain. It is hard to imagine how many 'ah' and 'umm's there are in spoken language (along with bad grammar). Also, sometimes two people are speaking at the same time (New York courts often use real people as court recorders who keep a rein on that). Anyway, you can see the transcripts for October 27, 2004 and December 10, 2005.
The hearing in Superior Court was much shorter. It was on a VCR tape and I had to move it my computer so that I could stop and start it as necessary to transcribe it. The image flicks between Judge Johnston (shown here) and the court view (shown below) based on where the greatest volume is (I presume). Here are a couple of short excerpts I made with my camera (it compresses nicely for the web) of Judge Johnson declaring the ten day limit on Motion for Revision and referring to Superior Court Commisioner. This is the first official reference to the District Court Judges being Superior Court Commissioners made to me.
I was really glad that this hearing was so short as the volume for the rest of the court room was really low and it was hard to make out just what I said. Of course, there was the real pain of all the poor grammar and other kinds of mispeaking that I naturally wanted to correct but really couldn't in a transcript. What to do? The legal disputes between Karyn and are getting settled down. On February 16, 2005, Judge Johnson finally gave her decisions in writing (after many machinations) which she announced on December 10, 2004. Zowee! On March 16, 2005 those were added to the appeal and so now I am was able to finalize my appeal. I submitted the final copy of my Brief to the Court of Appeals on May 10, 2005. That link will also take you to the full transcirpts of the hearing as well as other papers presented to the court.
Here are some of the pumpkin plants I planted outside my apartment. There is a nice spot between the building where I live and the wall around the pool which is out of the way and out of sight. It also gets plenty of sun. However, this year I haven't had such success getting them to grow. I was woorried about leaving them when I went to the reunion in Bloomington, IN, but they did fine. This is how they looked in mid July, 2005.
These plants are grown from seeds that I kept back last fall when I was making pumpkin puree for my pumpkin pies. I have learned alot about getting them to sprout early indoors and then transplanting, so I expect to do better next year. Here are a couple of plants that haven't done so well.
This is one of the pumpkin plants in mid August, 2005 after it really took off growing, just a month later. Wow! However, I was wondering why I didn't see any pumpkins growing. I would see a little walnut sized one, but when I would look there a week later, I couldn't find it. There would be one further in the new growth, but it would be about the same size and so I thought my memory was faiing me (forgetting their size and location). What to do? However, one I looked and there were no lilttle pumpkins and where the last on I remembered had been there was a little stub. It turns out the squirrels had been eating them. We have mostly pine trees around the complex and apartently the squirrels really have to scavenge, down to tiny pumpkins.
So, the reason the plant was growing so rapidly was because it was putting all its energy into growing rather than pumpkins. However, I wanted pumpkins. I don't really mind sharing with the squirrels, but when the pumpkin is so tiny there is nothing to share, really. Anyway, this latest little pumpkin I put a cut plastic jar around it to see if it can big enough so that the squirrels won't bother it. Then when it is big and harvested I promise to share some of the pumpkin with the squirrels. If that doesn't work, I will try putting cayan pepper on the new pumpkin, but I am not sure if there will time for a pumpkin to mature. It is getting late in the season.
This is one of the local squirrels (perhaps even the squirrel). He does look a little hungry and scrappy. I could easily imagine him eating a tiny pumpkin.
On April 15th, 2005 I headed to the Portland, OR airport (here is the drop off area, I took a cab as I needed to get there at 7AM) to catch a Continental flight to Newark, NJ.
This is the plane I took to Newark, NJ.
From Newark, NJ I took a Continental Express flight to ALbany, NY. This is the plane I took on that flight. It was made in Brazil. Cool!