The OppenheimerReport

I was watching the Discovery Channel the other night, because I am a learning machine, and the show I watched was called “101 Things Removed.” It dealt with various objects doctors have extracted from human bodies. The stories of how the accidents occurred were fascinating, but the actual pictures were pretty grizzly. Among my favorites: an anchor embedded in a skull of a fisherman, a frog skewer through the cheekbone and eye canal of a frog hunter, a diamond necklace extracted from a jewel thief’s anus, a swordfish snout shoved through the skull above the left eye of a fisherman, a two by four through the neck of a tornado victim, a live grenade embedded in a soldier’s leg, an ice axe embedded in the leg of a mountain climber, and the piece de resistance: the calcified remains of a twin fetus removed from a man’s stomach. That might have been the strangest thing I have ever seen. What a nice change over what has been an almost steady diet of log home magazines and HGTV shows about unscrupulous contractors.

“Harry Potter and the Unbearable Flatulence” went on sale this week, and millions of hopeful readers are frothing in anticipation of this last installment of the wildly popular series. It never ceases to amaze me that there are groups of concerned citizens out there campaigning to ban the Harry Potter books because of references to wizardry and black magic. Let’s throw Mother Goose on the bonfire while we’re at it. Heaven forbid children should be inspired to read. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been noticing a substantial drop in communication skills among the 20somethings, and I think any literature which inspires kids to read is a good thing. I actually heard a guy say that he had been “conversating” with someone the other day. Forget the King’s English; we’re down to the court jester’s English. By the way, if you don’t feel like reading the book, I’ll tell you how it ends … Harry dies in a tragic methane explosion.

If any of you are still reading this “report” you may have reached the saturation point in discussions about our log home. As we spend almost every waking hour on this construction site, we may be reaching the saturation point as well. After the past week, we’ve reached that point in the building process where it seems as if we are pushing a rock up a hill. There have been a lot of unforeseen setbacks, and construction is far behind schedule. Two weeks ago, our stackers discovered that three critical logs were absent from the last load of logs, and this little setback held up the entire building process for almost a week. Unlike stick frame houses, wherein any 2x4 will do, logs must be stacked in sequence. We may begin to get back on schedule this week, if the rain abates. Weather has been the other deterrent, and we’ve had very unusual weather for the past two weeks. I may just post some photos next week of the progress to date, and skip the editorializing. Conversate amongst yourselves.
-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2007 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED