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HOUMA — Local business leaders say they remember when Louisiana always seemed to be the butt of jokes, known for corrupt politicians and poor economic performance.
Just over four years ago, footage of Hurricane Katrina showed the country devastation and heartbreak.
But national coverage of the New Orleans Saints road to becoming Super Bowl champions was different, portraying the city as vibrant and lively, a source of pride for residents. But some business leaders believe that positive attention could have a larger impact and improve the state's economic stake.
"I just really reveled in it, the sense of pride it brings to being a Louisiana citizen and Saints fan all my life," said Mickey Thomas, executive vice president of South Louisiana Bank. "I think this is good timing for our state. I think it impacts us in trying to acquire outside businesses to come to the communities here."
Anecdotally, retailers say the winning season has helped fuel sales of consumer goods to support the team, though it will be hard to measure the impact won't be known until sales-tax figures are released for the months in question.
Academy Sports and Outdoors stores have been the epicenter of a buying bonanza from customers hungry for team merchandise. Throughout the season, customers lined up outside the building to celebrate and get the latest memorabilia from the latest championship victory. That brisk business has shown no signs of slowing down, said Elise Hasbrook, a spokeswoman for Academy.
"The Saints were good for us all season," Hasbrook said, �though she did not elaborate on sales figures since the company is privately held. "It wasn't just about the Super Bowl or the divisional championship."
Major employers like Rouses Markets have seen holiday-level sales in the run-up to the championship, said one of its partners, Donald Rouse. Sales have been up 15 percent over a normal year over the season, Rouse estimated, and were around 40 percent above normal throughout the region on Super Bowl weekend.
Its French Quarter store did its best day of business in its history — even before it was owned by Rouses — on Super Bowl Sunday, Rouse said.
That means more business not just for Rouses, but more hours available for employees, newspaper ads for tailgating supplies and more business for food and alcohol distributors.
"Money spent at our stores is staying in this community," he said. "If we're selling it, they're selling it."
Retailers have said they have trouble keeping anything black and gold or Saints-related on the shelves. That's at a time when customers have otherwise been cautious with their spending and scaled back on optional purchases, a stance that has hurt retailers.
"People who might not have spent money, they find a little extra cash. It's a once in a lifetime deal," said Drake Pothier, CEO of the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce.
Experts agree that bump in retail, food and tourism directly related to the Super Bowl is likely to be temporary.
Officials at Louisiana Economic Development, which helps sustain and recruit businesses in the state, is working to harness that feeling of goodwill to improve the state economy for the long term. The agency took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times recounting the Saints' top statistics and listing top economic statistics alongside. Local economic developers say they're also discussing partnering with the state in future efforts like it.
"Our position in the global media will have lasting positive impacts on recruiting business, talent and investors," said Jim Edmonson, an economic consultant for the South Louisiana Economic Council, a Thibodaux-based group that promotes businesses in the region. "People know who we are now and want to be a part of story, or at least talk about the possibilities."
Fun images of the Saints' victory parade and rebuilt New Orleans can also help reassure new companies about the area's quality of life and draw in conferences and meetings, the experts suggested.
Whether that desired effect will happen, or whether it can be measured, has yet to be determined.
Loren Scott, professor emeritus of economics at LSU who has studied the state's economy extensively, called the win "wonderful." But he says he knows of no peer-reviewed research that has linked a Super Bowl win, or even a long-term successful NFL franchise, to economic growth.
"I don't think there's any denying that all the free publicity New
Orleans got is a positive," Scott said. "That's a great card for officials to pull out and use."
But the win doesn't erase the reservations that companies have long expressed about relocating to Louisiana, he said. Those concerns include the risk of further hurricanes and whether the state is adequately protected, the supply of skilled labor and adequacy of roads and bridges.
Even with the Saints' help, Scott said, officials "are going to have some other stuff to have to answer about that's tricky."
Staff Writer Kathrine Schmidt can be reached at 857-2204 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Saints win fuels sales, optimism for wider impact
Feb 12, 2010 at 5:00 PM
Feb 12, 2010 at 5:47 PM


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subset: commoncrawl


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Wondering what my evolution project is about? Here are a bunch of posts I made explaining how it all works, but in a nutshell: the project uses copied drawings to 'evolve' creatures over time, and teaches evolution in the process by letting you experience it yourself! You can see the actual animation here,
Evolution! "Game"
The Virtual Reality versions of this game are too old at this point, but you can play an old non-VR version for Windows by downloading it here! https://uvwar.itch.io/evolution
If you don't like to read (for shame) you can hear me talk about the project in this radio interview, here
And if you want the whole project summed up in one image, take a look at this! These are the all the creatures descended from my original creature (in the middle there)
and here are some plant evolutions
In the Beginning
Back in March of 2011 I was taking an animation course at VCU in which I could spend the entire semester working on one project. Where some people had to come up with an idea, I had one percolating for some time. Years earlier I had known I wanted to do some kind of animation based on evolution, but wasn't sure how to go about it. In the meantime I collected a bunch of inspirational images, (which incidentally led me down another path involving old dinosaur documentaries. The youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/DinosaurTheatre and the blog http://www.dinosaurtheatre.blogspot.com/ go into more detail) and by the time the class rolled around, I had an idea of what I wanted.
I didn't want this. Most of the time when people think of "evolution" they think of something like the animation above, from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." Or more specifically, this…
The "Ascent of Man" by Rudolph Zallinger, for the 1965 Time Life book, "Early Man."
I'm sure you've seen it before. It's more or less all over the place. Just like this image!
Who can forget this hilarious parody?!
I hope you guys are sitting down because the amount of humor on display here may bowl you over.
Although a powerful image that instantly evokes the idea of evolution, it is, in fact, wrong. Not just for the fact that a vast majority of the "ancestors" weren't actually a part of human family tree, or that they're shown walking upright, but that they're shown in a successive line. This "parade of evolution" is something that shows up over and over again; a linear progression or advancement of lifeforms that invariably ends in an upright, close-shaven white guy. All of these notions about evolution are false, of course.
As you can see from Mr. Darwin's own sketch book, evolution is best depicted as a sort of tree. There is no "end goal" to evolution, and one form of life isn't necessarily more 'advanced' than another. Instead, life evolves in all directions constantly; branching out into multiple forms, as well as truncating with extinction. So the question then becomes: How can I use this idea in my animation?
Inspiration and Method
As I mentioned in my last post, I was looking to make some kind of animation that wasn't simply linear, but instead represented the true "tree" of life. But in the meantime, I was grabbing anything that looked interesting.
Here you can see Ishu Patel's "Bead Game" and….
Sheila Graber's "Evolution"
Both are nice animations that go into varying detail of the course of evolution, as well as ending with man's mastery of the atom, and perhaps an uncertain future. But again they follow a"linear" representational model of how people think of evolution. I wanted to do something similar, and yet different. But how? At first I was thinking of having animals march through time, set to some kind of music like Ravel's "Bolero." Eventually I ran across this, which was pretty much exactly what I was thinking of!
Allegro non troppo – Bolero (1977) by Cartoonzof2006
Scene from Bruno Bozzetto's "Allegro Non Troppo"
Naturally, I had to do something different.
Here are some of my early ideas. I essentially ended up going with a combination of the top left and parts of the right page, coming up with a sort of game. Much like the whispered game "telephone" where one person whispers a message down the line until its very different by the end due to small "mutations" along the way, I would create a game of telephone using visual imagery. I did this by creating a nondescript salamander-like creature to start of us, as you can see here…
From there, I had my various groups make copies. The copies, of course, would not be exact, simulating slight mutations in the offspring of this parent, progenitor species.
Here you can see my creature with some of the variations it spawned. From here I would take these new images and tape them up on a wall so everyone could get a good look. Then, I would give some kind of excuse for their extinction, and eliminate all but a few.
Here I am putting some of the creatures up before mercilessly ripping them down again.
Around this time I also decided that I wanted to include children somehow with the animation, and fortunately I was able to work through various groups and schools to get a wide range of children to participate. One thing I had began to notice again and again was that when a scientist was asked "What was the defining moment that made you want to become a scientist?" they almost invariably answered "When I was a child." There always seemed to be some kind of event or situation that would stick in their mind as a kid, and would help shape their interests and ambitions late in life. I hoped my little evolution game would have a similar effect on the kids I was working with, because although I wasn't implicitly explaining evolution or "teaching" them anything, I knew they would internalize it and at least remember it later.
In any case, everyone seemed to take their creature going extinct personally, and would plead for me to leave theirs up. I would, as an unbending force of nature, refuse to acknowledge them. From there we would take the next creature and make copies of that. By now everyone would be fairly comfortable with the game and begin trying to make their creature "the best" (by some metric of their own), and I would mix things up by throwing them a curve ball. At this point I say the world has turned into a desert and once again 98% of the animals die out. Of the few remaining, they must choose the creature they think is best suited for this desert environment. In this way, even being suited to the environment of that generation is no guarantee you'll succeed into the next, as you can't fully predict which way I'll change the environmental factors.
Some creatures best chosen to start the "desert" generation
This continues for 6 generations, with each group have 2 generations exclusive to them. The group I used in the final animation had the "ice age" ending, but others included the sea, the mountains, or underground. Next I'll discuss the actual process of getting the drawings, as well as the wider range of creatures that were produced.
The Blind Watchmaker
I like this very much, being extremely keen on 'Chinese Whispers' (='Telephone') as a technique for the experimental study of memetic evolution. And it must have had great educational value for the children taking part. -Richard Dawkins
Considering Richards mention of my animation, I figured it might be a good time to bring him up! In fact, Mr.Dawkins was a great inspiration to my animation, and actually had a direct influence on how it was created.
Originally I wasn't sure how I should go about the animation. As I mentioned in my first post I wanted something that at least represented branching structure instead of linearity, but I was blanking on how to actually pull this off. I also added the challenge of specifically trying to get children to make a majority of the drawings. One thing I kept noticing was that when various scientists were asked "What was the defining moment in your life when you knew you wanted to be a scientist?" they always gave the same answer: when they were kids. There was always some formative and usually highly specific and memorable event that seemed to spark their fascination with science when they were younger. So I set out to find myself a group of kids in the hopes that, maybe someday, they'll think back and remember the activity fondly when they think of evolution. Perhaps even in a few I would have planted the seeds of a future scientist. But wrangling up some kids was secondary to actually coming up with something they could DO.
I had toyed with the idea of rotoscoping initially. The idea was that I would animate a linear, traditional evolution animation and have the kids trace over my drawings, "completing" it. My thinking was that I would have underforms that were fairly boring and acting merely as guides, allowing the kids to come up with something interesting to overlay on top, as long as it "followed the lines." The result would have been a strange jittery flash of different forms changing over time.
But, as you can probably guess, I figured this would be a little too boring. I wanted the activity to move with a certain amount of speed, which rotoscoping isnt known for. I also couldn't really think of a quick and easy way to trace a zillion frames with people that had never done it before, and besides it gave me this weird child labor vibe, so I abandoned it.
Around this point I was coming up with the ideas that you can see in my sketchpad picture in the other posts, but still wasn't sure what to do. That's when I stumbled upon Mr.Dawkins in his documentary "The Blind Watchmaker."
Coming out around the same time as Dawkins book "The Blind Watchmaker," the BBC documentary goes into William Paley's assertion that complicated things must have a designer. So, in his example, if you were to find a watch out in nature you would assume someone had designed it, and that it didn't naturally appear as a watch with all its complex parts as-is. This naturally leads into the idea that to look around you and see the various complex forms in nature, then its right to assume that there must equally be a designer for that too, for its too much to assume such complex designs could happen on their own.
William Paley, philosopher on Natural Theology
Naturally that's exactly what Dawkins attempts to do. He goes through the documentary explaining things that seem impossible on the surface, but are actually quite possible within the confines of evolution. So elements such as the eye or the wing which seem tremendously complex at first, can be explained through relatively simple methods of slight modification over time.
It was when Dawkins got to the simulated lifeforms that he called "Biomorphs," however, that my animation ideas began to sync. Dawkins shows of Jeremy Ruston's little programmed "creatures" who have digital genes which he can manipulate into various forms. On the surface they don't look like much of anything, but using your imagination you can begin to see familiar shapes or patterns. He then begins to "select" for a form he likes the most. The genes are set and new permutations come up on the screen, and he selects again.
A young Dawkins selecting some Biomorphs and fiddling with their genes
I used this to full effect in my own animation of course, only using paper and crayon instead of a computer. Of course by now computers have all sorts of cool evolving lifeforms on them, and a few programs have this very same 'evolving' capacity to help guide you towards something you like but aren't entirely sure what that may be! Oh and if you haven't seen the Dawkins documentary, check it out; it's good!
Speaking of simulated evolution, I recently came across this the other day.
I love the fractal patterns of plants (succulents and ferns being my favs, naturally) and this instantly caught my attention. Created as a school project back in 2008 by Markus Jonsson, Jonatan Nyberg and Jakob Rogstadius, Linnaeus simulates plant evolution, using little genes just like Dawkins' Biomorphs up there. You can open the XML file and goof off with the parameters to make truly strange plants but because they evolve on their own, they tend to do it regardless! The patterns of the bark and the shape of the leaves and flowers are what intrigued me the most, and I spent hours mesmerized by these little virtual plants. Although the link doesn't seem to be working for me at the moment, you can (or could) download Linnaeus here http://hci.uma.pt/~jakob/?p=projects to try it out for youself, which I suggest you do!
Whew! Anyway, I'll try to get some stuff from the library up here soon as well as posting up a 'how-to' guide in case any of you decide to try this on you own. Not that it's astoundingly complicated or anything, but I never went into any real detail on my process, so I think it might be helpful. If anyone does create any critters I'd love to see them! Toss some scans my way at tylerrhodesart@gmail(dot)com if you'd like! And if you're feeling extra contributive you can start with my same salamander-like creature and keep the ball rolling! Until next time.
Evolution! A How-To Guide
People keep mentioning of wanting to do something similar themselves, or asking me what programs I used, so I figured I'd go into the entire process from start to finish in more detail.
You will need~
1. A whole lot of crayons. I chose crayons mainly because I could get a lot of them, they were colorful, and they usually aren't a medium people spend a lot of time on. The name of the game with this is speed, and something like colored pencils or markers and pens would slow people down. Maybe. Ive never tried it. But crayons are a good bet. I used two Crayola 96 packs, and gave every 2 people or so their own mini-carton of crayons. This usually meant they had enough colors to make something without fighting over crayons, but eventually people tend to lend each other the colors they need anyway.
2. A whole lot of paper. With 6 generations times X number of participants you'll be going through a lot of paper. Generally speaking at least 100 or so creatures were made in an average group, but it can always be more or less depending.
3. A partitioned folder. I got a bunch of folders with little partitions in them to keep each generation separate. Along with a section for the "timeline" of the group. This includes the direct lineage of chosen creatures for each generation. This is important for later!
4. Tape!(or Magnets) Just some regular scotch tape will do but something like painters or artists tape is even better if you don't want to risk damaging the original drawings. You'll be using this to put up the drawings on a wall or something so everyone else can see. Magnets work even better if you have a magnetic board because you can quickly and easily move drawings around without damaging the artwork in any way.
(optional) 5. Microphone If you wanted to get some recorded sound effects like I had, you'll need a mic of some kind. I used a ZOOM H2 Mic. You'd also need headphones if you wanted to hear it as you were recording.
And….that's it! Pretty simple really. Now for the actual process…
STEP 1: Hand Everyone 6 Sheets of Paper
Once you have everyone in one place and ready and raring to go, give them each 6 sheets of paper. Part of the game is to move quickly and not allow for 'mistakes.' If anyone seemed to be second-guessing themselves or trying to flip their page to start over I would try to stop them. I wanted their initial and gut instinct in what they drew, which was always better than their "do-overs"anyway!
STEP 2: Give the People Their Crayons
As I mentioned earlier I had two 96 packs of Crayola crayons which are divided into little sub-boxes holding about 16 crayons each. I would pass these out however it seemed to work, but it usually boiled down to something like 1 little box for every 2 people.
STEP 3: Brandish Your Starting Creature
Once everyone's settled, you can begin. I held up (in the initial groups I was using a projector, but when I couldn't later on I just held up the drawings. The kids had no problem seeing it and it was a lot easier!) my initial salamander and told them to copy it the best they could, but that it didn't have to be perfect. I stressed that they should copy what they see, but I wasn't very specific on what they had to do if they asked me anything. Usually someone will ask if it has to be the same color, as they will panic when they realize they don't have any of those crayons in their box, to which I'd answer with "no." If anyone seemed hesitant to draw I would prod them along. Once people start drawing something they usually finish it.
STEP 4: Mark Each Round
Be sure to have everyone label what round it is as they draw. This ensures that even if the drawings get jumbled you can resort them later. To do this, simply ask for everyone to write a 1 in the corner somewhere. This is to mark round 1!
STEP 5: Watch the Clock
I had about an hour for every group, so I had to make sure I moved quickly. I would give them only a few mins to draw, but as we kept going and things tend to get more 'complex' I would allow for a little more time. Usually if one kid 'finishes' I would stop the round right there and announce it. This typically sends everyone into a mad rush to get theirs done "in time." I would let them keep drawing as I would collect all the sketches. If you have anyone helping you, you can start collecting and have them fed to you to start taping up, or have one person taping, another collecting, etc. In any case, don't give them too much time to overthink, overdraw, or do their drawing over.
STEP 6: The Tape/Magnets
After collecting your drawings, begin to tape/magnet them to a wall in rows and columns.
STEP 7: The Mass Extinction
Give them a few seconds to look at everyone's drawings, as they always have fun seeing what other people came up with. Here you can say what you'd like about variation or genes etc. and then give some reason for them to go extinct (something generic is best like "The swamp they were in has dried up over time"). Pull off most of the drawings from the wall. You'll probably get a lot of cries of anguish and pleading, but don 't stop for anything! Now I generally would leave maybe 3 or 4 left, but if time was short of the group seemed very indecisive I would only leave 2. I would be pulling essentially at random, but I would also go for drawings I thought would be better at illustrating the point than others,(for instance I would avoid the more abstract drawings because I knew people would have a hard time copying it. I did try it once however, and the results were very interesting, but everyone was more or less confused so its up to you) or if I noticed a kid was getting really worked up over their creature getting eliminated over and over again I would at least push it into the first "round" of eliminations.
Anyhow, let's say you have 2 or 3 creatures left. At first I just had them pick one that they liked. They usually go for the one that's the best drawn, which is fine. After this first generation I begin to ask them why they chose a creature. This gets people to think about why the creature would be better adapted, or at least defend their position (things they probably weren't considering very strongly before this point). This is where you can catch people staunchly defending their own drawing, or picking something and then sheepishly admitting they don't really have a good reason for picking it. I do this line of questioning with both creatures so that people can always get a sense of what other people are thinking, but I always go with whichever creature gets the most votes.
STEP 8: File Them Away!
Be sure to check that everyone's drawing has a 1 for stage 1 marked on the drawing (if they don't fill one in or you can do it later), and file all the drawings away in your GENERATION 1 section of your partitioned folder.
STEP 9: Repeat Steps 3-8!
From here, do as before. Hold up the new starting creature and ask them to copy it once more. By now they'll understand the game a little bit more and should start moving faster and being more comfortable with the process overall. Be sure to ask them to mark these new drawings with a 2 for generation 2, 3 for 3, etc. I would also keep mixing up the scenarios, however, as we went along, in this order.
GENERATION 1: The first copy, usually a salamander type thing if you use a picture like mine. End with having them pick a creature they like
GENERATION 2: Typically similar to the first generation, more salamander creatures, but people tend to start deviating a little more. End with saying that "It is now a desert, which creature would better survive in a desert?" You can also give them some mental imagery by asking them to think of what desert animals do to survive on earth, and now that resources are scarce, they may have to be more fierce to survive. Generally the creature chosen has 'desert-like' colors.
GENERATION 3: Now you should start to see some wild creatures! Typically lots of spines, spikes, teeth and nails. The occasional background element tends to creep in now as well in the form of a cactus. Eliminate the creatures as usual and ask them to now select for a forest environment. Try to include creatures that vary a lot in how they look beforehand so you aren't stuck with 4 sand colored lizards.
GENERATION 4: It's usually a greenish lizard that starts this generation. Lots of trees tend to enter the drawings now and sometimes the creatures are interacting directly with the background in some way. At this point narrow down your creatures again, but the final generations I left open. Each group had a different "ending," with the one in the animation being "Ice Age." Others included the Underground, The Sky, The Deep Sea, and The Mountains.
GENERATION 5-6: Similar to the first two generations, things just tend to reinforce themselves here. At generation 5 you usually get some kind of transitional form looking animals, and for Gen 6 just keep pushing it 'deeper' into that new area. So the ice age creatures get even more hairy and tusky, the sea creatures get even more aquatic, and so on.
End with everyone's final creatures on the wall, and pull out the rest of the chosen creatures that led up this point, which there should be 7 (6 including your original, which I internally refereed to as Generation 0). Here its quite easy to see the small but dramatic changes made over time to get to where everyone ended up, and you have a nice chat about evolution etc. at this time.
From there get your drawings packed away and you're done!
(OPTIONAL) Sound Recording: Generally at the last second I would record some sounds. I would just pull out my mic and either have everyone file by in a line or they would just crowd around me and record one sound each. Just have everyone be as quiet as possible and record one sound each. If there are only a few people you can keep recording multiple sounds. Of course, there will be laughter, but I left all of that in my final animation.
And that's about it! You should have a folder jammed full of drawings and possibly a mic packed full of cool sound effects. From here we'll get into my actual animating process and the programs I used, the background elements, and the music.
Time to Animate
People had asked me what I used to animate the drawings, so I thought I'd do a brief run-down of my process.
At first I scanned all 460 drawings, which as you can guess takes a while. Depending on the colors used and how timid the artist was drawing it, the resulting image would sometimes be less than ideal. Lighter colors like yellow and pink are especially problematic, but I could usually get the drawings look decent. At first I would end up with something like this…
And get it looking more like this…
From here I "cut them out" in Adobe Photoshop so that the only thing Im working with is a nicely trimmed creature on a transparent background. From there, we move into Adobe After Effects.
After Effects is a program most people use for motion graphics and whatnot, but you can also do snazzy animations and special effects with it. Once I import all my cut out creatures and scenery I can begin. Normally you can move images over an x and y axis (up and down, left and right), and with a button press, you can go into the Z plane. This is how everything looks 3-D, with a virtual camera flying through a virtual space. In the image up there you can see how I set up all the objects in their proper spots and flew the camera through the scene, with things popping into view as needed. The view on the right is what the camera see, but the view on the left shows you all the elements lined up. You can see the bushes in the front there that block you view as the scene begins, and those two little rectangles on the bigger rectangle in the far back there are those two creatures in the tree that get eaten later on.
The camera itself has a bunch of controls that can do things like a "real camera", and here you can see I have a really low F-Stop and Depth of Field enabled which will allow for the extremely shallow focus and blur that you can see in the animation.
But the main thing I used to actually make the creatures move is called the Puppet Tool. The Puppet Tool is now in both the newer versions of Photoshop as well as After Effects, and when you activate it, it breaks any image down into a series of polygons, like so.
It also works by the placing of "pins." Here you can see the creature broken into polygons, and the pins Ive placed at his hips, shoulders, and feet. You can up the triangle count to get a smoother bend, but usually it isn't necessary in something like this. Each pin adds a reference point that the others will bend around. You can use other tools like a stiffener if you don't want to things to move, but because I wanted to extreme rubberyness I just tried to place minimal pins and let them do their thing.
By pulling a pin, you can see how the foot stretches out, but also how the head moves, as well as the rest of the body besides the area surrounding a pin. Again, this is something I want to give it those charming silly movements.
Look at him go! But that's more or less "all there is to it." Once I had my music selected, I went through and marked the timecodes on any heavy or interesting beat, and made sure to animate each little scene within those strict frame allowances. Once I was done with that, I just plopped them all down in a timeline, and they already synced correctly to the music because I had specifically designed them to!
Here is a basic tutorial from the handy guys at VideoCopilot if you wanted to try 3-D layers in After effects yourself, so give it a look if you're interesting in getting into some basic After Effectsing. Good Luck and have fun animating!


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At the end of July, Olivia Wilde went back in time with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford to the Old West in Cowboys & Aliens. Not bad for the 27-year-old actress who's been listed on Maxim's Hot 100 list more times than anyone can count. So, what's better than playing cowgirl with two rugged superstars? Playing tag team between Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman in The Change-Up.
SheKnows: You are everywhere in the next couple of weeks.
Olivia Wilde: Yeah, you're gonna be so sick of me. [Laughs]
SheKnows: What's it like to be in two very big, high-profile films?
Olivia Wilde: It's really kind of a luxury for an actor to have the opportunity to show such different types of characters. I actually left Cowboys & Aliens and went straight into The Change-Up. It was kind of a funny change of pace. I remember walking about it on the set of Cowboys in this Western town holding the script for The Change-Up and saying to everyone, "What do you think? This is the funniest script I've ever read in my entire life. Can I run right into another movie?" And everybody said, "If a script makes you laugh that hard, you can't miss the opportunity." It doesn't happen very often.
SheKnows: What kind of woman do you play in The Change-Up?
Olivia Wilde: She is a very smart lawyer, a very responsible professional, at the same time being kind of a wild woman. And, I think that balance is healthy. It's something that I enjoyed bringing to the screen because I think, too often, our characters are one-dimensional. They don't really have that balance. And I knew that it would make it funnier.
SheKnows: How did your character change from script to screen?
Olivia Wilde: Well, I love the writing process. It's something I'm interested in, personally, and something I always do on every movie. Writers get to know me very well. And it always serves me in the end, because I feel I have a deeper understanding of the characters, and sometimes, they really like my ideas and they use them. But I don't swagger in with a bunch of big structural changes and demand things. I sort of meekly suggest, "What about this? Could we do that?" while understanding the structure of the film and not trying to change that.
SheKnows: Did they incorporate any of your suggestions?
Olivia Wilde: A few major things that I brought to the table actually made it into the movie and that was such a thrill for me. So, I learned a lot and ended up creating a character that I can be proud of.
SheKnows: Has there been a time in your life when you wished you were someone else?
Olivia Wilde: Yeah, of course. I think all of us have had that experience where the grass is greener and you wish you had the other person's life. The really amazing thing about acting is that I get to experience all different kinds of lives. I've been a doctor, a cowgirl and a computer program. I am an incredibly lucky person. So, anytime I start being envious of anyone else's life, I remember I have it pretty good myself.
SheKnows: People are always coveting the life of a movie star. Are there any drawbacks of that lifestyle?
Olivia Wilde: First of all, I couldn't describe myself as a movie star. I don't know when that happens, but it's certainly not me. [Laughs.] But, I think that you sign a sort of unwritten contract when you become a public figure. When you become an actor, you're sacrificing a certain amount of privacy, and parts of your life change. But the opportunity to be able to tell stories to a massive audience is really incredible. And this job couldn't be more satisfying, so any drawbacks, I think, are worth it, if you really enjoy the work.
SheKnows: There's a long tradition in Hollywood of body switching movies. What makes The Change-Up different?
OLIVIA: It's just a launching pad for a ridiculous, fun situation. You know, it's always outrageously terrifying. Have you ever wanted to be someone else? Well, if you actually found yourself in that situation, what could you handle? I loved that I could tell that they weren't afraid to push the boundaries, and that's what I'm all about.
SheKnows: There are some pretty raunchy moments in the film. Were you shocked reading the script?
Olivia Wilde: You know it's very hard to shock me, and when I read the script, I found myself gasping and shocked and really excited and I also rarely laugh out loud at scripts. I was just howling, it was just well written. And I loved that they were taking this opportunity to take a concept that people understood and blow it out of the water.
SheKnows: Your character goes out on a date with Ryan Reynolds in the film, what was that like?
Olivia Wilde: When she sits down at that date, she's expecting him to be just another dude who thinks he's gonna be able to date her because he's good looking. And, she's very tough with him. And, she sends back the Chardonnay and asks for a scotch because she just wants a drink after a long day of work. She's not expecting much from this guy, even if he's really pretty.
SheKnows: But is she surprised by what she finds?
Olivia Wilde: He opens his mouth, and he's funny and he's smart. And, that's what makes Sabrina fall in love with him. And that certainly is the way it is for many of us women. There are a lot of pretty guys out there, but there are very few who are smart and funny enough for us.
SheKnows: What's your idea of a good time on a date?
Olivia Wilde: One that ends at dawn. [smiles]
SheKnows: Any more details…?
Olivia Wilde: I think creativity, to not be taken to a boring restaurant and boring whatever. For me, it's some sort of creative idea and one that stays fun. I like to be surprised.
Olivia Wilde: "I got to approve my own nipples!"
Olivia Wilde prefers food over cocaine
Was Olivia Wilde any good in Cowboys & Aliens
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$218.98 LEGO Star Wars Ewok Village Play Set +FSWalmart offers LEGO Star Wars Ewok Village Play Set for $218.98 (reg. $249.95) plus free shipping.
Product Description: Travel to Endor and visit the treetop home of the LEGO Star Wars Ewok Village Play Set. Just like in "Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi," this recreation of the Ewoks' forest dwelling is packed with cool functions. Functions include the tree-trunk hideout, secret Lightsaber stash, spider web, net traps, slide, catapults and an elevating throne. Use the rammer function to take out the Scout Trooper's speeder - just like in the movie with this Star Wars Ewok Village game! Realistic details include rope walkways, vine and leaf elements, kitchen, food storage area, bedroom and a planning room. This LEGO Ewok Village is the perfect addition to your Star Wars collection. LEGO Star Wars Ewok Village Play Set: Thanks MR. Clutch Category: Babies & Kids Posted on 09 October 2016, 01:56 AM


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Sarah is currently working with Catch The Fire London and the Kenyan Children's Project. Her heart is for mission...
In May 2012 I travelled with a team deep into rural Kenya to an area called Kwiliba. Our team of 11 was led by Stu and Chlo Glassborrow, and made up of people from Catch The Fire London and other Catch The Fire friends.
We were in Kenya for 10 days, with a heart to love the broken. I work for the Kenyan Children's Project, and I have been to Kenya many times before, but the severe cases of malnutrition that we saw hit me like never before. I was also hugely impacted by the amazing heart of those people living in the rural communities that so selflessly protect and care for the orphans in need, even when they themselves have nothing.
We had heard news of a parish in need through Bishop in Maseno in the North of Kenya and the Mothers union there. So we made the dirt track journey in great anticipation of what God was going to do. Our vehicles were packed full with medical drugs donated by the Catch The Fire UK World Changers, and also toys and clothes ready to bless as many vulnerable children as we could.
We arrived to find many young children waiting for medical care. The sickest of the children were seen and treated first. Many of them had been orphaned, most coming alone despite being very young. That day we treated 114 children and fed more than 200 orphans. I cannot describe the pure happiness that was spread that day; we got to see lives saved. The healings we saw were countless, there was a mighty move of God and it was happening through children praying for children!
It was a day of divine appointments too. We met three young children Kevin, Alfred and Ezekiel. I never seen such severe malnutrition before, it was a heartbreaking sight. With no parents to care for them, the three boys were in desperate need. Thankfully, the Kenyan Children's Project have since rescued these three children. They are now living in the retreat centre, being loved back to life. The week of Kevin's rescue he was hospitalised with malaria and a hernia. If Kevin was still in Kwiliba he would not have survived. We are amazed and in awe at God's perfect timing; he is faithful to rescue and restore his children.
While we were in Kenya, Catch The Fire World Changers also provided the finance for a widow's home to be secured to protect her from abuse from the local men. Catch The Fire have greatly sown into the work of the Kenyan Children's Project, thank you taking part in restoring the broken hearted.
I am travelling back to Kenya at the end of July, ready for a team that will come out from 6th-18th August. To find out more about the Kenyan Children's project and how you can support them, click here.
This archived article was written by Sarah Strong for release in Aug, 2012. Circumstances and situations may have changed regarding the author, locations and ministries. This content may therefore be outdated or misinformed.
Sarah is currently working with Catch The Fire London and the Kenyan Children's Project. Her heart is for mission...
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15 Things From The '80s We Totally Loved
It's true that some things are better left in the past… R.I.P. scrunchies. But when taking a walk down memory lane, it's hard not to long for the days when you could play your Atari while listening to REO Speedwagon. For a nostalgic walk down memory lane every week, tune in to The Goldbergs when it totally premieres Tuesday September 24th at 9|8c on ABC!
1. Ahh, the days of listening to your Walkman while rollerskating and sipping on some Kool-Aid Koolers.
2. Remember when crimping your hair and talking on your extendable cord phone AT THE SAME TIME was considered multitasking?
3. Do they even make Grip Ball anymore? They probably have a less fun version on Wii.
4. What happened to this kind of athleticism? A time when real men wore spandex.
The 1988 Aerobic Championships were a real thing and should come back.
6. There was something oddly satisfying about putting a big ol' tape into an even bigger ol' VCR.
7. You'll never get back the simple pleasure of lugging around a camera three times the size of your head.
8. Sadly, the coolness of your Chuck Norris Karate Kommando has expired.
Just kidding… everyone knows Norris is timeless.
9. If you're like us, you long for the days when keytars weren't ironic.
10. And why are music players getting smaller and smaller?
Your 16-piece stereo system is the closest you were going to get to the Hall & Oates concert besides actually being there.
12. Would you throw out a mixtape with a track list like this?!
What you chose to put on a mixtape said more about you than your diary!
13. You'll never get back the simple pleasure of completing one of these babies.
There's probably a phone app out there with cheat codes now… tsk-tsk.
15. Kids these days think they have "swag." This is the true meaning of "swag."
For more '80s nostalgia, check out The Goldbergs!
Totally Premieres Tuesday, September 24th at 9|8c on ABC!


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Games | Play free online games! |
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Play with your own profile by registering yourself for this fun game. You can also play as guest, but your scores and account will not be saved then.
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You've made a racing circuit on your desk. Race as fast as possible and collect all stars and prices.Controls
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Interim Eudora Police Chief David Burger released more details Tuesday about a suspicious device detonated by a bomb squad Sept. 13 at a Eudora apartment complex.
The device was found by apartment staff in the closet of a vacated apartment at the Greenway Apartment complex, 1516 Greenway Drive, Burger said. Police were contacted at about 1 p.m. on Sept. 13 and the Leavenworth Bomb Squad detonated the device in the parking lot at about 4:30 p.m.
Burger described the device as being about the size of a Mason jar, chemical in nature, and more "incendiary than explosive."
The tenant who previously lived in the apartment left about a week prior to the discovery, Burger said. At this point, police are attempting to locate the person, whom police believe is now out of state.
The remnants of the device also are being analyzed by police, Burger said.


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$ 30.00 $ 34.00
The EPIC Bacon bar is a game changing snack that allows you to enter bacon bliss at all times of the day. Indulge bacon lust freely and frequently. #BACONLUST
INGREDIENTS: Uncured Bacon (Pork, Water, Salt, Vinegar, Celery Powder), Natural Pork, Lactic Acid
is back-ordered. We will ship it separately in 10 to 15 days.


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Offline aviation database for IATA/ICAO codes.
This app contains the IATA/ICAO codes for airports (over 11.000), aircraft and airlines (over 5.000).
After the first start you will asked if you want to create the database. The database will created offline. You don´t need to be online.
I can´t answer to the remarks. If you have problems please write me a mail. I will do my best to fix it.
More screen shots and information at:
Airports Information:
- Name, Elevation, coordinates, timezone, Runway, Communication
- download of Metar/TAF reports
-Notam download
- Decoder for Snowtams Notam)
- airport indication with ggogle maps
-airport in the vicinity function. Is searching for airports in your vicinity. (GPS or network required)
-distance calculation
FAA charts for U.S. airports
- downloadable for offline use
Fleet Information (online connection (required)
- get fleet information from several airlines (how many aircraft per type, registrations, etc.)
Airline Codes
Aircraft Codes
Aircraft country registrations
Delay codes
Tags: iata/icao dictionary , iata / icao dictionary , icao iata dictionary , iata , icao delay codes , iata dictionary , icao , iata icao dictionary , icao/iata dictionary
Users review
from 1.106 reviews
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We spent two nights at this Ibis and found it a convenient base for our sightseeing. Although the rooms are small, they were fine for a couple of days, and the staff were very helpful and friendly.
There was some parking, and a liitle restaurant and bar. Nothing grand, but we got everything we had paid for, and left very satisfied
- Official Description (provided by the hotel):
- The Ibis Lourdes hotel is located opposite the hospital, 10 minutes walk from the sanctuaries and 3 minutes from the SNCF railway station. Just 1 km from the Lourdes Convention Centre, the hotel is ideal for a weekend or holiday stay. Book one of our 88airconditioned rooms (including 3 adapted for guests with limited mobility) and make use of our facilities, a restaurant, a bar serving snacks 24 hours as well as outdoor pay parking. Business guests will appreciate use of WiFi Internet access. ... more less
- Reservation Options:
- TripAdvisor is proud to partner with Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda, ACCOR, Priceline and Odigeo so you can book your Ibis Lourdes reservations with confidence. We help millions of travellers each month to find the perfect hotel for both holiday and business trips, always with the best discounts and special offers.


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Breaker 1-9 ... Breaker 1-9!
September 18, 2012, Rick Houston, Special to NASCAR.COM, NASCAR.com
Bobby Allison was on the kind of hot streak in the summer of 1971 that most NASCAR drivers could only dream of. Held winless through the first half of the season, Allison finally broke into the win column on May 30 in the World 600 at Charlotte. Next came a victory on a hot and humid day at Dover, and then another the week after that at Michigan. Afterward, it was time for the long haul out to southern California, where the road course at Riverside awaited. The track was full of turns and hill crests that made it impossible to know what was coming, and if he could figure out some sort of early-warning system, well, heck, why not? Allison's first attempt was to outfit his car with a regular CB radio, with a crew member standing by at the top of the grandstands across from the start-finish line. "Breaker 1-9 ... breaker 1-9! This is ol' B.A. coming at you loud and proud from Turn 12. Y'all got your ears on?!?" It didn't work, even with the volume turned up full blast. Still, the CB was better than nothing. The concept could work, if he could only find the right rig to use at Riverside. Enter Chuck Santorre, a Motorola employee, who told Allison that he could set him up for a couple hundred bucks or so. The role of spotter in NASCAR was about to take a giant leap forward. "The radio had a hookup with a set of earplugs so I could hear," Allison said. "I went out there and ran some laps, and man, I could hear him just like we're talking now. I could talk into the mic, and he could hear me. We thought it was great." Though Allison remembers a few skeptics commenting on "another one of your wild and crazy ideas," he says he simply responded with a smile. Santorre made his way up to the grandstands for the start of the race, and it wasn't long before he proved the radio's value to Allison. Coming out of the bottom turn and headed toward the esses, a wreck had the track blocked. "Bobby! Go out in the dirt! Go out in the dirt right now!" Santorre commanded, and that's exactly what Allison did. "I went out through the dirt and the cloud of dust and missed everything," Allison said. "I won the race so easy that day, I didn't have to race anybody. About three races later, Richard Petty walked over to me and asked, 'How do I get some of them there things?'" The Riverside victory was Allison's fourth in a row, and he would extend the streak to five consecutive wins just three days later on a half-mile track in Houston, Texas. Not long afterward, more and more teams began to use radio hookups supplied by Santorre, who continued to serve as Allison's spotter on a part-time basis. "Chuck came to a lot of races, and he spotted for me when he was there," Allison said. "It would be a crew member that I had a lot of confidence in who would take over the duties whenever he wasn't there. Bob Spangler, the first guy who did my souvenir stuff, he became the interim spotter. He was really good at it, too." "
I'm just proud that I got to do some of those things that appear to still be going on in the racing world. The radios were probably the most lasting and most widely appreciated thing that came along." --BOBBY ALLISON Some of the old-guard drivers had trouble manhandling a car around the track with somebody else's voice ringing in their ears, trying to tell them what to do. Allison, however, had no such issues. He was already accustomed to receiving instructions from control towers at any of the hundreds of airports that he had flown into while piloting his private airplane. "Flying the airplane, I could take my little radio and talk to a guy a thousand miles away," the NASCAR Hall of Famer said. "I was so tuned into radio communications, it made it really easy for me. As the spotters got better and better, they could say so-and-so's weak getting into the corner or so-and-so's weak getting off the corner. They could feed the driver the right kind of information to help them advance, and they could warn the driver of an unseen problem so often." Along with the advent of spotters, the use of radios also advanced communications between driver and crew by light years. If a car was loose before radios, the driver was supposed to pat the roof of the car. If the car was tight, the driver patted the door. If the crew needed to get a message to the driver, out came what was more often than not an old and tattered chalk board. Sometimes, the crew didn't see the hand signal. On top of that, it was understandably difficult for a driver even pick out, much less focus on, a small pit board while flying past at 100 mph and more. "Well, sometimes they didn't see your arm out of the window," Allison remembered. "It was easier to see the pat on the roof, but it was just part of the challenge of going out there and trying to be as competitive as you could be." Without a doubt, Allison is proud of his contribution to the evolution of the sport through the use of spotters. "I have always felt it was one of the neat things that came along, and that maybe I helped develop to at least an extent," he concluded. "I did a lot of things, I think, to help racing grow to what it became. I'm just proud that I got to do some of those things that appear to still be going on in the racing world. The radios were probably the most lasting and most widely appreciated thing that came along."


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5. masshysteria
3:56 PM GMT on April 20, 2012
Good Morning Tony! As I post this, my hubby's downstairs in the garage puttering about as well. Thankfully, he did a thorough reorganization job some time ago and either threw out or gave away those things he could no longer safely use or were completely broken. I must say, "it's so nice to have a man around the house", especially, with these particular chores. LOL! Well, today, we have a lovely, sunny, warm, spring-like day in store for us (76F degrees) before a weekend that could produce chilly temps and the heavy rainfall needed to break out of our lengthy dry spell plus high pollen count. We've been really affected by the pollen this season with counts reaching 11.80 out of 12.00! Lots of sneezing and hacking going on around here. Is it any wonder why we're actually looking forward to this chilly, rain soaked Sunday and Monday? At worst, we had a new automatic sump pump installed last August, so it's ready to go if at all needed. Hope you and yours have an enjoyable Friday and Weekend! Don't work too hard! |


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too busy????
Friday, 19 February 2010
Ideas for the flyers......
too busy????
7 comments:
Hi Liz
I like the third one best. The lace across the corner and the extra flowers on the right-hand side seem to bring it all together with the right mix of colour and depth. However, the dresser looks good, too. I'm sure you can have portrait cards done but if you're writing on the back you may find that will have to be landscape.
Cheque tomorrow!
SxBy the way, I like the head in the photo with the delphinium bag (could you put some more things in the foreground or in the closed side of the cupboard?) but I'm not keen on the scary heads in the other photos! Clare's blue hat and the floral picture are yummy, though. I like the dresser very much, lovely, but wonder if it says "home" rather than "fair/bazaar, come and buy!" Just my humble and very in-expert opinion, hope you don't mind me chipping in...
Hen x


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Loading... Hands Off! Volume 5 (Hands Off!) (edition 2006)by Katsumoto Kasane
Work detailsHands Off!, Volume 5 by Katsumoto Kasane
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References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in EnglishNone No descriptions found. Kotarou Oohira, a transfer student, does not realize that his cousin's and a classmate's ESP powers are intensified when they touch him, as they face some dangerous situations in school and in the community. (summary from another edition) |
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Lopez Sees Some Rodgers in Josh RosenJohn, Dante and Cody recap the college football action from the weekend. It was a great weekend for Texas schools! And John sees some Aaron Rodgers in Josh Rosen.
The Bracket: Ugliest Sports BrawlsIn this week's "B-Straw and Pauly G" Bracket, Paul Gallant and Brien Straw discuss some of the biggest brawls in sports history.
Zags Dominate Bruins On Boards: One Win From Final Four
5 Possible Buyers At The NHL Trade DeadlineWe saw the NBA Trade Deadline pass last week in a blaze of glory and now the NHL will have it's chance to steal the spotlight on Monday.
TTYM: A Man Mows Down A Kid For A Ball And An Epic Yearbook Fail
Organized Anarchists, Not Hockey Fans
Video: Mike Meltser on Vancouver RiotsMike Meltser gives his take on the riots in Vancouver after the Bruins 4-0 win in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.


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Your IT resume provides recruiters and hiring managers with a critical first impression of who you are and what you offer. Working in a field as competitive as IT means you have to do everything you can to ensure your resume get noticed. Making a bad first impression (or no impression at all) is a sure way to get your resume moved into the 'No' pile.
"They [resumes] get eliminated for all sorts of reasons just to get the pile down to something manageable," says Rick Endres, president of the Washington Network and former CIO of the U.S. Congress, as well deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Commerce for Technology Policy. To help you build a better resume, CIO.com talked to Endres and other experts to identify common errors and some not-so-common ones.
To continue reading, register here to become an Insider . You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.


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Written on: 17/09/2013
I went to Mill Farm for a 1.5/2-hour trek in June this year, which was booked through a group-on style voucher with niece. As relatively experienced rider, having ridden on and off for longer than I care to admit and owned my own for over 7-years I was looking forward to riding a different horse and hacking out with my niece. The initial greeting at the farm was a little disorganised and resulted in us starting nearly an hour late. We asked our ability level so we could choose an appropriate ride and assigned an appropriate horse. I was given a nice steady horse and my niece a lovely little reliable pony, my niece was anxious about doing the gallop and I have to Della who led our ride, was amazing! She gave my niece amazing confidence to gallop and even gave her the opportunity to do it again as she loved it so much - so thanks Della you helped make her day.
Overall the experience was good, it wasn't fast and furious but the ground conditions weren't conducive to that kind of ride. I felt with the group on voucher it was definitely value for money and might have paid up to £25.00 - £30 no more though. But the end result of a very happy, confident niece who had a good time was achieved and for that I would highly recommend, thanks Mill Farm and Della in particular.
As rated by our community of reviewers
" Bad memories " Read More
" Lovely friendly yard " Read More
" Best riding school you could wish for. " Read More
" Breakdown Of Communication between Yard owners & Staff! " Read More
" BRILLIANT " Read More


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About Paksport
Ellsworth Handcrafted Bicycles
Paksport is the exclusive Australian distributor of Ellsworth Handcrafted Bicycles. Our focus is on personalised customer service and offering the best possible support and knowledge to our customers, within a transparent business structure. We love Ellsworth bicycles and aim to help others to enjoy riding these fantastic and beautiful bikes. We welcome enquires from retailers and end users, seven days a week.


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Democrats Call Republican Bluff on Budget
It's hard to resist a little hypocrisy-mongering occasionally, especially when it's a high-profile subject. Republicans, as you may or may not know, have been fuming for years that Democrats refused to pass a budget via "regular order," instead making deals in back rooms that allowed them to avoid public scrutiny of their priorities. This year Republicans finally insisted on regular order, and Democrats have taken them up on it. But as Ezra Klein explains, a funny thing happened next:
House Republicans, it seemed, weren't that eager to move to regular order after all. There's been no evident interest in the next move, which is appointing conferees to begin reconciling the two budgets....In fact, Republicans see a disadvantage in a formal public process. "If you appoint conferees and after 20 legislative days there's no agreement, the minority has the right to offer motions to instruct, which become politically motivated bombs that show up on the House floor," Boehner told reporters.
Senate Democrats don't find this a very convincing excuse: They note that they had to vote on dozens of Republican amendments — many of which were designed to embarrass them.
House Republicans instead want a private agreement — a "framework" — that would direct the conference committee as they attempt to reconcile the budgets....And Senate Democrats aren't having it. After years of Republicans complaining about secret deals and hammering Senate Democrats for betraying regular order, they're calling the GOP's bluff. That's why Reid intends to move towards conference this morning. Either Republicans will agree, and regular order will proceed — which will likely mean no deal, and which will then give House Democrats a chance to throw their bombs — or Senate Republicans will filibuster, and that will be the end of the regular order talking point.
Isn't Washington grand? I can't say that I personally care much about regular order for the budget, but tea party types and radio blowhards have been griping about this forever. So now they've got it. And guess what? It turns out they don't like it so much after all.


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"People feel when we come here, that we didn't forget about them."
Montel Williams
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Maya Angelou
"Forget injuries; never forget kindness."
"Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave."
Winnie the Pooh
"Blessed are the forgetful; for they get the better even of their blunders"
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
Benjamin Franklin
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
Michel de Montaigne


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Oscars: And the first awards go to …
LOS ANGELES — Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won the supporting-acting Academy Awards on Sunday for the boxing drama "The Fighter," while "Toy Story 3" claimed the prize for feature animation.
Network censors bleeped Leo for dropping the F-word during her speech. Backstage, she jokingly conceded it was "probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word."
"Those words, I apologize to anyone that they offend. There is a great deal of the English language that is in my vernacular," Leo said.
Bale joked that he was keeping his language clean.
"Melissa, I'm not going to drop the F-bomb like she did," Bale said. "I've done that plenty of times before."
But the Oscars, being a global affair, were telecast elsewhere in the world with Leo's words uncensored. Viewers who watched the show on Star Movies, a major channel available throughout Asia, heard the F-word loud and clear.
Leo's win capped an unusual career surge in middle age for the 50-year-old actress, who had moderate success on TV's "Homicide: Life on the Street" in her 30s but leaped to big-screen stardom in her late 40s, a time when most actresses find good roles hard to come by.
In disbelief when she took the stage, Leo said, "Pinch me." Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, who presented her award, obliged with a little pinch on her arm.
"I'm just shaking in my boots here," Leo said, accepting the prize for her role in "The Fighter," also nominated for best picture. "Yeah, I am kind of speechless."
Bale earned the same prize his Batman co-star, the late Heath Ledger, received posthumously two years ago for "The Dark Knight." At the time, Bale had fondly recalled a bit of professional envy as he watched Ledger perform on set like a whirlwind as the diabolical Joker while the film's star had to remain clenched up as the stoic, tightly wound Batman.
"The Fighter" gave Bale his turn to unleash some demons as Dicky Eklund, a boxer whose career unraveled amid crime and drug abuse. Bale delivers a showy performance full of tics and tremors, bobbing and weaving around the movie's star and producer, Mark Wahlberg, who plays Eklund's stolid brother, boxer Micky Ward.
Best-picture front-runner "The King's Speech," a tale of Britain's stammering King George VI that led contenders with 12 nominations, won only one of the first seven prizes for which it was competing, best original screenplay for writer David Seidler.
The win capped a lifelong dream for Seidler, a boyhood stutterer born in London in 1937, a year after George took the throne. Seidler, who overcame his own stutter at age 16, had long vowed to one day write about the monarch whose fortitude set an example for him in childhood.
Seidler thanked Queen Elizabeth II, daughter of King George, "For not putting me in the Tower of London for using the Melissa Leo F-word." The film includes two scenes where the king spouts profanity in anger to help force out his syllables.
The Oscar for adapted screenplay went to Aaron Sorkin for "The Social Network," a chronicle of the birth of Facebook based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires." "The Social Network" also won for musical score for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
While "The King's Speech" came in as the best-picture favorite, "The Social Network" was considered a potent prospect for an upset win.
The two films have led a strong and varied field of best-picture contenders since they debuted nearly six months ago. "The Social Network" was the early leader, grabbing key critics' honors and winning best drama at the Golden Globes. Momentum shifted to "The King's Speech" as the film dominated on Oscar nominations morning and swept top awards from influential actors, directors and producers guilds.
"Toy Story 3," last year's top-grossing release and a contender for best picture, won the fourth-straight animated-feature Oscar for Disney's Pixar Animation unit. Pixar has produced six of the 10 Oscar recipients for animation since the category was added, including "Finding Nemo," "WALL-E" and last year's winner, "Up."
It was an odd backdrop for a Pixar win, the Oscar ceremony using visual effects to present the award in front of a re-creation of Far Far Away, the fairy-tale realm of Disney rival DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek" movies. The original "Shrek" won the first Oscar for feature animation, but unlike the durable "Toy Story" franchise, the "Shrek" series finished with a critical dud, last year's "Shrek Forever After."
Reuniting voice stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, "Toy Story 3" was the latest follow-up to the 1995 film that launched today's era of feature-length computer animation.
"Toy Story 3" director Lee Unkrich called Pixar the "most awesome place on the planet to make movies."
The Oscar for foreign-language film went to Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's "In a Better World," a saga of two broken families that centers on two teenage boys struggling with violence at school and plotting revenge.
The Lewis Carroll update "Alice in Wonderland" won the first prize of the night, claiming the art direction Oscar.
"Alice in Wonderland" production designer Robert Stromberg had warm words for the film's director, Tim Burton.
"Meet me with a saw, because half of this is yours," Stromberg told Burton, holding up his Oscar.
The show opened with co-hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco inserted into a montage of scenes from best-picture nominees, built as a series of dream sequences reminiscent of Oscar contender "Inception." The footage included such guests as Morgan Freeman and last year's Oscar co-host Alec Baldwin.
Franco started off telling Hathaway how beautiful she looked. Hathaway shot back, "You look very appealing to a younger demographic, as well."
Also up for best picture: the psychosexual thriller "Black Swan"; the sci-fi blockbuster "Inception"; the lesbian-family tale "The Kids Are All Right"; the survival chronicle "127 Hours"; the Western "True Grit"; and the Ozarks crime story "Winter's Bone."
With TV ratings on a general decline over the last few decades, Oscar organizers doubled the best-picture category from five to 10 films last year, hoping to spice up the show and bring in a broader range of films. Academy overseers also have tried to liven up the show with fresh hosts, new routines and different ways of presenting awards.
It paid off last year, when the low-budget Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker" beat sci-fi behemoth "Avatar" for best picture. TV viewers totaled 41.7 million, up 15 percent from the previous year and the biggest Oscar audience in five years.
This time, Oscar planners cast youthful hosts Hathaway and Franco (also a best-actor nominee for "127 Hours") and promised exotic visuals as backdrops to the ceremony. They also stepped up pressure for winners to keep speeches short and sharp, rather than intone long thank-you lists.
Still, a fair number of winners used much of their time thanking agents, managers and other industry colleagues.


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Live updates
- ITV Report
Sheffield United ban fans over 'ISIS' chants
Sheffield United have handed banning orders to a number of fans after investigating allegations of racist chanting.
Read the full story ›- ITV Report
League One round-up: Sheffield United embarrassed
Nigel Adkins' first game as Sheffield United manager is one he will quickly want to forget after seeing his side beaten 4-0 at Gillingham.
Read the full story ›Advertisement
- ITV Report
Jose Baxter free to resume career after FA drugs ban
Jose Baxter is free to resume his career after the Football Association handed him a five-month ban for failing a drugs test
Read the full story ›Sheffield United players get 'balls out' into interview
What's going on at Sheffield United?
Goalkeeper Mark Howard and left-back Bob Harris both managed to mention the phrase "get the balls out" during an interview with our friends over at ITV Calendar today.
The pair even managed to get sports reporter Chris Dawkes to repeat the phrase in a question to manager Nigel Adkins, who replied with a wry smile.
United begin their League One campaign at Gillingham on August 8th.
- ITV Report
Sheffield United remove Ennis-Hill name from stand
Sheffield United will remove Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill's name from a stand at Bramall Lane, the club have confirmed.
Read the full story ›Sheffield United appoint Adkins as new boss
League One Sheffield United have confirmed the appointment of former Southampton and Reading manager Nigel Adkins. Adkins replaces Nigel Clough who was sacked following the club's failing to gain promotion this season.
Nigel Adkins has agreed a three-year contract to become Sheffield United's new first-team manager. More to follow #sufc #twitterbaldes
Sheffield United sack manager Nigel Clough
Sheffield United have sacked Nigel Clough after the club missed out on League One promotion.
The Blades, who reached the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup, were beaten in the play-off semi-finals by Swindon and have been condemned to a fifth year in the third tier.
Clough has been relieved of his duties with immediate effect, with his coaching staff of Gary Crosby and Andy Garner following through the exit door.
A club statement read:
Sheffield United today announce that Nigel Clough, the club's first-team manager, and his management staff, are to leave Bramall Lane with immediate effect following the decision by the board that a change in direction was necessary for the forthcoming season.
The search for the club's new first-team manager will now start and it is hoped that this will result in identifying and recruiting the right candidate within a relatively short period of time.
Baxter and McCarey fail drugs tests
Sheffield United midfielder Jose Baxter and Wolves goalkeeper Aaron McCarey have both failed drugs tests and been placed under suspension, their clubs have announced.
A statement from Sheffield United on Saturday evening announced that "traces of a banned substance" were found when Baxter underwent Football Association testing.
Wolves said McCarey had failed a test for "a non-performance enhancing substance".
- ITV Report
Sheffield United suspend striker over failed drugs test
Sheffield United have suspended striker Jose Baxter after a banned substance was found in a drug test.
Read the full story ›- ITV Report
League Cup team news: Spurs v Sheffield United
Tottenham goalkeeper Michel Vorm will keep his place for the League Cup semi-final second leg at Bramall Lane.
Read the full story ›


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Vietti 2005 Barolo Lazzarito Piedmont
January 13, 2011
Vietti winemaker and industry visionary Alfredo Currado passed away this year, leaving the estate in the capable hands of his son, Luca. The Nebbiolo grapes used to make this Barolo are sourced from 39-year-old vines in the Lazzarito Vineyard in Serralunga. This wine is aged for over two years, first in French oak barrels, then in ones of Slovenian oak, both of which add to the grapes' sweet blackberry fruit and accents of tobacco and menthol.


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Louisiana Grills Smoker Box For LG Series Grills (51299)
at Your Local Ace
This item can be purchased on-line, however, due to shipping restrictions, ITEM PICKUP IS ONLY AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL ACE STORE.
- Product Type: Grill Smoker Box
- Brand Compatibility: Louisiana Grills Country Smoker 450, 570, or 680
- Smoke and cure your meat before cooking on the grill
- Idea is to impart smoke flavor on fish, game or cheese before it is cooked or while curing
- Cold smoking process should be done on cooler days or evenings when the temperature is cooler outside
30-Day Return Guarantee
We want you to be fully satisfied with every item that you purchase from www.acehardware.com. If you are not satisfied with an item that you have purchased (excluding Gift Cards and gas-powered outdoor equipment*), you may return the item up to thirty days after the original purchase date to receive a store credit (less shipping, handling and other charges). We recommend that you make returns of online purchases to an Ace retail store near you which will issue your store credit. If you do not have an Ace retail store near you, please contact a Customer Service Specialist by calling 1-866-290-5334 for complete return instructions. Please refer to our Return Instructions for more information about returning a purchase.
The item must be returned in good condition, in original boxes (whenever possible), and with all paperwork, parts and accessories to insure full credit. After 30 days, please contact the manufacturer directly.
*Gas-Powered Outdoor Equipment cannot be returned once gas or oil has been put in it, even if the Equipment has been drained of these materials.


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Contact Us
Jacqueline Toppings
PHONE+1 703 883 6587 CONTACTMedia Inquiries ADDRESS7930 Jones Branch Drive
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Hilton Hotels & Resorts
McLean, Virginia 22102
Related Information
Hilton Expands Welcome Program for Chinese Travelers Globally
Leading Hospitality Company Offers Specially-Tailored Services for Chinese Travelers at Top Destinations Worldwide
March 17, 2015
MCLEAN, Va. and BEIJING - Hilton Worldwide today announced the expansion of Hilton Huanying (huān yίng) - a program that offers Chinese travelers a customized hospitality experience during their stay - to more than 110 Hilton Worldwide properties globally. As Chinese citizens make up the world's largest outbound travel market1 and are continually evolving in their needs, Hilton has updated the Huanying program amenities and service standards. These offerings meet the needs of the modern day Chinese traveler, while maintaining the comforts that harken back to home. With this expansion, Hilton Huanying - deriving its name from the Chinese word for 'welcome' - will now greet guests at participating hotels under brands including Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels & Resorts and DoubleTree by Hilton in more than 30 countries and 65 cities popular among Chinese travelers, including Tokyo, Seoul, London, Paris, New York and San Francisco.
"Huanying is an essential part of the Hilton hospitality promise, welcoming Chinese travelers with a level of service and personalization we know they expect and enjoy," said Rob Palleschi, global head, full service brands, Hilton Worldwide. "Since being introduced in 2011 at 51 properties in 13 countries, Huanying has empowered more than a million Chinese travelers to explore new destinations with the comforts of home. We are very proud of this program, and the benefits are clear. Chinese travelers who stay at Huanying properties express a greater overall satisfaction in their hospitality experience."
Chinese outbound travel is expected to grow at an unprecedented pace, with the number of outbound Chinese travelers expected to double from 100M to 200M by 20202, and Hilton is responding by enhancing its Huanying program. Through its extensive field research, Hilton has discovered that Chinese guests who stay at participating properties expressed a substantial increase in customer satisfaction in areas including service, accommodations, property loyalty and overall experience. In fact, a third party survey found that Hilton is the preferred hotel brand amongst Chinese travelers3.
"Driven by our in-depth knowledge of China, where we have been operating hotels for over 25 years, and our position as a global hospitality company with over 4,300 hotels operating in 94 countries, we have a unique advantage in addressing the needs of the Chinese travelers," said Martin Rinck, president, Asia Pacific, Hilton Worldwide. "With this in mind, we applied our comprehensive understanding of where Chinese travelers like to visit and what they look for when they stay at a hotel, in order to develop a tailor-made service that better meets the needs of our Chinese guests, in the form of Hilton Huanying."
In order to continue to best serve the needs of the evolving Chinese traveler, Huanying program offerings have been expanded to include additional locations, expanded traditional breakfast options and a 24-hour interpretation service that Mandarin-speaking guests may access during their travels.
These offerings were added while maintaining Huanying's focus on three signature hospitality touch points: the arrival experience, guest room amenities and the breakfast experience. The complete list of Huanying offerings include:
Arrival Experience
- Huanying Greeting: a welcome note in Simplified Chinese
- Mandarin interpretation service (Many properties offer Mandarin speaking team member(s) as well)
Guest Room Amenities
- Tea kettles
- Jasmine tea
- Slippers
- Dedicated Mandarin-speaking television channel
Breakfast Experience
- Two varieties of congee with condiments, fried rice or fried noodles, a dim sum selection, fried dough fritters (crullers), hard boiled eggs, Chinese tea, fresh fruit and soy milk
- Chinese culinary utensils including chopsticks, Chinese spoons and a soy sauce dish
Travelers may access a list of participating Hilton Huanying hotels at www.hilton.com.cn/huanying. To download images and access more information, visit news.hilton.com/huanying. Information in Chinese is available at www.hilton.com.cn and news.hilton.com.cn/huanying.
1. China Outbound Tourism in 2013. (2013, January 1). Retrieved February 27, 2015, from http://www.travelchinaguide.com/tourism/2013statistics/outbound.htm
2. CLSA: US Lodging Sector Outlook (Oh, J., 20 January 2015, p. 1)
3. CLSA: US Lodging Sector Outlook (Oh, J., 20 January 2015, p. 1, chart 1)
Audrey Wong
Hilton – Asia Pacific
+65 6833 9763
Jacqueline Toppings
Hilton Worldwide
+1 703 883 5381
About Hilton Hotels & Resorts
For nearly a century, Hilton Hotels & Resorts has been proudly welcoming the world's travelers. With 570 hotels across six continents, Hilton Hotels & Resorts provides the foundation for memorable travel experiences and values every guest who walks through its doors. As the flagship brand of Hilton, Hilton Hotels & Resorts continues to set the standard for hospitality, providing new product innovations and services to meet guests' evolving needs. Hilton Hotels & Resorts is a part of the award-winning Hilton Honors program. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits, including a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to book a stay, an exclusive member discount that can't be found anywhere else, free standard Wi-Fi and digital amenities like digital check-in with room selection and Digital Key (select locations), available exclusively through the industry-leading Hilton Honors app. Begin your journey at www.hilton.com and learn more about the brand by visiting news.hilton.com or following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About Hilton
Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company, with a portfolio of 14 world-class brands comprising more than 4,900 properties with over 800,000 rooms in 104 countries and territories. Hilton is dedicated to fulfilling its mission to be the world's most hospitable company by delivering exceptional experiences – every hotel, every guest, every time. The company's portfolio includes Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Canopy by Hilton, Curio - A Collection by Hilton, DoubleTree by Hilton, Tapestry Collection by Hilton, Embassy Suites by Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton by Hilton, Tru by Hilton, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton and Hilton Grand Vacations. The company also manages an award-winning customer loyalty program, Hilton Honors. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits, including a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose exactly how many Points to combine with money, an exclusive member discount that can't be found anywhere else and free standard Wi-Fi. Visit newsroom.hilton.com for more information and connect with Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.


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In certain states, homeowners can take advantage of what's called a homestead exemption. Basically, a homestead exemption allows a homeowner to protect the value of her principal residence from creditors and property taxes. A homestead exemption also protects a surviving spouse when the other homeowner spouse dies. State homestead exemptions often have four features, including the well-known property-tax exemption on a portion of a home's assessed value.
Property Taxes
A homeowner's understanding when it comes to homesteading her property most often has to do with the property-tax exemption. Generally, this advantage of homesteading pertains to shielding a portion of a home's value from property taxes. Often, a typical homesteading advantage is that it'll exempt the first $50,000 or $75,000 of a home's assessed value from all property taxes. With a $50,000 homesteading exemption, you'll only owe property taxes on the home's remaining assessed value.
Forced Sale Immunity
With a homestead exemption, your home is shielded from a forced sale to satisfy creditors. For example, the lender financing your automobile can't force the sale of your home if you default on your auto loan. Before homestead exemptions, creditors could and often did try to seize a homeowner's property to satisfy all kinds of debts. Homestead exemptions, however, don't normally shield your home from forced sale in mortgage foreclosures or from defaulted property taxes.
Surviving Spouse Advantages
State homestead laws vary, but surviving spouses under homestead laws retain the homestead right to their homes for life. For surviving spouses, as long as they use and occupy the homesteaded property, they won't lose homestead rights. Surviving spouses on homesteaded properties, though, must make any mortgage and other payments due in order to retain their homesteading rights. California's own homesteading laws work to protect the homestead interests of surviving spouses by guaranteeing their homesteading rights.
Homestead Requirements
In order to declare a homestead on your home, it must be your principal residence. Also, in states like California, homestead exemptions apply only to real property. You won't be able to declare your house boat or motor home a homestead under certain state's homesteading laws. Your homestead exemption and its advantages last until you effectively abandon the homestead, too. Commonly, you abandon an old homestead when you declare another home your new homestead.
Photo Credits
- Jupiterimages/Creatas/Getty Images


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The Escoda Versatil synthetic Kolinsky brush is the modern-day alternative to natural Kolinsky.
Utilizing a carefully selected custom blend of uniquely patterned synthetic fibers, these brushes achieve everything artists expect from the finest natural hair brush.
Available in a variety of shapes and sizes, the Versatil provides great water retention, a firm spring, and a sharp, fine point, plus enhanced durability and a more consistent shape over the life of the brush.
Rigger, Series 1549 — The Rigger is a long, full-bellied, pointed round brush shape with large color capacity that was originally designed for painting the rigging of ships.
Long and Short Handles — Long handles are recommended for easel style painting, while short handles are recommended for table-top painting where the artwork lies flat, especially with water media.
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Room 1
Room 2
Room 3
Room 4
Room 5
Deluxe Rooms are spacious French style bedrooms located between the first and the seventh floor of the hotel. They are appointed with the very latest technology and Shangri-La signature beds create a warm residential feel.
Furniture, made of natural wood and marquetry, is characterised by French clear-cut silhouettes and symmetry in decoration.
*Visuals shown correspond to the room category but are not contractual.
Unique layout overlooking the courtyard or the Avenue d'Iéna.
Some rooms have a terrace or a balcony.
King, queen or twin bed on request.
Marble-clad bathroom with a bathtub, large separate walk-in shower, flatscreen television, mist-free mirror and heated floor.
Each room offers 40 sqm / 430 sqf of luxury.
Complimentary Wi-Fi


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The Leonard Lopate Show
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The Leonard Lopate Show
Backstory: EU and Debt
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Earlier this week, Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit of nine European countries. In Greece, the government and private creditors continue to meet to renegotiate the debt there. On today's first Backstory, Stuart Kirk, the head of the Lex column in The Financial Times, discusses this week's negotiations, why many in Europe are now bracing for a Greek default, and how Europe is trying to cope with its continuing debt crisis in the new year.


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This is a closeup of the test cell the team built to measure the properties of the self-assembling photosynthetic system.
MIT researchers have created a novel set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity; the molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution.
Their paper on the work was published on Sept. 5 in Nature Chemistry.
One of Strano's long-term research goals has been to find ways to imitate principles found in nature using nanocomponents. In the case of the molecules used for photosynthesis in plants, the reactive form of oxygen produced by sunlight causes the proteins to fail in a very precise way. As Strano describes it, the oxygen "unsnaps a tether that keeps the protein together," but the same proteins are quickly reassembled to restart the process.
This action all takes place inside tiny capsules called chloroplasts that reside inside every plant cell — and which is where photosynthesis happens. The chloroplast is "an amazing machine," Strano says. "They are remarkable engines that consume carbon dioxide and use light to produce glucose," a chemical that provides energy for metabolism.
To imitate that process, Strano and his team, supported by grants from the MIT Energy Initiative and the Department of Energy, produced synthetic molecules called phospholipids that form discs; these discs provide structural support for other molecules that actually respond to light, in structures called reaction centers, which release electrons when struck by particles of light. The discs, carrying the reaction centers, are in a solution where they attach themselves spontaneously to carbon nanotubes — wire-like hollow tubes of carbon atoms that are a few billionths of a meter thick yet stronger than steel and capable of conducting electricity a thousand times better than copper. The nanotubes hold the phospholipid discs in a uniform alignment so that the reaction centers can all be exposed to sunlight at once, and they also act as wires to collect and channel the flow of electrons knocked loose by the reactive molecules.
The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant — similar in principle to the chemicals that BP has sprayed into the Gulf of Mexico to break apart oil — is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant by pushing the solution through a membrane, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.
"We're basically imitating tricks that nature has discovered over millions of years" — in particular, "reversibility, the ability to break apart and reassemble," Strano says. The team, which included postdoctoral researcher Moon-Ho Ham and graduate student Ardemis Boghossian, came up with the system based on a theoretical analysis, but then decided to build a prototype cell to test it out. They ran the cell through repeated cycles of assembly and disassembly over a 14-hour period, with no loss of efficiency.
Strano says that in devising novel systems for generating electricity from light, researchers don't often study how the systems change over time. For conventional silicon-based photovoltaic cells, there is little degradation, but with many new systems being developed — either for lower cost, higher efficiency, flexibility or other improved characteristics — the degradation can be very significant. "Often people see, over 60 hours, the efficiency falling to 10 percent of what you initially saw," he says.
The individual reactions of these new molecular structures in converting sunlight are about 40 percent efficient, or about double the efficiency of today's best commercial solar cells. Theoretically, the efficiency of the structures could be close to 100 percent, he says. But in the initial work, the concentration of the structures in the solution was low, so the overall efficiency of the device — the amount of electricity produced for a given surface area — was very low. They are working now to find ways to greatly increase the concentration.
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Posts by tag
Life Jacket
Daytime Visibility: Make Yourself Stand Out
It's obvious that when it's dark, you need light. But what about ensuring daytime visibility?
How to Pick the Right PFD for Kayak Fishing
Awwwww yeah! You got your kayak all rigged up for a great day of fishing, have all your rods and lures packed and ready to go, but wait – what about your PFD?
Life Jacket Facts From The Safe Boating Campaign
Keep these Life Jacket Facts in Mind Whatever kind of paddling you like to do, it's important to always wear your life jacket (or PFD) while you're out on the water. Think of it like wearing a seat belt in your car – you probably won't find yourself in a situation where you need it, but it's a precaution that can be live saving should the worst happen.


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Today was one of those sleeper days… just deeper.
As Lionel predicted, the northern tier of the Greens weren't going to see much from the synoptic storm, but the upslope on the backside as the low departed was going to be superb. Not quite VTah 6… but I'll go ahead and say this was VTah 5.5 ;)
Even the snowboarders were getting "Deeper" on this sleeper (hint: this is deep on a board).
Yep… it was a deeper day… and a sleeper day. Maybe it was all just a dream…
Check back later for a full TR. In the meantime, checkout our high alpine powder skiing TR, and stay tuned to the weather here on FIS as the next major storm takes aim at the east coast! If you are still in need of a 2011 Calendar we have a few of our ski stoke wall calendars left–last chance!
HEY YOU ON STUMBLEUPON!!!: This post has been expanded into a FULL TR! Check it out, and thanks for reading FIS!
7 Comments
wrote on January 10th, 2011 at 6:39 pm1Glad to see you guys took advantage! Great day to have the day off for sure! Bring on the snow..
wrote on January 10th, 2011 at 7:38 pm2too bad all that snow is hiding christian's new pink pants
wrote on January 11th, 2011 at 12:04 am4WOW. Wish I could have gotten out today… :-/
wrote on January 11th, 2011 at 10:24 pm6Ugh, alas no. However, I finally worked out the kinks in my schedule this afternoon and I should be free tuesdays this winter. Let's hook up and ski sometime.
Ina Franks
wrote on January 12th, 2011 at 6:38 pm7WOW. Wish I could have gotten out today… :-/
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